As mentioned earlier, the difficulty of the
Elven Legacy series has been viewed as both a selling point and a drawback. Hardcore strategy gamers have shown great appreciation for the unforgiving nature of the games, but at the same time, less dedicated players shied away a bit from the original game due to this.
EL:R improved upon this by scaling back the difficulty just a bit, making it enjoyable for the more casual gamers, while still providing a decent challenge for the die-hards.
Elven Legacy: Siege has backpedaled in this regard a bit, again ramping up the difficulty factor. The missions tend to be long, some going on for over an hour. While this is certainly not something to complain about, the problem lies in the overall strategy needed to win some scenarios. Often, losing just one unit can have a detrimental effect on the entire mission, but the effect may not be felt until much later in the mission, meaning that, a "catastrophic" loss early on may not become evident as such until quite a bit of playtime has been invested in the mission. This can and will cause a significant amount of anxiety and frustration among the casual gaming crowd.
In addition to the difficulty issues, there just was not enough in the way of new offerings. Sure, there were new characters and missions, but the maps were just rehashes of previous scenes. Sure, there was snow and mountains as well as the fields and forests, but it all just felt, well, like it had all been seen before. For a game so close to being great, just a little extra work (and perhaps a little more time between expansions) would go such a long way.
