[DonCorazon]

I have it as a result of having made the bad mistake of pre-ordering the first Elemental. I am having a tough time getting into it, but it is better than the first iteration (which is like saying a morsel of cockroach is better than starvation).

I haven't played enough to provide an educated opinion, but the fact it hasn't really grabbed me, someone who loves this genre, may say something.

When I have played, it almost feels like an RPG. I seem to mainly be moving my mage around trying to level up. It kind of bothers me how slow everything is - the research system is a hassle. I wish I could build units and buildings at the same time. You look at the tech tree and it takes a while to get to a bow? It just doesn't make much sense to me. I never found the world very interesting either - one of my main gripes with the first game when I cared enough to be vocal was it was totally soulless. The world even looked barren. The first manual was laughable with no flavor for the various nations - it felt like a spreadsheet with ridiculous fantasy names pasted on. The new FE is an improvement for sure, but still it feels to me like the nations/mythology etc is bland and maybe that's from being a Dominions player where everything is dripping with an awesome sense of history/mystery/myth.

The main thing FE has done for me is caused me to start playing Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, which had been sitting on my shelf for years without getting much play. Also, I've been thinking about Warlock: Master of the Arcane, which I had more fun playing the Steam demo than I have had puttering around with FE. But sometimes it takes a while for a game to click with me so I wouldn't want to push someone away from FE - there might be a good game in there, it just hasn't gotten me interested enough to spend the time to see where it is.