After the big impressive introduction movie, the rule is one cinematic for every completed mission in the campaign. But these cinematic moments are really disappointing, both the quality of the script/dialog and the video compression quality are bad. If you're a patient player and you won't skip the first ones, it won't be long until you start to skip them (I don't, but hey! I get paid to do this, you shouldn't suffer!).

When you reach a conflict point on the map, you enter the battle. Really really big loading times in this game, even on the most powerful computers will make you want to go on a sandwich break before you enter a mission. Inside missions, the map is 3D, and you can zoom in and out well. You cannot rotate the camera, but let's say they have an excuse on "wanting to keep a strategic view". The troops and heroes look good, textures are nice on them, and like in Total War a company has different models for each soldier, making it personalized and making the game look more "natural". Spells and special effects are not extraordinary, but decent nevertheless. But these good aspects are ruined by the animation of the characters. Real choppy and basic animation, that makes this game look bad in action. Also, in the heat of a big battle, the frames drop like crazy. You can add the sometimes dumb AI to that, that is making units undecided on what to attack, while they are under fire. Pretty annoying.

On top of that (I could be wrong – it's just a feeling) I find that the interface, 3D terrain, graphics, cinematics and animations do not fit together somehow. It's a strange remark I know, I had it for some other strategy titles too: for example the old Myth if you remember, the 3D terrain was really blend and uniform while the units were really well defined. I somehow don't think that it fits well. Same here: sometimes it feels like all these could work individually, but not together for some reason.

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