It was a smart move for Spiderweb to put this saga on Steam. For me, it went from "I'd like to try that some day" to "for that price, I'll buy it NOW." And now that I have experienced the quality of their games firsthand, I'd have no problem paying $15-20 apiece for their other titles. Of course, if they show up cheap on Steam as well, I won't complain.
Forgot to mention in my earlier post that I've encountered essentially no bugs. There was one situation where one of my creatures got stuck behind something and I couldn't move him and I couldn't leave the region because my creatures weren't all with me. Took about 2 seconds to realize that all I needed to do was destroy the guy that was stuck.
I also like that the tough combat forces you to experiment with all the spells and items you're carrying to see what can help. Those shield spores really come in handy to give the creatures a bit more staying power. Also, for a few tough battles I decided to destroy my creatures and rebuild them with lower intelligence (so I couldn't control them manually) but more endurance and strength. Sometimes that's just enough to do the trick. Other times it's disastrous as one of them runs at the enemies and the other 4, 5, or 6 stand around doing nothing.
Also found that simply building an army of battle alphas, while effective against many enemies, is sometimes completely ineffective, like when battling the stronger turrets. Gotta use ranged creatures such as vlishes in such cases. I like that the game forces you to try different tactics like this, rather than allowing you to cruise through the game with the same army and weapons/spells against every enemy. (Like, say, Diablo allows you to do.)