Hey there, my name's Andrei, I enjoy strategy games, huge fan of the Civ games and similar games (SMAC, CtP etc).

In 2010 when WoM came out, I read a bit about it but ultimately didn't get it because I was too buys trying out the new Civ and some other games at the time. Then I read the unfortunate reviews and it totally slipped my mind for a long time.

But a few days ago I see FE pop up on Steam and, while never having actually played it, I did remember reading a lot about it and since I enjoyed FfH too and this felt like it was made in that style, decided to go ahead and buy it.

So far I have played through 3 games. The tutorial, my second game where I lost fairly quick while getting accustomed to the mechanics, and my current third game (playing with Challenging AI ) where I am about to win a Master Quest victory.

So, on to my early impressions of the game, both good and bad in no particular order:

- The customisability is amazing. I love being able to design my units and pick various bits of armour / weapons / equipment /traits. Also looking forward to creating my own Faction for my next game. The game easily beats most direct competitors in the genre when it comes to unit diversity and the amazing customisability factors heavily into this. 

Just some examples of units I made in my last game playing the Gilden (sp?) : Valkyries (Female riders wearing nothing but a magical robe and a long spear with traits to improve initiative/attack/charge/speed ) devastating fast attack mounted units or the heavy cavalry type Royal Knights (light plated horsemen with a few magical trinkets and a longsword and kite shield, expensive and slow but very sturdy and hard hitting). And I understand that the AI will use these units against me in future games too, how awesome is that ?

-  The game is not as polished (as Civ 5 for example) as it could be, though I've not encountered any game breaking issues yet (XCOM I'm looking at you). There's a number of small improvements that could make the whole experience even better such as: Seeing how far your armies can travel without having to actually figure out the terrain type they're going over, or being able to select multiple units when casting a unit spell. 

- I'm not sure about the AI yet. I'll have to play a few more games before I'll be able to tell if it is better than the Civ5 AI or not, but so far it feels ok and the difficulty levels are varied and well explained so there should be an option there for anyone.

- Great modding potential. Perhaps one of the things I'm most excited about. As an avid mod user (and even occasional modder) for many games with great modding communities (the X games, Minecraft, Mount&Blade, Civ) I know that a game that can provide a great basis for modding is a sleeping success. I'm already excited just thinking about all the various mods that are sure to pop up, and since the base gameplay is very fun and customisable itself, they're all bound to be great games in their own right (WW2 Simulator where you design your tanks and stuff ? Star Wars ? Why not, I'm sure it can be done with FE).

- Graphic style is, clearly a fully subjective opinion, not too bad and can even look downright beautiful at times. Overall I'm not a huge fan of it, but it is certainly not going to bother me at all.

- There are many ways in which I feel FE is an improvement over Civ5 mechanics wise. I love the way you can make armies from multiple units, I love the tactical battles (not necessarily because they are amazingly detailed, but because you get to play around with those units you design ), I love the way the world feels alive long before you even encounter the other factions (this is something I remember from FfH).

Overall, I think FE is a really good game, and hope it gets a good amount of attention from both fans and critics, because I would love to see more expansions and added content from the developers too.

It has some bugs but nothing that has really stopped me from enjoying the game (compared to XCOM, another game which I enjoyed a lot but unfortunately the bugs were far more glaring and in some cases completely game breaking).

And finally, since I'm a huge fan of Steampunk-ish stuff, I am really hoping there will be an expansion (or mod ) taking the tech tree in that direction (early muskets / steam / railroads towards the end of the tech trees ? one can dream )