Best turn based game I've ever played – and I also like chess.
The game gives me a cosy feeling, running around in a world full of fantasy and strategy is great. It features a good combination of both combat-tactics, exploring and building.
Difficulty: GOOD
Sometimes when playing it all seems very challenging, sometimes it's a walk in the park. When a strong enemy hero turns up from nowhere I get the chills.
Game length: OK
It takes a looooong time to play this in multiplayer mode. But at the same time, the length is part of what makes it so great in singleplayer.
Stability: GOOD
I have had some minor problems with multiplayer mode. But since I've played it so much and almost never got any bug-problems, I am content.
Control: GREAT
You control your towns, you control your heroes and you control your creatures in combat. It's a lot to control but all is well figured out. The menus are very well made and newcomers shouldn't have any problems with figuring out how to do what.
Graphics: GREAT
Measuring with 2009's standards it's a bit weak. But the 2d view still has a good charm and there is no doubt on what is what on the exploring mode even if there always are a great number of different objects on a map. I almost don't want to battle sometimes since the worldview is so nice when exploring. In battlemode the attack animations works well and the spells looks awesome still.
Detail: GREAT
There are a lot of things and objects and all are really well made and animated.
Music: OK
The music changes depending on where your current hero stands, if the hero stands in a dirt environment – then the dirt soundtrack sounds. Also, the different types of towns have different themes. This makes the gamemusic change rather often some times, witch can be annoying to the experienced gamer. I prefer to turn off the music and play some soothing mp3 files from my own library in the background.
Cinematic: OK
They are not astonishing, but then they don't need to be either.
Quantity of units / skills / spells / whatever: GREAT
Even though I've played this game so much, I still havn't used even a half of the combination of spells and creatures that can be good in combat. There are a lot of artifacts that can make the hero much stronger fast and make interesting twists to the game – as for the flying boots for instance. The secondary skills of the hero is also great in making the heroes different from each other.
Possibilities / Choices to make: GREAT
The game is full of choices all the time. Where to go first, what to build first and what skills to choose – always you need to set up goals for your kingdom and try to be a bit smarter then your enemies.
Story: OK
The singleplayer story is ok, not great. This changes in the expansions however. I didn't really care to follow all the turns of the singleplayer campagn. It's challenging to try to beat old scores on them, but it's not the best storyline.
Tension / Excitement: GOOD
Sometimes the game can stand still, two strong heroes are both waiting for the last battle and the transportation takes a long time, but this will hardly happen on the smaller maps. Otherwise the fog of the unexplored areas makes it very exiting to reach new territories.
Humor: BAD
There isn't much "joking fun" in the game. Or have I missed something here?
Singleplayer / multiplayer usage: OK
It's mostly a singleplayer game, but it can be enjoyed with friends to. The stability of multiplayer can be a problem though.
Game editor: OK
It takes to long time to make a playable map in this tool. This feature also gets better with the expansions. But since I'm only to be talking of the original game here – I have to say that it's a bit to much work and not enough randomgeneraters.