First of all, it's better then WoM. Much better, much more polished, much more fun. Thank you for taking the time to make this the game Elemental should have been.

[BUG?] If you're running Windows 7 64-bit on a user, rather than administrator account, you have to run the game as an administrator. Otherwise, the game refuses to start with the error message that you're not logged in. Is this because the beta uses remote files and requires login?

The existence of a clear tutorial is great. The videos are succinct and clear. It's well-done that it leaves me wishing, a bit for an advanced tutorial to be added once the game is close to finished explaining more advanced game concepts like trade. A couple minor things that seemed a bit unusual for the tutorial scenario:

• Both of the equipment caches located on the tutorial island gave equipment that was too high-level to be equipped. It seems like rigging those drops to be usable so new players can learn to equip an item would be better.
• My sov and first champion started the rat quest stacked together. The champion separated from the stack to go hit the rat den, then rejoined the sov. When the joined stack returned to the questgiver location, I got an error that I didn't have the rat. When I traded the rat from the champion to the sov and tried again, it worked just fine to complete the quest. It would seem that quest locations ought to check for completion conditions (i.e. a rat in the inventory) of all units in a stack, not just the first.

Upon starting a new game, a few things jump out at me immediately as great UI improvements. I love the subtle "Zzz" cue that a city isn't building anything. I also like that the HUD over a city shows what it's building and its current progress. Unit movements feel much more crisp, without the "spongy" feel to the animations that WoM had. It would be useful to show sov/champion experience on the detail screen in addition to the unit card in the bottom left.

I had time for one battle, against a spider, which I lost. I liked that fact that I didn't lose my champion or sov when I lost, but a bit more explanation as to what the rules are for that would be nice. I was told my champion suffered a broken nose, but I have no idea what that actually meant.

Overall, in about 40 minutes of playtime, I can say that FE is a game I want to play. Even this first beta has a much clearer vision and much more polish than WoM. Well done; keep up the good work.