I enjoyed building the party, deciding what to emphasize (e.g. evasion vs damage resist vs shields/heals, or damage vs utility). The different classes offer enough variety that I ended up playing though 3 times with different combinations of classes - I feel that was sufficient to explore most of what the game had to offer. The loot system is Diablo-esque - gives you a ton of stuff, most of it garbage. Not sure if that's a plus or minus (though at least it's easy to cart it back and sell). Too much of the game is deciding whether you want this or that. Most of the quests aren't interesting (some are amusing once). Sometimes the game will RNG it's way to killing your party if your defenses aren't good enough. The endgame can drag a bit. Overall a decent game.
Not having played any of its predecessors....it was an OK game. Worthy of one playthrough, but the replay value is low. Stuff I liked: -the Tower Defense aspect -a lot of micromanagement is done for you in the dungeon (though this is also sometimes frustrating when they won't do what you want even if you smack them) -digging to find new stuff -the general progression of creatures, esp in the Horde faction -the narrator doesn't take it too seriously (sometimes he's even a little funny...) Stuff I didn't: -parts of the UI, particularly grabbing stuff it wasn't often clear where your cursor was, and telling groups of creatures: "Go here, fight this" is very tedious underground (aboveground it's just like any other RTS) -the "quests" to upgrade your throne room gated by "evilness" which feels like it comes fairly arbitrarily -the enemies feel like there's 3 types - melee, ranged, and bards. Plus occasional bosses. There's different levels but you barely notice - "Is the druid girl an upgraded fairy? Oh well, she's dead now anyway." -the Demons are terrible at the first dungeon level (all melee? really?) but amazing at the second (mind flayers FTW); I rarely found it worth the time to even go to the third with them -campaign is short and not worth replying, and the maps are the same - 1 play with each faction (if that) and there's not anything else to do. -spells seemed mostly useless, aside from the recall spell (but see below) -many targeted attack spells (e.g. lightning bolt) did not work for me (Linux version)
