I've been playing Etherlords of late and I've got to say it's quite a game so far. I'm not a card game type of guy but I believe that is what the combat is based off of. You play in a might and magic type view while moving your heroes on the map, then go to a combat screen that is turn based when the time comes. Both screens really look great. The map screen lets you zoom in and out and rotate 360 degrees. The characters movements and magic effects look great also. Your troops are nicely rendered and the battle animations really lend to the game. Another nice part is the enemies are not just the same old overused characters, there are some original creatures here, and they look very nice as well. There is just a ton of eye candy here and a pretty nice game as well. It's simple to play, I was able to pick it up in about 20 minutes and was quickly engrossed in the game. If you like might and magic or any of the card game series you will like this game.
This glass is 8/10's of the way full, the only drawback is the slow pace of the combat, it can get a little slow at times with too much time between attacks, the great graphics and animations make up for it though.
A little more info after another hour of play time:
I've read reports of problems with the install of this game, I had zero problems on an XP machine. IT was kind of strange that win the install was over it just exited, didn't tell me the game was ready to play or anything. A little out of the ordinary but nothing to complain about.
A few more observations:
The art in this game is great, the end level art, the story-telling art, even the battle screen has some nice dragons on the edges and a lot of details are in the back of the cards etc. A lot of time was spent making this a pretty game and it is, the details are there.
A nice touch to the game, you can right click for info on just about anything at anytime, it's great just starting out, you can find out what spell is what, what level the enemy is, all with a little right click action.
This game is a little deeper than I originally thought, looks like I might have to read the manual with all this rune buying etc. 7 resources sure does seem like a lot though.....
The most annoying thing I've found about this game...the voice over in the campaighn, yuck, sounds like somebody who just gargled with draino.
-glassoftea