TLDR: C+, moving higher with every patch they release.
From patch 1.01....
Review
Overall: Mechanically and technically, the game shows a lot of promise, and is a solid base on which to build a truly epic game. It doesn't deliver on several key selling points however, or under delivers. Thematically, I don't enjoy Elemental but I guess that's to taste.
Campaign: Since I'm not a fan of the story or the writing per se, the campaign was pretty underwhelming for me. I don't consider it what people should play first if they want an accurate representation of the game's depth. The new tutorial hints and such are helping it feel more fleshed out, but for a game that thrives on choices, randomness and control, the campaign offers none of these. It really only delivers the story, which again, you may or may not care about. It feels like a first-time attempt at an RTS campaign, and coupled with some other problems, results in a pretty bad presentation. That's about all I have to say on it, lest it get too nit picky and negative. I will only say that after playing the campaign for 4 hours, I was pretty disappointed and fearing the worst. Luckily the sandbox is much better.
Sandbox: Overall, the sandbox has delivered an epic game experience because the maps are huge, there is a lot of stuff to do, and the pacing feels about right. There are lots of choices to make, things to explore and the monsters add a lot of dynamism to your turn-by-turn decisions.
On specific featuresAI: I'll start here because I have the least exposure to it. On a normal game, the AI has been passive except for one repeatedly approaching me for treaties. (Shouldn't he take a hint at some point, or like me less because I rebuff him?) The AI has almost managed to kill off one player, who I've not seen because they're on the other side of the world. In comparison to my forces, the one AI I do see isn't intelligently building units or building armies strong enough to stop me. Nothing else much to say, other than it seems semi-random whether the monster AI chooses to attack you or not. They do seem to have a preference for caravans though.
Magic: This is where I'm afraid I'm going to get pretty negative. The magic in Elemental sucks, there's just no two ways about it. What should have been a focus in development feels like an after thought, from how spells are named, to how they're presented, to what they do, to what the core of the system actually is. After 6 hours of a sandbox game, I've yet to see the spells that supposedly make this game awesome. No volcanoes, no storms, no earthquakes, not even especially impressive summons..and I started 1.01 as as summoner.
There are handfuls of exceedingly generic spells, and having spell damage range be almost 100% means you often plink guys for damage one round, then explode them for max damage the next. Neither tactical nor strategy spells really have any oomph. Strategy spells are especially underwhelming. There's no creativity in them, they don't scale in power compared to what you start with, and they don't even have visual effects. How much of this is still in the pipeline, and how much has been completely overlooked, I don't know. Read down if you want constructive criticism on magic. But I had to get this off my chest. Do not release a game with Magic in the title then under deliver on it like this.
City mechanics: Overall I'm pleased here. Elemental still does not get away from "all cities tend to be a like", but the process of building cities and watching them grow is enjoyable, and all the mechanics and strategies that revolve around cities works. What I don't like is the Food Mechanic. Available fertile land dictates city placement way too heavily, as it's hard to grow a city in decent order without it. I like that I don't have to worry about starving populations, and that recruiting for my military seems to have a negligible impact on my population....but since it all ties back to the rate of city growth, and city growth is so important...I feel like Food needs another role than just how many homes you can build, or whether you have the 1 food available to build a trade center or something. Going back to magic, it doesn't provide (at least that I saw) much way to compensate for what you lack in the environment. I've seen the +1 food, +1 materials enchants, but little else...and again, I STARTED as an enchanter.
Tactical battles: They're about standard for 4x fantasy game tactical battles, now that some patches have gone in. I won't comment on the actual combat mechanics, since those seem to be in a great deal of flux. I don't have much to really say about tactical battles, since how fun it is is driven by a lot of other things...but since magic and some units are underwhelming, tactical battles have the tendency to feel that way too. It would be nice if terrain was more important, and more random. Also I have units that sometimes start the battle in the middle of the field, way ahead of my army, for no earthly reason.
Unit customization and gear: This is an especially good part of the game. Building units and equipping them and champions adds a lot of depth. Equipment however feels overemphasized in terms of effectiivess. Levels don't mean squat without the gear to back it up, for both heroes and regular troops. I have suggestions below. Overall, this is a great start, but equipment DOES lack quite a bit of content once you've played a single game. With only 4 sets of armor, a handful of weapon types with 1 to 2 levels of quality, and only a few trade offs between them, it's more of a sliding power scale than a real tactical choice.It's cool that I can have shirtless berzerkers with axes and Stones of Rage...but they'll never be "good."
Items: As I said above, it's a good start. I love that I can make troops with magic items. But like a lot of this game, there needs to be more, and more thoughtfully designed items. Suggestions below.
Champions: As people have mentioned around the forum, heroes have a lot of short comings. Even if I have them in every single battle I fight, without the right equipment, they're no better than high HP peasants. If I give them equipment, they're all "Fighters" of a generic sort. If they're not spellcasters, they aren't army leaders, in my book, since a 3x3 nuke in tactical battles is pretty much a winner. And those without combat special abilities at least seem especially worthless, the true baseline, uninteresting fighter. I have suggestions below
UI: I have to hate again a little. I'm not a fan of Elemental's windows or UI. The color scheme is god awful in my eyes, I don't find pastels to be an engaging or evocative set of colors. So much has been packed into that bottom tool bar as well that it's overloaded. More suggestions below, but is it possible to get away from the peaches, the mauves, the baby blues and the limes? When I see pastel, I think bland, inoffensive, somewhat childish. When half your game is that color, half your game gives that impression. The font in quest windows seems thrown in there, as well.
Bottomline
A good start. I feel you guys jumped the gun on release though, and I say that as an avid gamer who can't wait to get their hands on stuff. I avoided participating in beta because I wanted to experience Elemental as a polished product...and I feel like I'm getting the beta experience none the less. In the future, I suggest Stardock reigns in their own excitement with their title, and seeks non-fan, non-beta tester feedback before they launch. As an indie developer, I thought the benefit was control over the release process, but Elemental's initial offering really seems like someone was breathing down your necks for a release. And for the truly hardcore Stardock fans, answering that modding will solve all of this, that's not a response that works for anyone but die-hard fans.
Having played GalCiv 2, I feel like I know what to expect from the future of Elemental, and I hope continued support from Stardock takes the game up the several notches it's capable of, from average, troubled 4x game with great concepts to great 4x game with fully realized concepts. Given the amount of thread nuking of late around here, I hope these criticisms are ones you'll leave stand.
Suggestions for the next 6 months of development:
Magic: I don't propose a total rewrite or anything like that. I find the Fire/Water/Air/Earth dynamic to be totally overplayed in this day and age, but that's probably not going to change. So what I want to see is:
1) More spells, and more meaningful spells
2) Easier access to spells earlier on in the game.
3) More truly epic spells, and more spells with a lasting impact on the game and/or the world.
More spells and more meaningful ones. A new spell which only does more damage, or has a different mana/damage ratio is not a spell worth making. Yes, it satisfies a balance requirement, but that's ALL it does. More meaningful means: different patterns of attack, additional effects, different casting times, additional costs or risk to the player.
Easier access to spells earlier in game. For a player that is half magic, half combat, spell acquisition is slow and boring. You stare at the same 9 spells you don't want to waste time researching because they're not interesting, wait 50 turns to raise a spell level, to maybe get one or two spells that excite you. A single book can add a handful of spells to your repertoire, but books are infrequent and late game, making magic boring all the way up until then. Rewarding players with single spells for quests or random events would be a nice perk.
3) More truly epic spells. I shouldn't have to wait until the very pinnacle of magic to make a volcano, like was demonstrated in the videos. And that's the ONLY magic I know that's truly epic. Are there more? Probably. But I've put 15 hours already into Elemental, I've done my dues, now where's the cheese? Strategic spells are boring by and large, and many lack visual effects. I want stuff like:
-A massive thunderstorm that hangs in the map view, slowing down everyone within it and dealing some elemental damage. Can be maintained a significant power cost, with accompanying kick ass visual effect.
-A massive zone of corruption that reduces food output, morale in combat and leeches life from people within it. Visual effect please.
I'm not going to rattle off dozens of examples, but you get the drift. Apply that to tactical combat spells as well. You should be able to summon every creature in the game with the right combinations of books. You should be able to cause earthquakes that make some of the battlefield unavailable.
There should also be offensive spells castable from the tactical map. Sovreigns should be able to drop meteors or fireballs or lightning bolts at great distances, not just in combat. Make a new spell for it if you have to, but again, give us the feeling of magic's epicness both in and out of battle.They should be able to cast offensive spells in friendly terrain at 100% (or more) and have spells decrease in effectiveness the farther out of their terrain it is, or the deeper in enemy territory it is.
Make every spell count if you can...and honestly, put the leg work into good magic. The current offering really feels like a side project, or something that only got a few weeks spent on it.
Unit customization and items: We should be able to customize all the appearance aspects of troops we make. If I want to make blue skinned berzerkers, I should be able to go into the editor, within a sandbox game, and make them.
More poses for unit cards.
Unit cards should update to reflect a hero's current appearance.
We should be able to customize a hero's appearance and unit card quote once we hire them.
We should not have to be bald to wear a hood.
Layering clothes and armor would be amazing. Not a requirement but it would still be amazing.
Units poses on unit cards should not have weapons clipping through shields or body parts. If just looks tacky.
Stuff at the item vendor should be organized by item type and/or quality. A big list of stuff, if you guys plan to do more items, looks messy.
More items with a variety of trade offs and advantages, of all types. There only reason now to use light armor is for avoiding the combat speed penalty or because you're broke. There should be better light armor with a higher defense value available later on. There needs to be more basic weapons available at the start of the game, everyone running around with clubs looks ridiculous. Rusty daggers, rusty swords and reasons for why you'd want a club versus a rusty sword. You've got tons of combat relevant stats, make the gear play off those stats, both UP and DOWN the item advancement scheme.
We should be able to customize units for races we get access to in game, where reasonable. Darklings, for example. It makes no sense we can produce a race of troops with different gear and arrive at different kinds of troops, but not do that with the other races. There needs to be more magic items in general, even if they just are better versions of older ones. But there also needs to be items with a higher variety of effects. Resistance items, invisibility, shape changing...you get the idea.
Again, what's there is a great start. Don't stop now or it will never be more than that.
Heros: Heroes need some more love, or they need more roles to fulfill. As it is they just follow my sovereign around, who in turn hides behind my strongest units, to get levels. Coupled with the fact they're so fragile, you never want to get them into trouble, even though they don't really DO anything for you, other than allow you to branch out into the world and hit multiple quest spots at once. Which is a bad idea unless you have two or more good armies to back them up, since they can't do anything on their own.
I feel like heroes shouldget Attack and Defense increases as part of their leveling. Make the % of increase relevant to their current stats, but all of them should be getting at least somewhat more effective in combat as time goes on, without pouring all their points into the strength.
The heroes that you haven't made into spell casters, or have no relevant special abilities, are completely boring. Who cares if they produce 1 gildar late game? At the risk of suggesting some new overarching system....let us put those non-combat, non-exploring, non-spellcasting heroes to work. What if they could be put in charge of managing cities, like a Lord? An extra slot in each city that only a hero can be put into, where their stats increase (or decrease?) a city's output or defense values? They may not be gaining experience, but it would feel like they're doing something useful at least.
UI and Visuals: Seriously, revisit the color scheme in the whole game and look for uses of boring, mild colors. I'm thinking the Kingdom/Research/Spell pane for one.
The Wraith race color is baby blue, and it makes it hard to see on the cloth map. It's also just not very intimidating. All race colors should pop brightly, because that's info you want to know immediately when looking at stuff.
Spheres of influence should be visible on the cloth map, or MORE visible.
Roads should be MORE visible on the cloth map.
We should be able to expand the minimap to get a single pane view of the whole world, rather than just a zoomed out in-game view.
Vendors should list items in some sort of order, possibly under headings like "Mounts" and "Swords"
There should be multiple tabs on the spell book to view spells according to level, sphere, strategic or tactical. The spell book should be larger too, only being able to display 12 or so spells on that one page will get tedious as time goes on and more spells are added. Do we really need to see those icons so big? The titles are right there and the art isn't so amazing it's worth having that big. Sort of like the spell art on the right page, where half of them just show the crystal image associated with the spell.
The size of each entry in the design unit screen does not need to be that big. It seems like a general them of Elementals screens that EVERYTHING is oversized/uses huge fonts.
Other stuff: Timing on many spell animations, versus the damage floater and the sound effects, are off.
Battle sounds still cut out regularly. This may be associated with the memory leak.
Friendly units should be able to move through other friendly units (but not stop on the same tile) as long as one of the units isn't a super huge monster. It looks awkward that a single unit is occupying one corner of a tile, and another single unit has to walk all the way around them.
Monster spawning is a little out of hand. Not only is it the frequent "adventureres have done something stupid!" but monsters spawn in the tiniest corners of unclaimed space, meaning very small pockets between your cities produce an inordinate amount of critters, which them go straight for your caravans, since your roads usually go right through those pockets. Don't get me wrong, it's a cool mechanic. But monsters should need at least some room to spawn and move around.
Monsters also spawning RIGHT next to units is really, really annoying. I've recruited heroes before, ended turn so we could blink back to a city to buy some gear, and had a monster spawn and kill them immediately. Very annoying. Monsters should not spawn within 4 or so tiles of a unit, so you at least have some warning, and they aren't ninja ganking caravans.
We need a "retreat" button. We at least need a chance to escape a battle without having to fight it out to the end. We should take some losses for doing so, but auto-battling implies we're too stupid to run away when it's warranted.
Autobattles should not pick out the weakest hero to kill as often. What should be any easy way to get a hero leveled turns into an easy way to get them killed, because by the numbers, they're the first to die. If my combat rating is 10x the amount of the enemies, that should tell the AI that, at the very least, weak champions shouldn't be getting killed.
We should get a notification when a champion has died, especially because of how auto battle resolves at the moment. There were a couple times I went looking for one and found they had died long ago in a random autobattle.
There should be a "select all" button for cities. It's tedious to Shift + Click 12 units, especially when it causes your cursor in game to freak out.
Rethink horses and mounts. It's very cool we can have them. There's just no reason NOT to have them. Seriously, is there a reason? Who doesn't want more moves per turn and a higher combat speed? No one, that's who. For troops, it makes sense, mounts are based on resources and in macro bump up the cost of troops a lot. For heroes though, mounts are relatively cheap and never a bad idea.
Oh, the irony!
Just wanted to say I agree with the OP.
This is not a finished product. It looks and plays like an early beta at best. I am very disappointed. I seriously regret pre-ordering this.
Last pre-order Stardock gets from me, that is for sure.
Pretty much.
I could've written volumes on Elemental at 0.99 or 1.01, and even at 1.05, but I'm still holding out before writing anything, if I ever do write anything. The differences in those 3 builds have been huge and IMO, 1.05 is finally starting to feel like what I expected from the game (in sandbox at least, doubt I'll ever play the campaign).
The game also has a steep learning curve with some gameplay mechanics that aren't easily figured out, and when you combine that with buggy and unbalanced it makes the game very hard to initially digest. The steepness wouldn't have been so bad initially if everything else was solid.
Personally I think Stardock pooched it. This will end up being a solid and enjoyable game but it seriously could've used a few more weeks of polish with beta testers pounding on the more release-worthy versions of the game to help fine tune it.
The model of releasing something buggy, broken, and unbalanced and fixing it right away doesn't really work for the general gaming public.
Lucky for me I'm an HOMM fan then?
I agree especially with your magic sentiments. Higher level magic needs to be a big deal - or maybe have fewer levels but take MUCH longer to research each level.
When I've fought an enemy sovereign, he/she didn't use magic during the tactical battle. That might have been fixed with the AI improvements.
Does the AI use imbue champion a lot? I do every time I find a champion with good int. Then level essence up. If the AI doesn't - it should more when it finds a good would-be spell caster champion.
Yeah, that's just the thing.
Here's the deal. game reviews come out approximately 2 weeks after game release.
Fact is, programming and artwork assets aren't in good enough shape for reviews. I know right now if Stardock leaves the game in the state it's in, it's totally going to get trashed, and this game is going to go the way of the dinosaurs. No one will buy it, there won't be money for an expansion, and in the end it'll be another failed experiment for Stardock.
The magic isn't good, the artwork isn't good, and the system stability isn't there. Champions, sovereigns, quests and wandering monsters aren't good. The empire part is good, but not enough to make up for the rest of the game.
Most of the promised features were implemented in the least impressive ways imaginable.
But right now Frogboy's team is dead in the dumps and prepped for vacation. I think they are tired and don't want to work on the game for about a month. They put themselves in a bad situation by releasing a game that simply wasn't ready to release. Now they are going to have to use paid customers as beta testers, and people aren't going to be happy about it.
TLDR version:
Elemental needs a HUGE functionality/artwork patch in the next 2 weeks or reviews and going to trash it 6 ways from sunday.
I guess because I never came to these forums until I purchased the game (and therefore am not a fanboi/fangirl) I am out of line for wanting what I purchased to be what was promised on the website or advertisements ... BUT ...
The whole "be realistic" or "wait for patches in the coming weeks/months" thing I'm noticing on the forums whenever someone complains is offensive to me. I paid for a game ... expecting to get a game ... right now I feel like someone pooped in a box (well, digital distribution - but you get the point), I paid for it, then people are telling me to "wait it out" and "it'll get better."
"it takes time" - Yes, making good products takes time ... that time is supposed to be BEFORE they sell it to someone.
I bought a box of broken glass, and people are telling me to wait WEEKS and the manufacturer will hopefully ship me some glue and maybe, just maybe, some actual instructions on how to put it together.
How come PC games are basically the only product line that we can be lied to on product features out of the box, sold an item that does not work (I get crashes to desktop at least every 15-20 minutes), cannot return the item ("Oh you're unsatisfied? Tough, thanks for the money.") and then we're supposed to wait around and hope weeks later the item we might as well have thrown in the trash on day 1 gets magically better.
+1 for the OP. A fair and balanced review.
I enjoy this game but some of you have a case of the fanboys. This review is spot on. Magic does seem underwhelming. He brings up a lot of good points and you're shooting him down.
Anyway, great thread. Don't let them get you down.
Well, you seem to be in the minority. I await your own flawless and insightful review. No seriously, where is it? Let me guess, you're waiting for more patches.
Civ4 didn't have that issue. What makes you think Civ 5 will?
Also, deep and complex? I don't mean to flame but I'm pretty sure you're playing a different game than the rest of us.
No, I think he's firmly in that special place fans get when they're experiencing cognitive dissonance.
I think this review is spot-on, and much of it applies even to 1.05.
I haven't played a whole lot, but I was disappointed with the magic as well. Looking back to Master of Magic, my favorite part of the game was casting world-changing spells or city-affecting spells (Armageddon caused volcanoes to randomly spawn every turn, while one spell opened a rift of chaos over a city, damaging it every turn.) I was hoping to see Elemental expand on these ideas, giving us more spells like this with visual effects to match. I was really looking forward to, say, opening rifts to the Plane of Fire over my opponent's cities and seeing them rain fireballs on the world map. As to the comment about fertile land, there could be a spell which creates a patch of fertile land, but at a significant upkeep cost.
Again with spells, summoning seems kind of odd. I haven't done it very much, so I could just be confused, but it seems like you can just have one copy of every monster in your spellbook, with no upkeep costs. There seems to be no drawback to just having one of every summon with you all the time. I liked how in MoM, you had to balance the power of summoned creatures with the time it took to summon them, and their upkeep cost.
I agree with the complaint about generic spells - many of the damage-dealing spells seem incredibly alike except for their element. Some more distinction there could be useful. Also, I think the more powerful spells should go back to requiring elemental shards. (Again, it could be that they already do, and I just didn't notice.) Returning to summoning, I think a powerful unit like a fire giant should require ownership of a fire shard to control - that would make them much more sought after. It's much more interesting to fight over a shard with a reason like "once I get this shard, I'll be able to control Fire Elementals and raise volcanoes" instead of "once I get this shard, I'll do 75% more damage with fire spells".
I do like city building and tactical battles, and I think the game shines in these areas. Upgrading soldiers from single units to Parties and Companies does give a great feeling of your civilization advancing in power and organization. I love seeing sprawling cities, and the various building tiles look great.
Overall, I think the game does need a lot of work, and I hope that future updates will address some of these issues. I know that Elemental is not supposed to be a Master of Magic clone, and I'm not suggesting that it take that path, but MoM made magic important and awe-inspiring in a way that Elemental has yet to accomplish. I think the development team needs to seriously look at the mechanics of magic in Elemental vs. MoM, and consider some changes in the fields of spell upkeep, summoning, global and city enchantments, etc. As the game is now, I don't think it's delivering on its full potential. I'll be curious to see the review scores as they come up, but I honestly think the game's going to get a lukewarm reception.
I think your review was spot on. I hope Stardock takes a close look at your suggestions, as they go a long way towards addressing what is holding this game back. This is a game that a lot of people want to love, and it still needs some from Stardock.
Well done on the review!
I'd also like to add that I share most of the critics and wishes for improvement that the OP stated in his review. I look forward for Stardock to look into that suggestion list and add elements mentionned in his review.
I have to say, that I'm enjoying the game so far. But I agree with every single point on the OP's review, while some things have been smoothed out by 1.05, most of his salient points about magic, champions/heroes/soverigns are spot on. The default values (attribute 10) for soverigns and heroes seem to be half or a third of what you'd expect, especially in regards to attack/defense strength and HP and Essence. Essence seems almost too scarce to use to imbue my other heroes so right now I'm following a General Ripper mindset of denying them all (including my wife) my essence. My heroes and definately my soverign should be able to handle a squad of peasants on their own. Heroes need to feel like they're the heroes from Greek myth and our Soverigns should at least feel like demi-gods. Soverigns are supposed to be people that move and shape the earth around them and the game should reflect that.
I also want, full in depth choice at soverign and faction creation. More choices are never a bad thing and I'd like the ability to set my race's base attributes and their general descriptions such as height, weight, bust size, etc. Make me have to use my precious build points for my soverign to not only pick the braches of magic he can learn but also how high he can theoretically level in them (which could then be increased and changed via artifacts, items, and shards in the main game).
Also give me some dynamic game start scenarios. For instance say I'm a vassal of one of the other soverigns and my tasks are to create an outpost, eventually they begin taxing us to death and we rebel, carve our own place in the world then move on to conquer it in its entirety. In the least, some random events and moral dilemmas, with occasional super events like from Gal Civ.
-J-
The part about champions is definitely a big one. Though some people may be misremembering HOW heroes in MOM got so good since heroes (until they had some levels and equipment later) could not take on even regular units on their own:
1. Abilities, Abilities, Abilities: Heroes in MOM could have a huge range of abilities that most normal units simply couldn't have or that could not be combined in certain unit types. Armor piercing, life drain, flying etc etc, as they leveled up they got unique abilities and usually tons of them. Even the most worthless spell-casting hero was helpful if you had him stick around in your tower because it helped your channeling ability. A blademaster hero made everyone stacked with him gain experience. Who cared if he killed a single unit? He had a tangible useful reason to around other troops. The ability list for WoM is small and leaves most heroes sitting around in cities increasing food production or something as equally uninteresting. Give me my flying firebreathing mounted on a drake hero any day.
2. "He might not be able to fight but that staff is custom made!": I'm beating a dead horse on this one a bit because I complained about it before but the point is still valid. A great deal of the usefulness of heroes came from the ability to DESIGN and CREATE magical equipment with them in mind. Got a combat hero that is a glass cannon? Give him some armor with Regeneration to survive those tough fights! Got a spellcaster that seems to run out of mana? Give him a staff with nasty spells built in! Have a hero that needs to get close but is slow? Invisibility! It both gave you something to put all that excess mana to later in the game and gave you a reason for what type of magic and how many books you selected at creation. Putting the ability to craft items only in the editor is great for making mods I suppose but I can even craft items in game in NWN.
3. Personality: Ok, this doesn't make them any more effective but the sad fact is the heroes were a lot more varied and interesting. From the ultimate hero only the Life guys could have to the dumb orc everyone saw at the beginning of the game, each hero looked and usually was effective at wildly different things. A chaos sorcerer was useful for much different things than the huntress with her wimpy bow.
At this point, I'm looking for someone to mod WoM the way that CiV4 was modded by the Fall From Heaven team. As WoM look right now, it may look prettier than FFH2 but that mod is better than a completed professionally developed game.
I agree. Much work needs to be done. From reading the threads on this forum, I think I'll wait 6 months and then come back and make my final decision. I think many would agree, there won't be very many pre-orders for the next Elemental release. Unfortunately, goodwill once lost, is very hard to get back. But if they do manage it in a reasonable capacity, then all Stardock games in future will be the better for it.
Brad, in my eyes, the test begins now. See if you can admit your failings, get stuck in and learn the lesson, and I'll see you in 6 months.
If Elemental doesn't improve, so be it. I'll rely on fheroes2 (HOMM2) and VCMI (HOMM3) and Battle for Wesnoth, a free game whose next version is looking decidely speccy.
Best regards,Steven.
Good review.
I got the game because I wanted to feel like the ultimate great and powerful sorcerer...that's what I thought I'd be getting for my money. It's not even close but I'm hoping the game gets there soon. I rarely ever pre-order a game and only did so because I trusted that Stardock would deliver on release day. I think from now on I'll stick to my 'buy it a few months down the road' practice. It's served me well over the years...my soft spot for Stardock and what I thought I'd be getting with elemental got me to cave though. LOL For me, a lesson learned.
the review isn't that far off, but i think people are coming to a fast conclusion that they wish they wouldn't of bought this game. If we remember back to galciv2 vanilla, it was boring, bland and repeditive. Brad has said that this will be a platform that will and already has seen a ton of improvement. The same could be said with soase. Most of the forum goers and reviewers alike agreed that that game wasn't whole till entrenchment. I know we paid $50 for it but I have full faith that they will make it what we want and then a whole lot more. We have the right to voice our opinions and ninjin did just that, but those people jumping to conclusions about this being a crappy game and why do PC games get the excuse that they can be released unfinished can A) try to find any "great" strategy game that was "great" on day 1, or day 80 for that fact, and B ) go to console games and see if the grass is greener on the other side. just my 2 cents
completely agree with this review, bump
agree with the review though i don't mind that its crashing or buggy / inbalanced a bit but its way way better then the beta ever was, could have done with a month or more the game wasn't rushed just released a bit early oh well the thing that will keep me sane will be the Mod tools for now
+1 Ninjin; +1 Commkeen
I completely agree! Hey, I ALWAYS wait for games to go on sale--heck I just bought Fallout 3 on Steam for 50% off--but I bought this game right away for exactly these above reasons! I wanted an updated version of MoM!
Spell upkeep ala MoM's skill point system really needs to happen. We talked about that a lot, us Beta-testers. The essence system was and probably still could be used for this purpose; rather than permanently losing essence, it is more of a spell upkeep thing--once the spell is "turned off," your essence returns.
@Devs: If you listen to these kinds of constructive criticism, then you will have the means to shape this game into an all-time classic! Boy would I love that to happen!
The downside to tying everything to shards is that, because maps are so random, there's no guarantee they will be anywhere near you, and all the best spells could end up in the hands of the AI, and the player may go a whole game without the best gooey gooey.You can argue the law of averages applies and you'll get at least 1...but in games where that doesn't happen, someone is going to feel they've wasted a lot of time on a map that put that a (100% 400%?) disadvantage.
It's a tricky balance, trying to make everything compelling. I think shards just need to do more/affect more. Put different upgrades on them, make them capable of attacking enemy units that get to close, some other stuff.
I also agree on the summoning. Some of the monsters are strong enough to warrant a multi-turn cast time.
Well I see what you're saying, but at the same time, it would mean that your environment would play a contributing factor in how you develop your skills/units/empire. If a fire spellbook is the only magic you chose at the beginning and there wasn't a fire shard, then maybe you'd have to go on a quest or research to discover something that might work better (thus setting you back a little in the magic progression).
</digression> There could also be a more powerful spell (one of those ubiquitous ones that all sovereigns can learn) that allows you to retune a shard to another element or sommat </digression>
Nenjin, I thought this was a great review, and I second your opinions. Especially the underwhelming magic. This is Elemental: War of Magic, so I'd like to see a greater importance attributed to magic in general.
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