Personally I loved the first one. The path of darkness was brilliant as you watched your character gradually descend into more and more evil acts to achieve his goal.

This game has more units, and more races, but the mechanic is very similar to the first You still have the race to get mines, and the frustration that once you do the enemy sends a huge number of enemies at you, while its hero takes over the mines. If this frustrated you before, it will again.

There are some ways to mitigate this:

Firstly you need to make it a personal objective to take out the enemy hero(es) as soon as you can. Then you can hold a load of mines until the computer gets to level 4 or 5 keep, by which time you should have the lead on him.

Another way is to play as the elves. Ancient Wisps act like a level 1 crystal mine, so you can stock up on crystals behind your walls, and never have to bother with the rest. If you get far enough with this then you'll have built Elcors balm that heals your units, a merchants guild to trade your abundant crystal wealth for the other resources, then you'll be unstoppable (except for seige units, which are a problem). I favour this tactic, it's been reduced in effectiveness for WBC3 compared to 2, but it still works.

You could try playing as a demon summoner, I've not played this in 3, but in 2 you could summon succubis, which left souls, which gave you mana enough to sommon more. It's another way not to be a slave to the mine grab.

So in short, not much different to WBC 1 in terms of gameplay. The primary tactic of grabbing mines is still important, and is the best way to win. There are a couple of alternatives, but they're not as good.