The good 👍
- Factions and units are well thought out and distinct
- Artwork is great

The bad 👎
- Single-player story is eh
- Leveling up doesn't feel rewarding, as it mostly gives +1 to the number of troops
- I'm not sold on the combat system. It should be possible to have a custom card order, and it's hard to see where our units are on the battlefield
- Combat camera is hard to navigate and a bit stiff
- No option to auto-fight trivial skirmishes
- The fact that heroes can move only in straight lines on the tactical map feels broken

Conclusion:

It does look like Heroes of Might and Magic (HoMM) at first glance. But battles are auto-played, with us being able to use a few targeted buffs/attacks. There is no city development, apart from "you can now level up the whole city", which unlocks 1 - 2 more units and improves the walls a bit. I love seeing my city in HoMM, watching it grow with each new building, and planning my order of unlocks. Here it's literally "drag the 'upgrade city' card onto the city" and done. Flat and unfunny. We can't hire any heroes in SP and can only use the (usually) 2 provided main heroes. The art style in menus is pretty, but unit models during battles are ugly and low-poly.

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Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

The usual. Forces of evil attack and we need to run away. But we will have our vengeance. We bundle up with a previous enemy (because we now share a common, bigger enemy) and go on a quest to save the world. The single-player campaign has only 7 missions shared between 2 factions, so not much. There are no cutscenes. We learn the plot from speech bubbles above heroes on the tactical map. The ending is predictable.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☑ Average ☐ Good	It does look like HoMM at first, but that's a misrepresentation of what this game is. We pay gold/magic to recruit units. We decide whether units are at the front or at the back, and move around the map to attack other armies or locations. We don't control the units (auto-battles), but can use a handful of cards to boost unit speed / attack power, damage enemies or stun them. The AoE of cards is pretty small, usually just one unit wide. Which means we either damage one enemy squad or boost one of our squads. And battles can have up to 12 squads under a hero. Battles are usually settled quite fast, and cards are on a timer. So at best we can use a card 3 times per skirmish. Locations auto-generate resources (gold / building material / magic). It is all very simplistic.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	The game has cards, but it is not a deck-building game. On each hero level we can select from 3 randomly offered cards. They are either small AoE battle boosts / attacks or city modifiers (like allowing the city to have better walls or recruit a specific unit). Each card starts at bronze level and can be upgraded to silver and gold, if we manage to draw it again via RNG. We can't re-arrange the order of those cards or remove them from the "deck".
🎮 Controls ☑ Clunky and stiff ☐ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	Why can't the hero have pathfinding and do the turn for me? Why do I need to click next to a river bend, wait for the hero to go there in a straight line, and then move the mouse around to make a turn? This is bonkers. If I want to move past location to save on travel points, the path marker is aggressively snapped to the location. Like the game is made to move armies only between main locations. Hovering over unit name/health in the panel during battle does not highlight said unit, which makes it hard to know who is where and who should get a boost. It's not that bad at first, when we have only units of our own faction. But when units get mixed, and we fight against demons: I don't know if this specific squad belongs to me or the enemy >_<. There is a bit of a sneaking mechanic: if we end movement using only half of the available movement points in a forest, we will be "hidden". And in theory, if an enemy unit walks past us, we can ambush them. But usually it's easier to attack them head-on.
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	There are no real menus. No inventory items, skill trees or detailed stats. We can right-click on a hero or unit to get basic stats, and that is all.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	Meh. An auto-battler where we can't control units, with a handful of modifier cards. Armies run towards each other and clash. Archers try to stay in the back. Jumping units leap at the rear to decimate archers. Unit AI is not great, and there are no environmental obstacles (all maps are perfectly flat). The higher the location's wall level, the more turns it takes for the attacking army to "breach the walls". After that there is a normal skirmish, except that the defending army has access to wall archers. Which means there is one extra card that will be used 2 times, as it has a slow recovery time. Trying to arrange the army before a skirmish doesn't help much, as units get disorganized very fast after the battle starts.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☐ One checkpoint, frequent ☑ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☑ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☑ No map ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details: