A good and cosy game with bad music. Still totally worth playing when music is muted.
The Good:
* Graphics: The game has its own style, like walking in a nicely drawn 3D comic.
* Good story introduction: The story is clear right from the start.
* Digging, a nice feature (and you can just dig away as much as you want, don't have to wait a day like in HOMM).
* Rage: The spell source from hell. A great idea that works wonders throughout the whole game.
* Cosy feel: The environment is nice and kind of friendly, even the enemies seem nice from a far.
* Experience tracker and fight log: It's clean and easy to read. You se all your lost troops from the previous battle and how much you need to fight to reach the next level.
* Not repetitive: There is almost always something new to reach, a new type of unit or one of the many different objects on the map.
* Nice crossover from map mode to battle mode: The units and chests looks exactly the same on the map as in the battles.
* Good grid system: The grid system in the battle mode is good. It's also cool that the grid differs a bit depending on location and if there is some kind of special fight.
* Living items: Although I would have wanted them to impact the game even more, I still like the idea and hope that the follow up games will continue develop this feature. Some items need to be suppressed to give the hero its special ability. The suppression battles are also a cool ingredient.
* Chests in battles: In some battles you'll find chests with gold or other content. The chests are placed at random so sometimes you have to run fast to pick them up before the opposition. This makes some battles a bit more interesting.
* Various locations: There are a good number of different locations, each with their specific environmental feel.
* No stress: The game is not turn based in map mode, but if you don't move your hero you are not likely to end up in a surprising battle. Therefore, you can play it casual on slow days. Eat a sandwich and drink some tea meanwhile playing!
* Nice effects: Particularly the graphical effects of spells. Some doesn't come that often which makes them even more interesting to watch.
* Good furniture: Some of the map exploring takes place indoor. The detail level is high and all rooms are neatly done, much better then most similar games.
* Humour: There are some quests that have a funny outcome or story, but the smiles come most frequently when talking to the spirits of rage.
* Challenging fights: The game is not linear since you can choose where to go and who to fight. The outcome of such a game style is that some fights will be harder then others. Some fights are also made to be extra hard. These battles are really what the game is all about.
* Action in map mode: Sometimes your actions have consequences in map mode (except from the basic removal of the army you just defeated). There is also a cool quest which makes you a bodyguard that needs of guard a moving unit.
* Wife and children: You can build up your own little family. The idea is sweet and new (for me). Different wife's give you different skills and additional item placeholders.
* Notes: You are able to write notes on the world map which will make it easier to recruit units and keep track of quests.
* Smart movement: In map mode the hero goes to where you click. Maybe an obvious feature, but then many games have problems with it. You can click on a part of the road and the hero will run far to get there.
* Cool boss fights: I won't spoil, but there is some cool action going on in these fights.
* Graphical detail: In the battles you can still get the environmental feel that you got on map mode. For example: when fighting in the swamps you se some frogs that are looking on the battle.
* Wild life: When walking around in a forest you se some squirrels or other wild animals running around. This is really cosy.
* No lag: It doesn't matter how many troops there is in a battle, I never ever got any lag.
* Good amount of missions: In the beginning I felt that there was to many tasks to do, but when I got myself together I realized that the amount of missions is perfect. You just don't have to take them all on at the same time.
* Good spells: There are a lot of spells and they are nicely ordered.
* Nice turns of events: The main story turns and twist, but all come together in the end.
* Cool artefacts: Some items are really interesting.
The Bad:
* Music: Maybe its suiting but it has not much character, it's mostly stressing and too repetitive. For me the music was a big minus and I needed to listen to other game music while playing although it wasn't always suiting to have a battle tune in map mode and vice versa.
* Sound level: some effects are REALLY loud and make your head spin if you use earphones. (Beware of the necromancers plague). Not good to have such different levels on effects in a game. Also the sound level is strange in the intro compared to the real game.
* Meaningless battles: some battles seem really meaningless. It's a bit weird that some hostile archers blocks the path of the royal treasure hunter to a frog kings castle. Sometimes it felt like the units were set out at total random and not logical in any other way. I like battles that mean something to the story.
* Text: At first there was much to read, too much for me. But then you get used to the small font and learn to read through the important stuff even if you aren't interested in the stories. Something that I still find bad is some misspellings (like I'm better!?) and most of all the double spaces in the texts, looks stupid.
* No keyboard movement controls: I miss moving my hero with the arrow keys ( W A S D more likely).
* One chance to get the information: If you read through a mission a bit to fast you won't have a chance of finding out where you're supposed to go to finish it. The text in the quest book can tell you who to talk to, but then it's hard to keep track of everyone living in Endoria. Some of my quests didn't get done because of this, but then again, I'm a bit lazy.
* Long ways to recruiters: Sometimes it will take half the gaming time to run around filling up your army when the hero has gained leadership or a lot of troops have died. Remember to mark the interesting locations on the map. A cool idea would be to order troops to meet up with the hero in map mode, but maybe it would be difficult to organize.
* Lack of leadership: Sometimes when you level up you get to choose from either more leadership or more of something else. But HOW can you choose anything else then leadership? I guess this was the error I did the first time I played. ALWAYS choose the leadership in these choices. It's bad that they even give you this kind of no brain choices. Maybe this problem comes with being a knight, if so – then the problem is even bigger. I finished the game satisfying with a paladin.
* Camera view: In some places it's hard to se where you are in map mode. It's also hard to locate some units when there are obstacles and other bigger units in the way when in battle mode.
* Bug with Mirabella. When trying to get Mirabella to be your wife, then game crashes. You'll need the latest patch. But be sure to install the right one because there are different patches depending on what release of the game you have.
* Big bug with Lina. When trying to get Lina as your servant you will sometimes fail. If you insist on the issue, reinstall the whole game without the updates. Recharge her battery (and do the other things that didn't work on the same location) and then install the latest patch again. (Don't forget to save after these steps )
* Notes not easy to se on map.
* Cannot look into the future: With spells of both mana and rage there is a big problem. You don't know how they will develop when upgraded. So how to know which ones to upgrade to second base of the spell book spells and how to know which rage spell will be most useful? Some spells affect all friendly or all hostile units in battle when fully upgraded, but you cannot look into that future.
* A bit sad to not be able to use rage in boss fights.
* No movies: It would be a nice change if some of the stories included some movie or something that breaks the regular story telling in the small text boxes. It would make the game feel more close to the story… if you know what I mean.
* No info about what is beast and what counts as animals.
* No good regalia (so the elf wife really sucks).
* Map mode would be cooler if the units were a bit smaller (like when getting the spell pigmy on them). Then the world would seem a bit bigger.
* Would like to be able to reach menu (to fix sound level) when in dialog.