The moment you've passed through the opening cinematic, you realize this is not the game you've known & loved....
1) Campaigns are lengthy.. GOOD/BAD, really up to how much ur willing to soak up in a session.
2) Revamped creatures roster.
3) Highly stylized & truly unique in its realm and lore.
4) Some classic elements remain. And remain fun, as predictably enough it would.
5) Definitely a matter of opinion. As to whether or not it was necessary to fold so many corners and iron-out so many features to give that new-improved smell.
The moment you've passed through the opening cinematic, you realize this is not the game you've known, loved and tirelessly adapted with in all its randomness of game progression (game-play wise as well!) and slightly offbeat sense of high-fantasy drama. Granted that some of us have held back that chuckle one too many times, to the point where we've come to expect nothing less! Stereotypical Angels fighting equally predictable Devils. Knights with names bordering on the epic such as Lord Haart.. GONE are those days. Instead, a new era has dawned (literally..) in a new world (literally). Almost instantly, we are invited to empathize with the lords of a momentary lapse in chronology in the Heroes universe. Despite a rather ambitious opening cinematic, its follow up cutscenes (although beautifully rendered with in-game (ish)) visuals fail to hold onto the balance and indeed all signs of minute continuity. As if in a hurry to unravel an epic final act, that just keeps rechecking itself to maintain some composure. Not only are the many newly introduced creatures (too many, perhaps) overlooked as a means of step-by-step story progression. In an epic struggle that seems to assume that the AI is a toddler destined to have indecipherable resources at disposal & whereby the means of tactics on ur part relies heavily on a) Tactics skill b) Hoarding creatures usually with 1 prime hero frantically running back and forth... It would have sufficed to expand upon the lengthy single-scenario campaigns to involve them as side missions or perhaps even a mini-tutorial.
This is a quirky game, by all means. Creatures aligned in your army will not maintain formation from one battle to the next. Maps loading seem to give less priority to, well, everything on it..as you literally "get the picture". 1 tertiary resource, might be a simplification altogether unnecessary.. Just like the missing town screens. The ONE place where you could actually 'get away from it all', is an non-interactive mildly detailed "Harry Potter Enchanted Photo Album".. I keep seeing 'addictive' thrown in as a suitable peg for appreciation here and there as Gamespot's streamlined & predictable sense of reviewing continues well in blatant disregard of the many genuine attributes this game may find itself 'buffer' into. When its good its good (rarely why, other than a sticker that's supposed to make reviews "fun" whilst desperately trying to cover up the fact that Jeff & the gang are no longer here to come up with nu wunz..). And when its bad, it sucks.. NOT 'don't buy it' or 'rent it first' (something we're now left off with). Anyways, I've already trailed far enough off topic.. But in all seriousness, "addictive" is the bare-minimum that we've come to expect from tedious turn based strategy role playing from the legacy that forged it.
[[to be continued, when I've something OTHER than exams to worry about..hope I can edit this later *fingers crossed*]]