Well, first impressions are that it is good fun, with some interesting units and special abilities that improve how combat works and makes it more interesting.

There do seem to be a number of smaller issues which have plagued the Elemental games for a long long time, however, which continue. And some that are new to Sorcerer King

UI:

• Selecting things is buggy near terrain of different heights. Sometimes one clicks in a square or on a unit, and have selected somewhere else on a nearby mountain.
• Combat special abilities confusingly use the opposite mouse button to normal move and attack. If right click is normally move, and attack, why is it suddenly cancel when one is using a special ability?
• Alerts are not doing a good job of getting my attention; 'There is a monster in my territory' is something that can go on for most of the game quite safely. 'You can build on some resource' is also not taking into account conditions such as how much logistics are available.
• It's not obvious from the display at the side which settlements and units have acted, or not acted.
• Sometimes cities seem paralysed - you cannot change their production. This happens when there is a city level up in the queue of things on the end turn button. It would make sense to have level up choices available from just looking at the city or unit, as well as on the end turn button area.
• It would be useful to be able to get directly from the city screen looking at a building or unit, to the help system for that building or unit.
• It would be useful to be able to go from looking at a units equipment screen, to be forging equipment.
• When one selects the hero in an army, or possibly the first unit in the army, then one can cycle to all the other units in that army. If one selects any of the other units in the army, however, the arrows for cycling to the other units in the army do not appear.
• Some spells give -10 to the doomsday counter which is a bad thing - they should say +10, or actually do -10. Some quests give -10 to the doomsday counter, which is a good thing. Please use + and - consistently.

Gameplay

• Using multiple amulets of haste seems like a very strong (possibly broken) strategy. Possibly one should be restricted to not use duplicate items, or to one amulet/two rings/one of most other misc items.
• Initiative being used for number of actions rather than just initial order of actions is very exploitable.
• It would be nice to be able to see resources on tiles even without having a pioneer selected. It makes it a lot harder to plan, if one has to make a pioneer before even being able to tell if an area is nice or not.
• The spells need some (possibly lots of) attention. Ideally, when looking at the spells to research, I should be spoilt with choice because they all look efficient and interesting to cast. At the moment, I'm looking at a list of things that cost too much for almost no effect, and selecting the one that researches fastest in the hope that something interesting joins the queue later.