OK, my impressions.

Loading times were bad, which is a bad way to earn a first impression.

Played the land tutorial - piece of cake, but fairly well made. It might have skimped a bit on the tactics part of the fight - it mentioned nothing of flanking. It did illustrate how effective cover could be though. Nice introduction to land battles.

Then the naval tutorial - also very little meat in the "how to win" department. There should be something that skips the camera controls if you've played the other tutorial (and vice versa).

Then the naval battle - I felt like I wasn't doing a lot to affecte the battle. If my ships were faster (stupid battleship slugfest :/) I could've crossed the T's of the two french navies right off the bat. Lost 2 ships of 6, sunk or forced to surrender all 7 French ships. Graphics look great. I'd prefer frigates. ~:P

Then finally the land battle. I figured I'd do what I was supposed to and flank the Americans using the other ford to the left. Marched out, no problems started taking fire from American skirmishers, but my light infantry put them away. (Sidenote, there's a "skirmish" button for them but it didn't seem to make them spread out or do anything). Then ran into the main force of infantry (I think the AI shifted them over after it saw I moved to the other ford, which may or may not be scripted). Put my line up against theirs while I worked their flank with my grenadiers and light infantry, eventually forced them back.

Some time during this point the enemy arty took out all my horse artillery (which seem useless) and my general (guess I shouldn't have left him in the open). My cavalry was also pretty beat up.

With my British and Hessian line infantry shot ragged but the Americans essentially done, I sent my cav and light infantry against the remaining American dragoons and arty. Mopping up took some time but was just annoying.

didn't like:
>hand to hand animations seem weak. When a line of infantry crashes into another, it doesn't seem to do much - I would imagine the defender would lose many at the onset, when stuck by a whole bunch of bayonets. The defender doesn't. :/
>the light infantry of both sides can deploy anti-cav stakes. That's all fine and good, but it will apparently kill cavalry that walks through it, even if they're fully aware of it. Lost most of a hussars unit this way (though only realized a while after when I zoomed in on the stakes for chuckles. :/)
> useless tissue-paper horse arty

did like
> AI doesn't seem awful, though it's hard to tell in scripted fights.
> It's cool lining up infantry to fire at each other, though expensive really quickly.
> small crackling skirmishes between a few units