It has been released in the last week out of 1C in Russia.
Graphics are excellent, engine is solid (though with a few crashes).
The problem with the game I find is that it might have been a nice wargame, but somewhere got turned into a TB Puzzle Game. The game is hard, even on 'Normal', and you have to get everything just right, or there is no point in continuing.
To me it epitomizes the problem of Load/Save carried to the extreme (as opposed to Save&Quit). The game balance becomes so hard, because it is just assumed that you are going to load and save multiple times to get anything done.
If Elemental has graphics as good as EL, it will be terrific. The gameplay is solid, that is the mechanics work, but because it ends up as a puzzle game, not a wargame, there is no way to keep playing it and keep the interest up. Just play through once (with many reloads) then shelve it.
Any other thoughts?
I've played several missions and my thoughts are not far from yours. It's a good game overall, but its appeal may be limited by some of the design decisions. You probably hit the largest problem squarely on the head: while the game is a lot of fun to look at and play, and has an excellent UI, that fun gets decreased by the puzzle-like nature of the maps coupled with the tight turn requirements to achieve victory. This sort of precludes general exploration of the otherwise inviting looking map, a gaming element I particularly enjoy. In addition, and this will depend on your tastes, I find EL to be a bit one dimesnional since it lacks almost any 4X elements. It's a bit like taking the tactical battle elements of HOMM, Age of Wonders, King's Bounty, or (by educated guess) the forthcoming Elemental and removing all the strategic elements of those games like city/economy/resource management, empire building, and exploration. I realize that this foucus appeals to many players, but it makes the game a little lacking for me.
You should try th emultiplayer. The gameplay is just excellent, but you're right about the solo experience. But in multiplayer it's really different. Things like invisibility become more important than ever.
This won't change my opinion since I never, ever play games online (except MMOs, which are a different kettle of fish and which I almost exclusively play PvE). I've discussed this many times, often on these forums, and have no desire to revisit my arguments, so will just state that you cannot change my mind on this. And in any event, I'm guessing that, unless you have friends interested in the game, multiplayer opponents are probably few and far betweem, judging by the official EL boards on the Paradox forums site, which are very dead for a newly released game.
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