I still can't help but feel we are playing with a shell of a game, a meaty shell, but still a shell. I've played many games of the current FE beta, and when compared to WOM its great, but that's still not saying much in the way of the 4x fantasy genre. I know the devs aren't done with FE but I feel I should voice some of my concerns.
I've stated in the latest journal that my chief concern has to do with the tech trees. To add to that I'd also like to talk about the variations of units available to all the different factions, or lack thereof. I like the fact that you can capture certain unit types on the world map, but to add to that there should be race specific options to train "other things" such as shades, or giants, or dire wolves, etc... Currently the only difference lies in whether you are kingdom or empire.
It's probably cliche to do so at this point, but to borrow from MoM and other such fantasy games, these have a wide variety of not just trainable units that compose your armies, but serviceable units that provide abilities such as giant sea turtles transporting armies across the oceans (I know sea warfare has been removed at this point for FE) or flying units that really augment your capabilities in combat. With the introduction to the new FE art in the current beta, I am really hoping for some variation in, not just the factions, but within the units each faction gets. As things stand currently, all kingdom units, and empire units are all the same with the only difference being one is kingdom and one is empire. Pioneers are all the same, spear men are all the same, even the upgrades will eventually be the same across the board. This isn't just in looks either, it's in the functions of these units. This also spills over in to the spells but that's a slightly different issue.
My undulating fear this entire time is that WoM laid the framework for FE and that has limited FE's ceiling. But I am not a game developer and openly admit I usually don't know what I'm talking about. What I do know is that there must be much much more variety then whats available, and more then just differentiating factions. Where are the griffins and wyverns? where are the manticores and centaur? WHERE IS THE FANTASY??