Great game, great start.

Tactical Combat is great. Initiative system is great, adds another dimension rather than the usual you go then i go chess type play.
Spells in the tactical combat are also great. Monsters and players are strong enough for them not to be OP and the spells are strong enough for them not to be dismissed and unless you have a mana factory it's unlikely that they'll just be casted over and over for every battle. Good balance there.
I like the spell UI but instead of just laying them out in a list maybe you could give each level of spell an icon and then once clicking a level it can replace (temporarily) the skill bar with just spells while giving each element its own permanent space so one can know easily where the new spells they just researched are. Of course there should be a back button somewhere there.

I also like the city building pacing. It's either infrastructure or units. Can't have your cake and eat it too.
I just have one question. Where the heck do i go to find out how much grain i have have and how much food per grain is being provided! It's probably somewhere obvious but i can't find it .

On a graphical note maybe the height of hills should be lowered. I couldn't tell what a passable or impassable mountain was until a young ogre gracefully walked over what looked like a mountain to me but was really a set of hills between mountains and bashed up one of my heros. He lost an ear for Relias' sakes! An ear!

So far that's my review. Played 3 times 2 crashes about 40 minutes in each. Got cancer from both. Good stuff!

That's gonna be very difficult and personal. I'll have a shot.

I never cared much for HoMM, never really got into it.

MoM was truly great in it's time, but I fear nostalgia clouds judgement here as there were quite a few flaws in that game too. I loved AoW and especially the hero approach in that game and the way the surroundings were filled with dangerous places, though cityplanning and economy were very simple in that game, spells and spellcasting was great.

I think the FE beta is truly the best of both AoW and MoM. It's got its own style and surely there's still a lot to improve, but I think it's been a great decision to make the world alive as it is, with constant threats besides just your opponents. Never thought the combination of adventuring and levelling up could be matched so well with the standard TBS civbuilding and warfare. Not to mention that magic now truly shines with all the different options and different spells you get each game. Like I said, after more playing there's probably a lot to do in terms of balance, but the combination of mechanics in this game (for me) has hit the sweet spot.

When this is released, it's going to blow all those three titles out of the water. Right now we're still in beta so I don't see the point of comparing to anything else than WoM yet.

My personal 1st impressions :

- Leveling up : It feels more of an important decision choosing what ability to get and feels quite nice when you get that rare that picks your characters build.  Definite improvement.

- World : The world does feel a lot busier but also slightly more static.  This might be because I'm playing it on a easier difficulty level, but although there are lots of monsters, you can avoid them if you wishs and they don't seem to attack my cities, meaning I can wander and explore without having much thread.  Will have to try on a harder difficulty level to see if you get the same issue.

- World UI : It is a _very_ big improvement having the HUD icons for the world.  Helps me a lot.

- Quests : I like the way it shows you where to go and although they all seem quite similar (go somewhere and kill the thing there), I've not found the repetitive.  Also, I learned sometimes it is worth turning down quests - A piper managed to summon a dragon on one of my trade routes. D'oh!  One request, if you click on a quest giver you have visited, it would be nice to find out what the quest wsa, as it can be easy to forget.  Or somewhere have a list of your current quests.

- Diplomacy : Can't remember if this was in EWoM, but I like the very clear explanation of why someone (dis)likes you.

Cheers

 I have only played the Tutorial so far, but just that was much better then WoM. Keep up the great work. This game is going to be worthy of standing next to MoM and Civ.

Hadn't heard about this followup until recently - It was late on that I heard about Elemental too. Lack of advertising.

I'll have to check this out soon. Will be an accomplishment to make me shelve MoM though - I still play it from time to time even now via DOSBOX. Sss'ra makes for uber easy mode. Just customise him every time and you get Myrror all to yourself. If you grab dwarves, scout out and control the Dark Elves or Draconions, whatever you find first. Then you have uber gold and uber power.

Tbh I enjoyed Elemental, but only play it from time to time. I wouldn't have even known Fallen Enchantress was coming out if I hadn't been digging around for Elemental again recently.

Hint: Do more marketing / spam those ads out ;o)