Not to mention, FB was, ironcially right. Anyoen who bought War of Magic the following February would never have known that the game had trouble when it first came out. 

Legendary Heroes could ship 0.80 and be considered a good game. Nobody thought WOM was a good game. If you at my posting history, I was one of the first people to condemn WOM when it shipped.

LH is really a great game already and it still has almost one month to be refined (plus some patches after release). The past is over and the current product continues to get better all the time.

With a company like stardock it IS less of a concern if a game is released in a kind of advanced beta state rather than fully polished retail product due to Stardock's  ongoing commitment to improve and refine and patch their games BUT I would hate to see the game not do as well as it should due to ill informed reviewers marking it down due to lack of polish and/or bugs upon release.

This would not be a good practice for any company. Even though the "core" fans would be okay with it (really, what are you guys not okay with?), the game would get panned by critics and people unfamiliar with the product. Releasing too early was part of the problem with War of Magic. I wouldn't expect that they will make the same mistake twice, so they surely feel they have enough time to fix the bugs.

Yes, I think FE was a great game, yes I think LH makes it even better, but why ever release a product that isn't your best?  There are a lot of bugs and niggling issues that have lingered with the game for a long time, please take the time to fix all known issues before you release it.  You are a great company and deserved to be recognised as such, so please release LH in tip top shape instead of just assuming you can do the polishing later. 

(ps. I'm not quoting specifically you Lord Xia; more so the concept that many have in regards to what you've said)

I think we all need to keep in mind Brad's plan with the FE product line. FE:LH is only a stepping stone towards the last installment of the series. Why would he go out of his way to fix all the little bugs, balance issues, and nuances when he fully expects the game to dramatically change once more thus creating an entire new set of bugs, balance issues, and nuances...many of which will be repeats just like what happened from the transition from FE to LH.

That said, if there is an aspect of the game that is continually being spoken about but not being addressed by SD, the three outcomes I would theorize is that:

1. They disagree that there is a problem
2. They don't know how to properly/fully address the problem
3. They know it's a problem, but one that's already been slated for resolution in the final installment. 

I would not like this overall result as well, but it would be responsible reviewing in my opinion to mark it down for being what it is, if what it is is unpolished and bug-ridden. I don't think the game is either. The game is remarkably polished and bug-scarce to me. 

I do think they are going in a strange direction right before launch in the patches, where they are just beginning to tacitly acknowledge that they sucked a lof of the fun out of champions and leveling with slow leveling, split exp, and excessively long trees through changes to exp and trees each patch. I don't know what it looks like to a new user anymore, so I cannot say how it will be received as a whole by reviewers, though as a long time user I wish they would go back to the point where you could play this game simply and have fun. The party of champions was a strategy that was fun, I never understood why they wanted to stamp it out of the game in favor of forcing players in to much more complicated strategies, or leaving their champions parked in cities. It seemed like death to non-grognards, because it is very complicated making an army for each champion while exploring, expanding, and improving cities. This complicated dance could be a very good (or optimal) strategy with a viable party of champions course, they don't have to be mutually exclusive.

As it is, I think they had better make more explicit that champions split experience (could be awkward, maybe a "Don't cross the streams!" pop-up when the user puts two champions in the same army? Something less intrusive, a kryptonite icon perhaps?), because the first instinct among new players is to band their strongest units together, and I think they will be disappointed by the trees that seem to taunt them with abilities they will never be able to earn.

Can you give us an example of bugs that were fixed or balance issues that were resolved in FE that crept back up in LH?

I've seen this argument before and I think the line of thinking here is wrong. You don't keep piling more and more buggy code on top of buggy code. You especially don't intend to release that buggy code as a finished product. I understand video games are a different beast than traditional programming, but I would lose my job if I developed using that philosophy.

You set your features.

You work towards implementing those features (Alpha)

You fix the bugs/balance (Beta)

You release the product (Gold)

You fix any bugs that were overlooked (Patches)

I think they have enough time to fix the true bugs with the game, as long as they don't fiddle with the features. Really, LH is on the low end as far as adding new content goes, so there shouldn't be too many bugs that are not leftovers from FE.

Too true JShores (although I disagree about LH not adding more bugs, it feels like there is enough new code that  there will inevitably be a moderate number of new bugs).

The bigger bugs have been fixed and overall LH is a pretty stable game but there are still a moderate number of  little bugs and annoyances, quite a few of which can be tracked back to much earlier in the development. These little things really get in the way of it feeling like a AAA game and I think it would be great if LH got a month or so of dedicated polishing where Stardock ONLY fixed bugs or UI issues/annoyances.

However I've said this before several times and I don't know what trade-offs that would require at Stardock, maybe it isn't viable.

If Stardock took 5 years, they'd make a better game, but they'd lose money first.

At some point you have to say "good enough"

As of 0.80, I think the game isn't ready- mostly on the balancing end of things, but .85 makes some changes, so I'll hold judgement until then.  I agree with Mistwraithe on the state of LH.

Something that I feel could be improved on is the AI's response to a difficult world environment.  It really needs to prioritise building a fortress when many of the units it will fight against will be a higher level, both for the sheer capability to crank units but also for improved unit quality.

Also, woosh, 0.85 is upon us.

That is exactly my opinion, too. LH is already MUCH better than FE, but FE was in my opinion an average game, because a lot of its potential was not used. LH uses this potential, but it has still MANY gameplay issues:

- The path trees are too long and the abilities have too many prerequisites

- As soon as a commander is in an army the unit stats are unbalanced and the commander is not even using active abilites

- The cooldown of player and monster abilities is too long

- The mana cost of some spells (spark, flame dart, ...) is too high

- The scaling of some spells destroys the balance (level scaling of flame dart, no unit size scaling of wellspring, ...)

- The power of some spells is too low (shadowbolt, cloak of thorns, ...)

- The AI does not use strategic spells (pillar of flame, freeze, ...) against the player

- The strategic spells inflict too much damage IF a high level mage casts them

- The AI uses powerful tactical spells only rarely (blizzard, fireball, ...)

- Bows and staves have no special abilities

- Staves should use spell mastery for the attack and spell resistance for the defense

- The damage of crossbows is too low

One thing that has bugged me all the way back to FE (and is still an issue with LH) is that you can't send a stack on a long trip without babysitting it for several smaller trips.

So for example, if I click on a stack, then click on a location far away that I want the stack to travel to, the Square indicator and the "turn bubles" don't show up, and instead I have to direct the stack 5 or 6 separate times to get to the distant location.