Overall they did a pretty good job with this game, very much a cheap clone of Final Fantasy Tactics. Not as good though. The thing with this game is the status effects are just too many and too often to the point where it just gets on your nerves. Graphics- Artwork is just enough to pass, animation uses very few frames on the spells and attacks, and doesn't give you much of a feeling of impact. Music- surprisingly good, although they need more tracks, you hear the same music a bit too often. Game play- Is well done and feels very much like FF Tactics. BUT as I said above, way to many attacks cause status effects, instead of so many attacks using status effects they need to use other ways to diversify the attacks to make them more unique. Also some classes really don't feel that unique and use many of the same recycled attacks as other classes. Weapon types really don't feel different enough either, although this is fairly minor. Side note you can not rotate the map, this rarely causes a problem, but here and there it can.
I played AoW2 and Shadow whatever, but this one is still my favorite. AOW2 got too micro-management happy with the cities and the interface isn't as nice. This one has basic simple city management and that is all you need, the rest you can concentrate on the more fun battlefield stuff. Graphically it still looks decent enough, you can change the resolution to just about anything you want too. Music is great. Battles are perfect tactical type battles. If you don't like micro-management hell and like concentrating on battles then get this version of AoW and not AoW2 or Shadow.
