Battle Mages: Sign of Darkness is a RTS/RPG hybrid being developed by Buka Entertainment, a company based in Russia, and while I will (of course) reserve final judgment on the game for when the final product is released, I cannot say after playing this early preview copy that I have any wish to play the final product.

Buka is just stuck in a rut here trying to clone Warcraft III or perhaps even Spellforce, and they don't seem to want to innovate in the slightest, at least, not in any way that makes the game experience any better. They've done quite a few things to make this an inferior Warcraft clone, like mating a substandard graphics engine to missions that don't give you the first clue about what you are supposed to do, but they never seem to get the things right that made Warcraft III the great game that it was. I never actually completed a mission in Battle Mages due to the lack of a briefing on what I needed to accomplish, and I tried quite a few times.