My impressions so far..........

As with STW and MTW the training tutorial was pretty basic and I found it less entertaining than previous examples with less depth. The tutor was happy to marvel over the new camera while teaching us less about unit combining, strategy and movement. I felt like I should have been in control of the faction troops on the other side of the river, not the 3 unit sideshow I was given. For me it was all too scripted with little opportunity to 'get stuck in'. I will have to try the option to ignore the tutors advice an see if this gives more control. I disliked the green arrows under the units which were very distracting and turned them off in the preferences text file.

The interface for me was OK, but I prefer less clutter round the edge of the screen so I will probably be turning most of that off when I get the full game, if we get that option. Camera was a bit odd to use at first and i'm not sure I like it yet, I may go back to the Classic mode to retain MTW style control.

It ran fine on my Athlon XP 2400 with 1 gig RAM and a GF FX 5700 Ultra 128mb with all setting on max and medium AA. No appreciable farts or blips in the graphics.

The graphics themselves, particularly when zoomed out, do not seem that mind blowingly different to me. OK, they look great when you zoom right into the action, but how often are we going to be that close in the full game? Not often really, as we will need the zoomed out view to keep tabs on the action and units.

Trebbia was great, but I find the speed of the units on charge to be way too fast and it was all over in a couple of minutes. I can understand wanting to speed up the outcome of the battle so that we can get back to the strategy in the campaign map, but, well, it just ruined some of the battlescape atmosphere for me with all these units running around arcade style and skidding into each other, wham bam and onto the next unit slaughter. I like to savour the crushing of my enemy in a well thought out battle plan.

Overall its good to be playing with Rome and her enemies at last. The demo does not live up to the hype in my opinion, but this is nevertheless a big move forwards in TW gameplay.