So, uh.... I played the first two missions and I think I'm already good for a review
EA issues:
All of these are kind of to be expected in an early access game. But the sheer amount of these issues shows how much longer this game should have been in the oven before going into early access.
You got bugs, performance issues, UI woes, audio woes*, animation woes, unfinished parts everywhere, unpausable & unsaveable (!!!!) campaign
*The audio part is really amazingly bad. Crazy mixing, all over the place, videos blew my ears off, in mission I can barely hear a thing.
Non-EA issues:
Now this is the real bummer, I don't see how they can fix any of this.
First of all, the art style is an atrocity. It was clear from the material they released so far that this game wouldn't be much of a looker, but oh boy it is so much worse to actually see that unfold in front of you.
The environments are fine, but everything else.. ohhhhhh, boy.
They obviously tried to go for an SC2 style, but failed quite spectacularly - almost everything that is not environment in this game somehow ends up like a toy. A toy with Doom 3 shaders on it and mixed with that 3D Clone Wars look.
The worst looking ones, by far, have to be the humans. They are bug-eyed, all of them. And all of their proportions are off, like completely. It's like some weird ass parody of the human body.
The main character gets extremely close to Gollum with her eyes (and I mean the epic video game fail, not the movie). In a "so awful it's funny" way. And not just in-game - she looks like that in the pre-rendered cutscenes, too
There is a pretty wild story-art dissonance going on.
They are clearly trying to tell a serious story, but... everything looks either extremely weird, awkward or downright cute (those demon eye things, could hug them, want a plushie). Who thought this combo could ever possibly work?
I've played through two mission and am already fairly certain they'll pull the Arthas storyline with Amara, or something very similar.
The writing as far as I saw it seems... like it would be okay for a fan game, or a small indie title, but this? Oof.
And of course hard to get into any of it with all the other issues.
The voice acting ranges from "alright" to "awful". Could be partly due to the horrible mixing, or maybe the recordings aren't final (EA as well, in a sense). But if they are final - ouch.
The price for the campaigns, especially considering the quality of the art and writing, is just silly. And you'll be asked to shell out more for subsequent campaigns. No way this is going to work out the way they think.
The good:
The base gameplay actually makes a good impression. Unfinished, sure, but I could see that game playing really quite well, and it looks like people are enjoying it in co-op (unfinished, of course, but still).
If they provide a good editor, I could see custom gaming going places and you won't even have to give any money to Blizzard for it.
The menu is surprisingly well thought-out and there are already quite a lot of QoL features - more early access titles should take note here.
Either way. I don't see how this could become the big new RTS some had hoped.
Even with all the EA issues fixed, the rest isn't even remotely on a SC2 level, and that already wasn't quite as captivating as SC1 or WC3.
I'm gonna shelve this for now - I'll attempt the campaign again once released (after all, I already paid for it).
I have no clue where the 40 million went.
