Beat it a long time ago. There is an evil and good side? I always thought they were kind of morally ambiguous.

I love Etherlords 2 but I just couldn't be bothered with this one. It was badly made game and I wasn't willing to spent all that time tackling unbalanced game.
I played 2 first and maybe it didn't help because of how much worse 1 was. I am really glad they did those changes.
E2 feels like carefuly crafted experience while E1 is unbalanced untested mess thrown together without much thinking and I don't think it's worth playing.