First of all, the overall stability seems to be miles ahead of where it was previously. I have played about 1/3 of Serpent Isle without any visible bugs at all! This is truly remarkable. The only problem I've noticed is that there seems to be a very slow memory leak, so that after 5 hours or so of playing, the game simply exits to the Windows desktop (under WinXP). Since I save much more often than that, I just exit & restart the game every once in a while and I don't have a problem.
Second, the combat is great! Whereas before, even Spark could kill a dragon by himself, unarmed, now it's nicely challenging. The combat seems to be even better balanced than the original U7/SI.
But the best thing I noticed was the new party formation. I'm not going to lie - I still like the original U7 party formation better, but the closer grouping and less wandering nature of your party is 1000% better than before. I want to thank whomever is responsible for this, it has made the game playable for me, whereas before it was almost easier to just kill off all of my companions and carry them in my knapsack
I still do have two minor nitpicks about the party: 1. They should never, ever open a door by themselves. The bastards love to rush right into trouble whenever I step near a door with enemies behind it. 2. They should get out of my way. I often find I can't walk diagonally because a party member is blocking me, and since they stay in the same relative position as I move, they continue to block me as we walk. The only solution I've found is to move the opposite direction for a step or two, then double back to my original intended direction. If I am blocked from moving in my intended direction by a party member, that party member should swap places with me so that I can continue unimpeded.
But anyways, just wanted to say congrats and THANKS!
