I'm not very fond of giving a game a score in a decimal scale. Personal tastes and experiences can influence a lot, but now that everybody is opening their heart, I'll add my 2 cents.

IMO the game should go for more than an 8, because it is very ambitious and I've enjoyed a lot during grand part of each game, and the replayability is high enough to play many games with different styles and tactics.

I love the design of troops, the manage of cities, the way you can use or abuse of magic if you wish to, the leveling of heroes and cities, the feeling of a dangerous world, full of misteries and quests to be done...the early and midgame, were you start from nothing and from there you make yourself a place in the world, is just superb.

But I have to be realistic, and there are some points that interfere with the game as a whole (mostly have been stated before):

- Bugs and weird issues. Still there are many minor bugs that are little more than annoying once you get used, but there they are, and I think Devs should pay a bit more of attention to fix them. Each new patch fixes some, so in this aspect, the game promises real improvement. But still work to be done.

- Polish. Again, minor details that the player get used to, but when you find how are solved in other games, the overall impression is not so possitive. Minor details like how much movement is left/number of turns to arrive, the join/split armies system, the pops up that can't be minimized, the annoying scrolling between all cities to find the zzz each turn...things like that...You can get used to all of them, but the feeling is ...why I have to? Grrrr, ok....

- Diplomacy and the Late game. The game can be supported by monsters and wildlands in the early and mid game, giving a lot of fun with them. But in the late game, all different playstyles concur in the same point: no challenging monsters left, only AIs. The game in this part becomes very closed in options. Small maps you can try full conquest, but in larger maps that is not in mind. Master Quest and Spell Of Making are a good way to put a quick end to a previsible long boring end game. Alliance victory too. But my sensation is that diplomacy options are still very very limited, and cannot carry the weight of the late game, with hundreds of elite troops and powerfull champs.Options like open/close borders, trade cities, resource pacts and things like that could give a bit more of flavor to that final part of the game, and a excuse to keep going on the amount of turns left to completely conquer the map with the help of some allies...

- Minor stuff. The game provides a lot of features, but after >200 hours of playing, there is a point that you miss: more different monsters, quests, items. The ships, the World events, ...all of this stuff seems to be saying...just wait for a good expansion, and you will get tons of that.

So a game that has given me >200 hours of play, is well worthy for higher than a 8...should I give FE less than that because of the previous issues? How many games I've played lastly for so long? Apart from some addictive multiplayer games hehe...

Well, my final veredict is that I will keep that 8, because Stardock has demonstrated many times that they are caring their games, improving them and polishing them, with future patches and expansions like untill now, so when that time arrives, probably the score will be even higher.

Untill then, mods can help a lot, and that is what really keeps my final score balanced.

sadly I fear the same

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I give it a 7.9.

Once I get into a FE game I'm glued to my seat, forgetting to eat, ignoring sleep, ignoring cold, and some other biological functions don't get the attention they deserve either.  So as a 4x game it is doing its job.  Solid 7 right there. Plus I get to play a battlemage in plate armor that fires lighting bolts, or in this case thunderstorms around the battlefield.  Awesome!!  Oh that is so cheesy good fun I love it.  And it is every bit as imbalanced as it should be.  Archers on horseback... Hahhahah!   And the lovely design and interesting themes and lore bring it right there next to an 8.  

So close, but not quite.

-Diplomacy and Dynasties: I loved that from WoM.  I miss it.  Usually I specialized in diplomacy in WoM and kicked ass.  Sequels should go forward, not backwards.  I love making AIs fight one another.  I don't know why but I do.  I'd support the losing side such that it continued to eat away the winning side, while I'd sit back in peace and build up my cities, and then easily steamroll empires ravaged by war.  That is true evil.  And I was it's master!

-Adventuring: All the new adventuring content is great--most of it is very creative and engaging--except it seems disproportionately harder to win by adventuring than it does to win by conquest.  It is way easier to take a city than to fight a dragon.  Maybe I'm not fighting dragons well enough.  I'm getting better with the right debuffs but attacking cities is still easier. Adventuring areas kick my butt while I cheese tactical combat in city fights with plate mail and thunderstorm spam.  It is nice these zones are there, but they are impractical to use. 

-Ships:  I loved exploring with ships.  We had it in WoM, we have it kind of in the campaign or scenario or whatever.  I figure they will add it back in at some point.  But there is water and there is also harbors and docks so why are there no ships?

-Flying units?  Fantasy game... ehem... where's my flying units??  

-Magic:  It is not without potential but feels too weak.  I played a game as Risoln and that was miserable.  Magic is improved but I miss the big fire and frost elementals from WoM.  It seems like most of diplomacy and adventuring went to the magic tree.  Adventuring maybe, but all diplomacy should have gone to the civics tree.  Then a heavy civics specialization would have been workable.

-UI: I guess it is better because everybody says it is better, maybe I forgot how bad it was in War of Magic, but when I have to exit 9 units from a city one at a time, it makes me wonder if Stardock ever plays the game.  Rebinding hotkeys?  And there is no longer keys that rotate the screen like there was in WoM, where I could handle all camera functions from the keyboard.  Why is there so much going backwards in this game?

I get killed by the AI on the strategy parts of the game.  Managing the finer details of city development... I just can't keep up.  I'm sure I'd get better with practice, but the AI is kicking my ass now... strategically.  What saves me is the tactical battles.  There is so much good here but a lot that can be better.  Waiting for 1.1 now.

Wow! We have some really harsh critics. Someone has played the game 200 hours and knocks it down because he's run out of new things. (Long ago, I read  a game designer say his goal was to give 100 hours of quality game play.)

Another person gets totally immersed in the game, gives it a "'solid' 7 to start."

Many others knock it down because some other game did a particular aspect of the game better.

Look, some good points have been made; for example, SOLOSOL's post was brilliant and well written. It's some of the number ratings that puzzle me. I think an 8 shows a good game, but I think FE is better than that.

I suppose I might be one that you listed as a critic.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the game and play quite a bit.  The things I listed are just direction turns that take away from my game experience.  Channelers are too common, champions are over powered immortals, and I miss some aspects of the dynasty system. 

The map pack dlc has ships.

You make a good point but my opinion stands.  I mean AI Wars immersed me but there isn't anything really special about it.  Nowadays "8's" are are commonly regarded as games you can recommend to anybody, not just core strategy fans, and "9's" are timeless games for the ages.  Right now I can recommend FE to any strategy fan with a few apologies for problems here and there, most of which I listed.  Probably addressing any one of my issues on the list would push FE to an 8.0--even if there is just a hotkey to exit all units from a city.  It seems like an oversight such a thing isn't there.  If magic's power were more in line with warfare's, and adventuring were more practical, that would push it to an easy 8.5.  We would need a generally better game on the level of an expansion pack for FE to score in the 9's, in my opinion, but it is possible if Stardock keeps at it.

(Also, I want to be able to build ships like in WoM, not find them on the map.  And once I set ships to explore I cannot make them stop if I want them to switch to transporting units--that was a problem in the campaign.)

Click city, click "V" on keyboard - it vacates all units, been there forever.