Demo reviews:

[pkt-zer0]

Based on the demo, the game seems to be excellent in every aspect except for the translation. Great overall presentation. The music, while good, seemed to get a bit repetitive after some time, though I'll chalk this up to being limited to a single area. (I'm guessing other areas have differing music tracks) The combat system strikes a nice balance between simplicity and depth - the core mechanics are pretty basic, but having lots of varied abilities allows for quite interesting scenarios. It's as complex as it needs to be, not any more complex. Outside of battles, the items laying all around the place make exploration worthwhile. Quests add some flavour to the basic "kill enemies, upgrade, repeat" gameplay, but a lot of the humour is unfortunately lost due to the translation. It's hard to get a good idea of long-term balance and gameplay from the demo, so can't comment on that. The Starforce copy protection is another negative for me.

Overall, the demo definitely sold me on the game, even though I never really liked any of the HoMM games. It's like Age of Wonders in that way for me: like HoMM, except good. I'll be sure to buy it after it's un-Starforced.