Make sure you select 1080p60 because by default it gives 360p because it's a new upload.
Songs of Conquest (The Song of Stoutheart) with icycalm 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR_rGaFrcLwSo I played the first part of the first campaign, and it's very promising so far. It looks and sounds fantastic, and there's even quite a bit of challenge for what is essentially a tutorial. I lost almost all my units in the three main battles, and I'd be interested in replaying them to see how many I could save. I read in the Steam forum that the entire campaigns currently offered take 25-30 hours, and that sounds like a good adventure, if true. I am definitely interested in playing more.
I have a couple of minor complaints so far. You can't go wherever you want in the map, and large sections are off-limits even though there are no obstacles in your way, so it feels artificial. I don't remember how this was in Heroes of Might & Magic. Note that I've only played the first couple of games all the way back in the mid-'90s, and not for long either. Just a few big MP games with people in my university, and it was a riot back then. Not a serious strategy game, but very fun with a big group for an evening. If you've played
Age of Wonders: Planetfall, it's the same thing, just simpler since it was 30 years ago; that's why I say that
Planetfall isn't 4X, and neither is HoMM, or this. Another way to think of them is like Super Mario Kart as opposed to hardcore racing games.
So I can't draw direct comparisons with the series because I only played the first installments, but I can tell you that this is going in the right direction, with the introduction of city-building, which however I haven't seen so far in the campaign. But the adventuring is fun (with quite a bit of storytelling in there, kinda like the 2D Fire Emblems, but not as charming; though of course nothing is), and the tactical scenes are fast and quite furious, like a 3D version of Fire Emblem, with all the cool animations and whatnot. I only dislike the pixelated zoom-ins at the end of the battle, but someone on Steam told me you can turn them off in the options.
The tactical mechanics are interesting, though some aspects are somewhat goofy, as you'd expect of a system made by programmers. E.g. they tie your spellcaster's "essence" to how your combat units are stacked in the map lol. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever, as it ties spells to melee, which is the opposite of how spells should work. Spells should be a DIFFERENT thing to melee. And they say that you get more essence if your melee units aren't grouped up, which forces you to split them up, which results in inferior melee tactics. BUT listen: ALL videogames are like this. The Divinity: Original Sin games are even worse: they don't even have any classes, and anyone can do everything. So it's really nitpicking if you expect the tactics to make sense in a videogame made by programmers. What they have here is anyway better than Fire Emblem's rock-paper-scissors mechanics, so I can't complain. It looks like a solid system by videogame standards.
There is an "experimental co-op" mode that needs to be investigated. Is it for the campaigns? Then it'd be worth playing all of them with a friend. Can it also be used to set up teams in MP? We'll need to find that out. The biggest map in MP right now accommodates 6 players, but I've heard 8 are allowed, so maybe 6 is the recommended and you can pile on more anyway. Plus there is a mapmaker and people are already sharing maps. We should be able to make a mega-map ourselves for huge games.
I'll end this by commenting on something Diamond wrote on Steam:
Diamond Dawg wrote:No simultaneous or asynchronous modes. If you're interested in multiplayer, stay away from this for now.
He's basically trashing the entire history of hotseat games here. I've been playing such games since the '90s, and this has never been an issue. Turns go super-fast here; this isn't Civ. So sure, if you have friends who are willing to wait months to play this with you, you may as well wait for simultaneous turns, that the devs are saying they want to put in. But if you know people who are interested in playing NOW, I'd say give it a try and see how it goes, because if they play without you, you'll have no one to play with half a year later. I will certainly be checking out the MP options soon and reporting back on them.