metal_samurai: it certainly has a steep learning curve. the interface and controls are so different from what i'm used to, plus it's just a tough game anyway. i'm glad i stuck with it though, because it ended up winning me over. my mouse probably hates me though; with no keyboard use i put a lot of miles on that mouse.
i guess i'm one of the lucky ones in that i had no technical problems all the way through the campaign.
Glad someone else is having fun with it. :D Your post reminds me very much of myself experiencing the game for the first time. This has the "it's fun to lose" charm of DF and many other brutal games. Without the high challenge level it wouldn't be nearly as fun. I felt the challenges were fair too. Even with the dice rolls as they'd roll with me and roll against me sometimes, just like with RPGs. There are several save slots so I can redo battles that go badly and cost me too much in the long run. The random elements and the different paths and choices give added replayability to it too.
Would be nice to have some keyboard shortcut controls, though. Having played the PC and PSX versions I can appreciate the changes and upsides of the two different versions. The PC version has mouse control and a nice interface outside of battle designed for it, much better detail when it comes to full listings of numbered stats for units (which I love) and being able to customise marching orders, etc. and nice crisp graphics and animations for the cutscenes and 2D elements. The army leader portraits are also much larger. The PSX version has CD quality music rather than the midi sound of the PC (which is charming but not the same quality), small gameplay tweaks I agree with (such as being told that there are men for hire rather than having to find out and maybe missing them), a full screen map mode during battle, a better pause mode, banners at the edge of the battle screens to give general directions of units which also can highlight and help with selection or targetting, fast selection keys (but no conventient mouse to combine with that!!) and a minimalistic interface to keep as much of the screen as possible open to the battle map. The PC used to have multiplayer skirmishes too, which was a big plus, but I've not heard of it with the GOG.com version.
It will likely never happen, but it'd be awesome if someone could do a repolished version of SOTHR and combined the best elements of the different versions and some fan tweaks, similar to how Ur Quan Masters became the best version of Star Control 2 from the patchwork and fan tweaks.
