I purchased this game during a period of "I need to play strategy games" but I wasn't expecting anything great. I was wrong. The battles are engaging, and you are given quite a lot of freedom to achieve your stated objectives. Not just in regards to your tactics, but also in the composition of your corps and divisions. It doesn't skate over the brutal and blood soaked period of the US civil war either, some battles will inevitably lead to huge losses. Importantly though, learning from those little mistakes (that can lead to hundreds of excess deaths) is satisfying and leads to less losses next time. Adjusting your approach and learning the optimum time to go for the throat of the enemy feels great when it pays off... and painful when it doesn't. Losing a battle isn't necessarily the end of your "career". You build reputation by winning battles which, when high enough, can save you from a defeat. Performing well in battles, and increasing your proficiency in Economics, politics, etc., gives you fresh recruits and additional capital to expand (or rebuild...) your forces. Performing poorly returns fewer reinforcements and financial rewards, which makes the next battle even harder. The developers achieved a good balance between difficulty and learning. No battle feels 'unwinnable', but almost every battle feels like a new challenge. There's enough of a difference between these battles that I can play several without getting bored. This game was such a pleasant surprise for me, considering it has received little attention compared to other "big hitting" strategy games. I highly recommend it.
TL;DR: A brilliant, lovingly crafted, experience that is held back only by the game's poor performance. I would recommend holding off (or buying to support development, but don't expect to play yet) if you're closer to the minimum requirements than the recommended. This game has huge potential, and you can see that the developers realise they have the makings of something incredibly unique on their hands. Sadly, the game's terrible performance is just too much to ignore right now. Early access games are often janky etc., and I was expecting that coming into this, but the poor performance is on another level. My system's specifications aren't exactly top of the line (i5-7300HQ, GTX 1050Ti 4GB, 16GB DDR4, 512GB M.2 SSD) but they exceed the minimum requirements. The game, when it settles down, will run at 55 - 60fps on low settings and 45-50fps on medium @1080p. The problem is, for the first few minutes when entering an area the game stutters drastically. I don't have this problem in other games with similar system requirements. Of course, I realise that this is still fairly early in the development process the devs are going for, but the fact remains that it is still unplayable for systems like mine, despite the system requirements suggesting otherwise. With that out of the way, when the game ran smoothly the experience was very enjoyable. Beautiful environments, immersive voice acting, very promising base building system, tense combat and an intriguing story. I don't regret buying this at all. I'm only saddened by the fact that the periods of stutter make it too aggravating to play. I'm hoping that the devs start optimising the game/ fixing stability so that I can dive in and enjoy what seems to be something that's already great despite not being fully realised yet.
