I don't think Stardock/The Elemental Team is getting enough props for what they did right here.
As for me, I'm a gamer going back to the PC jr. days in my childhood; I spent thousands of hours in 1994-1995 playing MOM. In reality, I'm a database engineer- meaning I know a little bit about project releases.
Elemental has some rough spots. I bet they can all be traced back to an ROI push that cut resources and time to make an arbitrary number somewhere. Consider that Steam has CIV V, and that Blizzard just released SC 2.
So anyways:
- They took an enormous risk on a genre that hasn't been successful in the US since 1994. (Civilization + Fantasy RPG)
- The art style is incredibly distinctive and lush.
- When RTS/Quick attention span incredibly popular (Starcraft II/Farmville, anyone?) they took a risk on a game with sessions lasting 10-15 hours.
- They built a turn-based CIV engine from scratch. (Didn't seen any licensing props in the credits...)
- When the overall market trend is towards pimping IP again and again ('oh boy, Peggle Carnival IV!!!') they invested in world creation.
- Most of the complaints seem either tech engine or balance related. (E.g. 'On my ATI 9200 when I alt-tab...' or 'Sovereigns should be able to defend at +1 vs..') These are the issues resolved without a hard release deadline. For all we know, half of these issues were spotted *last week* in the Beta.
- Robust DEV interaction since the beginning.
All this criticism is harshing my mellow. This is the core of a fine game-- and all of this reminds me of the noise around Sins of a Solar Empire at launch-- a game that became a classic after a single expansion.
So, I'm sure I missed many other positives, but feel free to share. I assure you that I had all the CTD's and 15-turn games due to wonky AI as anyone else.
Cheers,
BW
My likes: Early game! Making a custom sovereign (even if you do get less points then the prebuilt ones for some silly reason) and founding a kingdom. Then I can run around recruiting and gearing up heroes. I can imbue one to make new casters. Fighting off monsters in the wilds to reclaim the world for my kingdom.
Late game is blah due to the balance and mechanics issues and I don't tend to finish games, but the early game is just great.
Yes, I love games like this, and am getting tired of yet another sci fi first person shooter, yet another fantasy MMO, etc. The fantasy turn based 4X genre simply has gotten no love recently.
This game has great potential, I just wish they had waited until at least 2011 for release. As someone mentioned in another post, the game as it is now is in real beta mode.
I bet frogboy feels stupid now for locking all those threads of people saying the game wasn't ready. It looks like we were right. This game clearly wasn't ready, and Stardock will have loss of sales as a result. Hopefully they don't lose too much in sales to force them to give up on this game, because I see a game that has lots of potential.
The game, in my opinion, is still fun, even though its unbalanced. I don't feel like I wasted my money, as even an expensive computer game is what? two nights at a decent restaurant? An unbalanced, somewhat buggy, but still fun game like Elemental is easily worth more than two nights at a restuaunt,. esp. if you don't score afterwords with some random match.com chick
It's hardly civ + MoM, it's far more akin to the Heroes of Might and Magic series than civ.
Sins didn't need the first expansion to garner both critics' and players' praise. If it did, it wouldn't have gotten 87/100 on Metcritic, which reflects the general rating of a game upon its release.
It reflects the views of certain sites. Given most won't rate a game as lower than 7 in case it jeopardises advertising money it's pretty meaningless, which is why you see a fair few games with an 80+ metacritic score that tank, and some with a sub 50 score that sell bucketloads.
So your saying that game sites won't give a Stardock game (like Sins) a low grade because they are afraid of losing advertising money? How would you then explain that elemental hasn't exactly been well recieved by reviewers?
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