I so wanted this game to be all that was promised, having been a huge fan of the MoM title back in the day
However, this game thwarts all those ambitions with a combination of tragically broken mechanics, utterly lacking communication/feedback from the gameplay, and among the silliest and most amateur artwork I have ever seen outside of a homeschool gallery.
The game is full of bugs, and worse, it is a bit hard to tell what are bugs as in broken and what is just flat-out bad design. Over and over things happen, or you try to do things, and nothing happens with no feedback.
That lack of feedback is combined with no tutorial and a worthless manual to make figuring out how to play the game way more difficult than it ought to be - trying to cast spells on your city, or learn why you can't access an "adventure locale" are exercises in frustration.
The artwork. Wow. It is as bad, really and truly, as awfully and unforgiveably bad as anything from the earliest days of computer gaming - this is so bad even a geek blushes to see it. The artwork makes everything look like crap - the figures of heros, monsters, the city, buildings, terrain - all are horribly rendered and childishly drawn. Compared to contemporary strategy titles this is woefully inadequate.
At best, this game is a free-to-play title with all the caveats that implies, and one I wouldn't recommend playing for at least a year till they work through the bugs/design issues.
I have been a Stardock customer through Galciv and other titles, but this is a sad example of a bad game poorly realized.