I downloaded the demo today. Here are my first impressions:

Installation: Easy to install. No problems.

Menus: Navigation is easy and familliar. Went straight to World War

Updated Graphics: I had to increase the Gamma. Everything was too dark. Once I did that, everything worked fine and looked good. The new camera angles worked pretty well for the most part for adding dramatic effect, but I'm guessing after a couple of games, I'll be turning that off.

Game Play: I like the new disclose phase (only disclose one SA). That balances things out a lot better, I think. Other than that, the game play is basically the same as MA (which is hard to improve upon as far as I'm concerned). One thing I noticed that is a bit annoying is that when I'm deploying units, I can't remove them by clicking on them. Don't know if this is a bug or not.

The only two new units that were used in the game were the new PL bot and bunkers. Both units are very cool and add something to the game. The bot is a great tank killer (can take out one tank per turn). The bunkers seemed very useful for defense and guerrilla forces, especiallin in rough terrain or in a choke point. But you have be careful not to block yourself in!

I noticed a lot of the new units are unavailable in the demo. Probably for the best. The new map that is available is pretty cool. I like the river and the swamp. It is better than Bizarria for a very small map.

I also noticed that all the territories had only 5 turns of revenue production. Is this a per map setting or will all maps have this. I liked the way that made the game go very quickly, but I'm not so sure that would be a good thing on larger maps...I don't know though. I guess I don't have an opinion one way or the other.

Anyway, it looks good. No major bugs that I could see. Lots o' fun. I'll probabably buy it.

Five turns of revenue is just supposed to be for the demo.

As for my impressions, I agree with all that UllerPSU already said. The only complaint I have is having to click undo on a unit if I want to do something simple like re-direct fire. I am hoping it is just in the demo. I am definitely purchasing this when it is released.

you two...ever considered going to game options and switching on the "automatic undo" button?

in a full game you have a special menu in worlwar where you can choose amount of revenue turns and amount of secret allies.

Like I said, these were just my first impressions after playing one World War. I didn't explore everything thoroughly yet.

I only sat and played a quick World War, I didn't explore the menus. I wanted to see how the gameplay was, not explore menus.

Menus makes the gameplay.

Seriously tho, there's lots of options that effect it so better check em through.

Add to this that sides are not equal now. Playing FNU is different than playing PL now because of different set of units.

Also try to switch to impossible difficulty using ".ini" file and have a fun!

if your only complaint is about quick undo maybe it worth some effort finding it in options...just advising...

Also changing side works from ini file.

Yes but you can't tell what it does to balance from the demo since you can't use all the units.

you can play with all the land and air units in the world war but not the sea oens (guess the map is land no sea map like emerald) Have to admit i missed the different buy menu options at top left of the screen for my entire 1st game. Only found them when i was trying to buy naval transports in one of the scenarios.

1st impressions, looks the same graphic wise, liked the training missions but after the 3rd mission i just turned off the voice (i donno just something about it made me cringe) Scenarios were fun and i loved the attack helictopers. Campain looks to be fun, like the idea of command units.

All in all an improvement over the original, just have to wait till it comes out so i can try the carear mode (which looks like good fun)

Yeah, the voice is pretty bad, if not comical I laughed out loud when they said "Oh my gosh! They're invading our capital!" in one of the scenarios. He said it like he would have said "I ate my sock and it tasted bad".

Couple thoughts I had from the demo:

That replay camera is amazing! I love how during a replay it swings around and gives you a good view as it does each action. So thats what a CNN style "fancy camera" is Very cool!

Park and bark battles are a lot more interesting now. What used to be mostly LAVs with Mortars behind and an occasional RL has become much deeper with pill boxes and Helis.

Rivers make a very nice no mans land. I like how that makes some of the borders more interesting.

Little things like showing the replay during behind the victory screen add a lot of flavor to this already great game. Also, the mini replay-style scenes during scenarios are pretty cool too.

I am having a lot of fun with just this little demo! Micronesia is a great little planet, and the option to play with half total income really makes it quick and interesting. I can't wait to try out the more advanced units and maps, not to mention the campaigns.

Looking forward to the patch that will add the advanced time limit options!

You have to wait to see new incredible planets! They are wonderfull!

Having just downloaded the demo and being very excited, I haven't got anywhere with the game yet, but a few initial thoughts:

1. Your publisher and I are destined not to get along. Having completed the install of the game I attempted to load it, only to be told I needed to run it as an admin to finish the installation.

WTF is the installation for if not to install the game?

So, now I log out, log in as an admin, run the game, quit and login as me. Jesus.

2. I get to the game menu, change the audio to hardware since I'm getting sick of watching things fire and the sound effect kicking in half a second too late. Much better... whoops, no, because the Audigy2 bug still hasn't been fixed! Well that's okay, because it's not like Creative dominate the sound market or anything!

3. This game needs V-Sync more than any other game I've ever encountered, yet WTF is the Triple Buffering support? Oh there isn't any, well that's just great for anyone who falls a frame short of their refresh rate! Welcome to the world of unexplained slow-downs as the camera moves about, especially over trees at high resolutions.

4. Still no in-game Antistropic Filtering support? WTF? This is 2005! Some of us own something a bit newer than a GeForce 2. Without AF everything beyond the direct focus point of the camera becomes a smudge. Those who haven't used AF before won't know what a wonderful sharp world it can be. Of course, I can enable it in my control panel, but wait, that's a global setting and, amazingly, different games work best with different settings.

5. The whole thing seemed a little... slow to me. No matter what res I had, I felt like I was dying of old age waiting for each missile to hit home. Maybe I just need to play with the options a bit more, we'll see.

6. Demo time limit? Wow, it's like a blast from the past. God help me should I ever be tempted to buy Domination in the future, I'd need to completely rebuild my PC to figure out if it was worth it (unless the timelimit is tied into the install... hah!)

So, while I'm looking forward to taking a crack at the new features and seeing how the AI does, it all strikes me as a bit lazy (I mean, come on, how much work is adding Triple Buffering support? A half hour?), especially the utter failure to fix the Audigy hardware bug. I'll be interested to see what price this is sold at in the UK.

Okay, played through the demo. I have to say, it was very odd. You're trying to sell us Domination, and to do so ship a demo that excludes in World War every new unit except the Bunker. In other words the demo told me I liked Massive Assault, which I already knew.

The new units were cut out, the new game modes were excluded... what was here that would convince me to buy Domination? The AI was more interesting on the first move, but made a couple of very silly tactical errors which I'm uncertain it would have made before. Is its faster run time because it's thinking through less moves? It's hard to say much because a tiny map with only two SAs didn't tell me much, except for a more interesting first move.

Oddly naval transports didn't indicate whether a unit in them had moved or not, and sadly the transports still don't tell me how many move and health points remaing each unit inside it has (besides 0 or > 0 for move) which can make unloading the right unit trial and error.

The music got quiet every time text appeared (a more subtle fade would have been nice) but for no apparent reason. Will there be narrated text in the full version?

I did come out liking the river no-mans land, as well as thinking the single SA declaration is superior. Problem is, this demo didn't really contain enough to convince me to part with my money. It was MA with a different map, and I'm not paying for that. I'll wait on the reviews to see how the new features pan out.

Oh, and the voice speaking when you quit the demo is annoying as hell

There is also multiplayer demo! You can play Beotorum map with all the available units. And Beotorum is very good medium planet.

Also you can play secnarios and campaign with such units partially.

all are the units available in the multiplayer demo?

On the upside the music is better (like the remixes of old tracks), and having your battle replay in the background behind victory is a nice touch.

The free camera is a nice idea, but I turned it off because firstly the framerate varies too much depending on what angle it chooses, and secondly because half the time I couldn't make heads or tails of where we were.

yes

(I do not much understand a reason to do 2 demos)

When did that come out? Wasn't there when I downloaded... wierd. I agree, two demos = loopy. Maybe they're worried about the limitations in SP being cracked if all the units were included?

Did anyone else find the layout of the purchasing menus illogical? Haven't played MA for a while, but I never had a problem with it. The PR purchasing menu is a bit of a pain.

Oh, and that thick outline around units in the stats screen (combined with their tiny size) makes it almost unreadable.

The tutorials are a vast improvement though, especially the explanation of which SA to declare and why.