Okay, I'm 25 hours into the game and so far I'm enjoying it a lot.
The combat clicks with me really well and thus I'm quite liking it, but I can see how it can be divisive. In my experience I'm not sure if it's inferior or not to a system where you can freely move the units rather than have them attack the closest enemy, but I can say it has led me to a couple of tactical moments that I wasn't expecting and wouldn't happen in a different system. At least in my case those moments gladly surprised me.
Of course I've also found myself a handful of times in the previously mentioned in this thread situation of being forced to suicide a wounded unit against a spear/pike wielding enemy because even making him wait until the end of the turn I still couldn't take out that enemy in time. A couple of times it was due to not managing initiative and priorities well, but there were at least two cases where there was no other choice than changing my soldier's equipment or the party's formation, which required me to load a save before that fight. It happened only twice and I understand the reasoning behind the combat system and how there's no way to tell most melee units to not attack spears head on, because then the AI would be able to do the same and the usefulness of your own spear units would suffer, but I still rolled my eyes both times it happened.
What that taught me, though, is to always have in my party two healers and a priest, all following the support branch of their upgrade trees. It adds a lot of flexibility since buffs like Invigoration, Vigor, Blessing and God's Will can easily change the flow of a battle by improving the initiative of a specific unit, allowing one to take an extra blow or letting you kill a troublesome enemy faster. Exorcism is also cool since it might save you some money on silver crosses and holy water.
The downside to that is that I don't feel at all compelled to check the Witch/Battle Monk branches of those classes since they're so useful as supporters. I might place them in my party if the ones I put in my castle garrisons automatically follow that branch, or maybe in a future playthrough I'm planning as a Baroness where she's my only ranged unit and the front and skirmisher lines are full of pikemen, but really, Enchantresses and Bishops are awesome.
The other big selling point of the game is the story. I won't write an opinion on the main character's storyline yet since I feel that's better done when I finish the whole game, but what really is the star of the show is the lore building.
I'm in love with the way the legends are implemented. You learn all kinds of stories and rumours in different ways and in many cases they only prove themselves useful in future maps or after they start making sense once you have learned different bits of the same legend from different sources that present you with different points of view about them.
And even the little things like hearing conversations about the state of the realm or what the peasants/nobles think about different characters and factions are very entertaining. There's also a thing that impressed me that I'm sure many players will completely miss. If you right-click on an NPC party on the map you can see its composition, but if it's led by a named character you also get a paragraph with his/her biography. Even if they're not important characters. And I've seen already a map with at least thirty named characters roaming it, so it really gives the impression that the devs really put a lot of effort into this.
One last point I want to mention is that this release is rock-solid. The game runs without a hiccup in my six years old PC, load times are pretty short (then become instant once you've loaded the map) and I haven't had a single crash. And other than the very minor issues I mentioned a page or two ago I haven't stumbled upon a single bug, or if I have it was something so minor I didn't notice. And I noticed the game has been patched like a dozen times already, so I'm sure most issues other people had were fixed. It's not that often nowadays that you get such a stable release, so while I won't praise the devs for doing what should be the norm, I think it's good that people know they can buy the game now and not have to wait until the game is patched into a playable state like it happens so often.
So yeah, unless the second half of the game screws the pooch really badly I think most people will find this game decent to good depending on if they like the combat system of not.
By the way
Aterdux Entertainment, I have a question about the third map, the one in the mountains. First off, kudos because normally I find that kind of mission really annoying yet I actually ended up enjoying it a lot and finding the pacing great. Would I be right in assuming it is designed so you only have barely enough time to do all sidequests and only if you don't waste any time? And if so, how did you find the balance, through internal testing or with beta tester feedback?