Items kinda suck. Many times I'd see one show up at the store that I want to get for a hero, but I can't since they're in the dungeon. By the time they are out, it's been replaced by something I don't care for.
I found that items that return your hero to town at a certain % were valuable. My heroes would never level together after a few levels and so I'd get to the dragon with only one or two guys. Having them able to fight the dragon everyday made it easier to take it down.
I like this game, I do. I like the humor in some of the matches (Computer + Human = Zombie for instance) and I find it interesting to see what will combine into what. The appearance of this one is a nice step up from the previous one. I just wish that it didn't start coming down to a 'mix and match everything one by one' thing after a while. Some of the things make sense in retrospect, but no way would I normally think Bomb + Mushroom = Nuclear Bomb. Eventually I would have found it on my own, but I thank the comments for that one. It gets a little boring after a while. Not sure what could be done to fix that without making it too easy, just part of what you have to do.
"the flashback badge does NOT work if you got 100% before badges. "
I went to the computer, said NO to the 100% completion reward(the sequel demo) then said YES to game complete code and that gave me the badge.