If the overland portion of the game was as good as the combat, Etherlords II would be a certified winner. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. The mini-campaigns (there are five) are all linear in that you are led by the nose and are forced to fight a particular battle at a particular time. It may as well be a straight tournament; it would make things go a lot faster and you could focus simply on fighting battles instead of plodding through the mundane storyline and fighting with the ridiculous camera angles. You are never free to venture where you want -- the game usually has a specific order in which it wants you to complete a quest. The game's idea of providing options to the player is whether or not to fight the Sawer-Man or the Evil Mother Eye, but in the end you'll most likely fight both of them anyway. It simply needs to be at least a little bit more open-ended rather than scripted to the letter.