Had the same experience with Songs of Conquest. Beautiful game, but something felt off that I can’t put my finger on. The game felt really snowball-y, where your chances to win depend strongly on what resources you control early on, and the magic system (while interesting) felt really imbalanced. Nothing really managed to recreate the HoMM feeling for me.
I have not played 2 yet but plan to when I can catch a decent sale. From what I read, the writing is better and there also seem to be some QoL features might help with the pacing of the dialogue and cutscenes.
No, I feel you. I did finish the game and enjoyed it overall, but the dialogue and writing was jarring. I’m not sure what exactly it was, but I was particularly annoyed by the characters being such clichés and the dialogue in the cutscenes being soooo slow (overused animations, dramatic pauses in every sentence, …).
Yeah, the vibe is different, but both are excellent in their own way. Part 2 is a more complex piece of story telling. It does some things that I had not expected from a game and that make it more (emotionally) challenging but also unique in terms of the experience. I personally found it really impressive.