The heart of the game - the tactical turn-based battles - is a solid and challenging endeavor. Unfortunately the bulk of your time will be running around in a 3D world picking up scattered loot and running back and forth for pretty linear quests. The effort made towards spotty voice actors, world/lore building, attractive third person scenery, and uneven writing could have been much better spent in crafting more battles. Controls can be clunky. The learning curve is steep, and unforunately there's no way to see how spells and units will level up. The skill tree is poorly balanced and resources are finite, so that you can get well into a game (I only played on normal levels) and realize that battles have become too difficult and you've wasted your gold/mana on the wrong things. The story has some limited black/white choices which are between Order/Anarchy and Power/Finese. Puzzles for the most part are laughably easy. If you subject yourself to the game, some tips: Easier to explore on foot - only use the horse for travelling over You can only max out Order OR Anarchy, as well as Power OR Finese in your skill alignment. The XP talents are worth it as battles are very limited. It's easy to miss scrolls and pouches of gold, but your map will show those that you walked by Pick your spells judiciously. Some spells are way better than others (I discovered Blindness later in the game which helped shut down tough units). Note that Mana is used both to learn spells and cast spells during battle.
