This is a mini-review of the beta.

First, the context.  I pre-ordered War of Magic back in the day and participated in the beta for Fallen Enchantress.  While I played and enjoyed the final product, it never quite gelled into the game I had hoped it would be.  I'd give it a solid three stars out of five. 

So I get this e-mail asking me to download Legendary Heroes.  Why not?  It's free, and I'm curious about what they're tinkering with.  FE was much better than WoM, and Stardock has a long history of keeping at things until they get it right.

Wow. 

This is a beta?  Seriously?  I'd pay money for it right now.

I love everything about this.  Let me count the ways (not necessarily in order of importance)...

1. Better graphics.  Lots of little things add up to a much more polished experience.  I was never a big fan of the slightly cartoonish style, and I find the new look much more to my taste.

2. Lots of UI improvements.  Too many to list, really, but the overall impact is that the playing experience just feels easier.  It's easier to find things and much more information is ready to hand.  I sometimes became frustrated with FE when trying to figure out what something did or just how long it would take me to get somewhere.  Pop-ups only get you so far.  Better by far if the effects are immediately clear from context.

3. Vastly improved heroes.  I love heroes and the whole RPG aspect.  I found the random character progression frustrating, and the whole sitting around the wilderness schtick seemed a bit odd.  I like the new means of gaining heroes, and I like the character progression a lot.  I can see some tweaking on the particular paths, but, as I said, it's already in very good shape.  I've played plenty of releases that weren't as polished as this "beta".

4. Channeler starts out with two support units.  This is a small thing on the face of it, but it makes a big difference in the play.  Your channeler is not nearly as delicate in the initial game and you can immediately leap into exploring.  A matter of taste, I know, but it helps draw me into the game immediately.

Overall, I am very impressed.  This version already has that indefinable "one more turn" urgency that just never quite came through with FE or WoM.  I am cautiously optimistic that this game will become one of the classics.

Now, a few quibbles and suggestions since it is still in beta!

I love wildlands.  However, they have always had some balance issues in that they generally cannot be conquered until you are so tough that you've probably won the game already (or are able to win it).  The easiest one to deal with is the one with the goblin city (whose name escapes me).  However, there is a peculiar bug (or feature?) where if you conquer that city it starts out as a really good city, but the instant it levels up it loses essence, production and grain.  What's up with that?

The governor path has always been problematic since if you park a hero in a city there's no good way to level up, and having a hero going around adventuring with only skills in the governor path is dead weight (with the emphasis on dead).  It would be nice to have an xp path linked to cities.  For example, cities could provide xp to heroes stationed there, with the amount of xp scaling with the city's development (or add more buildings that give character xp, again with the amount scaling based on the size of the city, or with overall empire production perhaps).  That would make it feasible to pursue an economics / city development path where many of the heroes stay in the cities and line troops go out into the field.  I personally like pushing the research tree as hard as possible, but the game makes it very difficult to devote heroes to things like the R&D branch of governor.