This game is very dark....all the maps are variations of dark brown, black, grey. Perhaps realistic, but since all of the units are in similar colors, unless you have a huge screen, you'll be straining your eyes. Gameplay is boring, really boring. You wait around forever to build things, then have to cope with rushes from the enemy. The story is pretty thin, don't be fooled. Not worth your time, let alone money.
With all of the creativity put into this game, it's a mystery why some very basic things were overlooked. The most obvious is point of view. It's impossible to zoom out enough to get a real idea of what's going on. Next, although the design of the creatures is varied and interesting, they tend to blend in with the terrain, are not very crisp, and move so quickly on the screen that it pretty much doesn't matter how unique they are. Again, enemies move so rapidly on the screen (think Tasmanian Devil) that there is no way that human reaction time can cope with them. There isn't enough time to recognize the enemy and give a command or cast a spell to counter that specific enemy. Battle is just a frantic mashing of buttons, with little idea of what's happening. The game desperately needs a time adjusting feature. For example, allow the player to pause the game, scroll around the map, issue commands......and when the game is resumed, those commands are executed. Or, simply a time slider to accelerate or slow down the pace of play. This exists in "Original War", and it is desperately needed here. Unfortunately, there appears to be no patch or mod to provide this. Don't take my word for it. You can Google and find a very good free Demo of the game online. You'll quickly see what I mean, pun intended. You might be happier with the vaguely-similar "Black and White" series of games.
