I am reviewing based on the *demo* version, not the full version. What I was expecting: A cross between Populous and Netstorm. And, it succeeds at that. The basic game play is: 1. You have an island that isn't large enough, that you need to place buildings on. 2. There are more islands nearby, and you need to either bridge to them, use magic portals to reach them, or use magic to move them closer. Like populous, unlike netstorm, your combat units are mobile people who go out and attack. Like typical RTS, you have different units / buildings to recruit them. So far, the game succeeds, very well, at what it tries to do. If you like this basic style -- you, the general, manage overall strategy, rather than specific orders to each of your dozen+ troops, good. This game avoids *UNIT* micromanaging. BUT: You have *BUILDING* micro managing. You need to upgrade your buildings. And trying to select them, or even *find* them, can be painful. You are forced to take a 3d camera view, even if an overhead view would be easier. The "overhead" view you can use is too far zoomed out to be useful. After building, or upgrading, you have to assign workers. There is no way to say "Build this, upgrade to level 2, and assign all workers". No, you have to build it, then move to the next building, give that building one order, repeat -- then go back to the first building, give it another order, repeat, until you have given each building multiple orders and instructions. It is *painful*, partially because you have to upgrade and order multiple buildings, cannot give an order queue to the buildings, have a hard time selecting, hard time *finding*, etc. That doesn't even take into account the top line of the display. You have control over there, and trying to hit them moves the map window (edge of screen scroll). And the mouse input seems much more sensitive than normal -- like it's not using the OS mouse input, but raw with it's own settings. *painful* controls and interface.
