I had fun playing Eador. For a few maps. Soon enough it became apparent as I played through the campaign that it would take me months of my life to complete it all and that each and every map I was just doing the exact same things. As far as I have gotten it has been super easy to just steamroll over the enemy after getting established. As soon as the balance of power tips in your favor the rest of the map is just plain boring as you then have to mop up in order to move on. It all just got so boring and tedious so quickly and I don't think I will ever go back to it. This is not to say that the game is bad. I did like it in general. It just does not even come close to being fun enough or contain enough variety to justify the length of the campaign. The music is good and the battles are fun (until you realize that auto-combat takes way more losses than you do and that you will have to manually handle all of the hundreds of combats throughout each map). In case it helps anyone make a decision, I love Age of Wonders series (1, 2, and SM). I have tried HoMM IV and Disciples II and they were only average to me. I also love Civ II and got bored quickly with Civ IV.
While this game remains faithful to the play style of the prior games (3 of my favorite games ever), it just isn't quite as good as them. There are too many little things removed or "streamlined" that the whole game feels a little less interesting on the whole. I personally prefer the graphics of the prior 2 games (beautiful 2D), but this one looks nice enough. The music is good, but I found myself only really enjoying the new versions of the old songs. The new stuff was a little too dramatic in general. That all said, the game is still good fantasy TBS fun and I did play through the campaign within 2 weeks of the games release. If you prefer modern games this is a good bet. If you prefer older stuff, the older games in the series are better. If you played the others to death like I have and wan't to know if this is worth it, I would say yes, as long as you are OK with a slightly watered down experience. Finally, there is no DRM in the game. You have to register if you want to use the online servers to play the game mulitplayer. I don't play online multiplayer and never had to register. If you want to play multiplayer, but you refuse to register your product to do so, don't bother with this. Registration consists of entering your product Key and an email from what I can tell. Offline it works just like every other GOG game and as usual for the series includes hotseat mode.
