It's held up decently enough to still be a pretty enjoyable play these days, yeah, even if you're not particularly attached to it otherwise (the first AoW I played was shadow magic, aow1 came many years later). I think the campaign might actually be somewhat more compelling than the immediate sequel (and about on par with SM).
Heh, as someone who started on 1 and really got sucked into the atmosphere and the lore and all that jazz, and then was seriously hyped about there being a sequel to it, I...
...well, mostly I got confused and pissed off at what they'd done to my treasured world
Yaka, king-god, the all-seeing eye and the all-consuming flame, he whose single footstep will cause the entire world to smolder and curl like burning papyrus... Was now just some dude in a funny hat who liked hanging out at furry conventions (I did learn to appreciate the Tigrans for their own merits, but c'mon man... Why'd they have to go and do the Azracs dirty like that?). The mysterious, solemn, nigh-uncontrollable primordial guardians of power too dangerous for mortals to command, were now a race of extraterrestrial leather enthusiasts. Not to mention the all-new lolrandom bios so many of the old heroes got.
Don't get me wrong; Shadow Magic is great fun and brings all sorts of really good stuff to the table. It just... It didn't have the same atmosphere as the first game, the same "soul" that I'd fallen so in love with, and the jabs and retcons it made towards the original just hurt. It took me a long while before I managed to start really appreciating it for what it is.
...learning that I could horrifically break the campaign via magic forge abuse may have contributed a little bit to my newfound sense of admiration. Or maybe not. Hard to say, I was rolling in mana crystals at the time, it's all a bit hazy.
And then 3 rolled around and slapped me with a fresh bushel of mixed feelings.