One of the best 2D strategies out there. I must for fans of the genre...
Next - sound.
Nothing exceptional, it does its work fairly well. The units and characters are well voiced, the music is nice... Gameplay
The game has 3 races - Humans, Foresters and Darklings. I haven't played with the darklings so far, so I will not be talking about them. To build an army the player needs to build his houses and increase the population limit. Here's the first interesting part of the gameplay - you can't build everywhere on the map. Only in town areas, which are around your starting main hall. All building commnds are issued from the main hall. Your villagers, however can build mines, trade posts (don't be confused, there's no trading in the game. The trade post is a drop point for resources) and towers anywhere.
Second interesting part is increasing your population - to build houses you need glory points. Those point are also used by your hero to learn skills. So those points at first are earned by conquering colonies, and depending on the colony you can get glory points in other ways (finding items, destroying buildings, etc.) Conquering colones is essential part of the gameplay. Each colony provides you with 2 types of combat units and 2 special abilities. Of these 2 you must pick one ablility.
In the game there are also heroes. Like in WC 3 and Tzar, they can pick up items. They have 4 slots for equipment and 4 slots for backpack The sad part is that, in the campaign you have to learn their skills in every mission. Their equipment and skills do not carry between missions. It is not problem though... I highlty reccomend this game to all the people that like fantasy strategies. They will love it.