The strategic map is similar to Age of Wonders: your parties of heroes roam around the map fighting groups of enemies, collecting loot and capturing resource producing buildings. Combat is turn based, moderately complicated but fast paced. There are 4 character classes all with interesting skills. Due to the somewhat random way that new skills are made available at level up, different traits the characters can have, and powerful artifacts they can have, no two characters of the same class will play exactly the same, so the limited number of classes isn't at all boring. The game has two modes: campaign and skirmish. Campaign mode is single player and there are specific scripted fights you need to do to progress through the story. The scripted dialogue is quite hilarious. Skirmish mode is multi-player or against AI players. I'm enjoying the game a lot and it was an incredible bargain for me to it on sale for around $5.