I bought this game because of nostalgia. I played it a long time ago and believed that I remembered it being good. Maybe I thought it was at the time, but maybe not. Bottom line: this game is not as good now as I remember it. It is super unfair and totally imbalanced. Even on the easiest setting, enemies have more resources, better towns, better heroes, and better units. I literally got instantly killed on the *very first* battle of a campaign. My opponent had epic units that I did not, on top of the fact that he had more of them. He even had a hero that was casting epic spells while my hero couldn't cast any at all. The game didn't give me a chance to build units or prepare. In fact, I didn't even have a base! Not all campaigns are THAT imbalanced, but most are. The above example is one of the more extreme ones, but you get the general idea of it. Even on some of the easier campaigns I find it to be unbeatable. Plus, the gameplay is SUPER repetitive. Stay away from this.
The story is probably really good. The developers clearly put tons of thought into the game world, because there are tons of unique backgrounds. Character creation was so detailed that I was smiling with joy when I was making my character. However, that joy was crushed when I started playing. There are severe balance issues that make the game literally unplayable. The skill system is clunky and makes no sense, and pretty much any character you make sucks too hard to live more than 5 minutes. You can't play the character you want to play, essentially. This is one of those games that kills you arbitrarily. You will spend more time on the character creation screen desperately trying to make a character that can survive than you will actually trying to survive with that character. A good role-playing doesn't punch the player in the balls for exercising free will. It's hard to be immersed in the game world and take the game seriously when you have to min/max or use "uber meta" or die after 30 seconds. It sort of defeats the whole purpose and appeal of role-playing games. To me, this game is a hack n' slash. It is Diablo 3.
I like this game a lot, but there are quite a few things that can be frustrating. First of all, the balance between combat and dialogue is way off in my opinion. I'm not the type of person who likes mindless killing and tedious dungeon crawls. In fact, far from it. I like a well-fleshed out story and lots of dialogue. That said, even I found the endless talking to be tedious. You can literally play this game for days and not get to do any combat at all. It doesn't matter how engaging the story is, if there's no action to back it up it grows boring fast. I think I only found three dungeons in total in the entire game. Secondly, the side quests are rather dull. They are mostly fetch quests. (Go here, talk to guy A, or get item B, etc.) It's quite boring and honestly I don't think I can stomach a second play through. However, the story *is* really interesting. It's compelling and I think it will suck most people into it like it did me. Also, the side characters and party members you can pick up on the way are few in number, but they feel as real as magical creatures can be, I guess. If you love the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series', I think you should try this game, because it's similar. It's not exactly the same (obviously) and won't fill the same kind of void in your heart, but it will come close. In the very least, it will make for enjoyable time.
