The goal of this review is to talk about the game design, no comment will be done about the graphics and the music. I tried to structure the review to make sure you can see easily the content with a glance. I'll also number them for easier reference by people who replies. The review has been made with version 1.07 which does not really matter right now because my review focus more on game design (rules) which will not change in the first few versions updates. I marked this thread as the first part of a review because there are some things that I have not review yet, and since the post is very long, it is possible that I reply to the comments of the thread in another thread where I would clarify or bring new points to the review. I tried playing a game completely before writing a review, but it seems that I am stuck ( due to the bad economic system, see below) in the game that I currently play. So I will have to stop. It also becomes very long and boring to play. I tried rapidly the campaign mode and I started rapidly a game as empire to see the differences. The points are split in categories and are grouped as pro, con, and suggestions. 1 --- Magic ---1.1 Pro1.1.1 No spell maintenance makes it easier to manage: I liked the Civ Rev idea of removing all maintenance to make it easier to manage because there are no negative income possible. Removing maintenance on spell seem to follow the same idea. At the start it might seem powerful, but most of the time you have this situation where the upkeep cost of a certain effect is too high for what it's worth (especially unit enchantments) and you end up never using them. So the new limit is to accumulate the required mana to cast the spell and don't worry about maintenance. The drawback is when player will cast powerful world enchantment spells, You will get in a situation where it will not be possible to counter the spell by cutting the source of mana. So you need some sort of counter spell or magic protection.1.2 Con1.2.1 Too few number of spells: During sovereign selection, I was wondering why they were each controling all the elements of spell book. The reason why is because each element only have 6 spells ... SIX spells!? Master of magic had 40 spells per sphere for a total exceeding 200. What is the problem, you lack of imagination? You could have copy-pasted the MOM spells and no body would have complained. By the way, MOM and "Age of Wonders" are 2 good source of spell inspirations.1.2.2 Spell spheres are chaotic and non-organized: First, I thought that there were the 4 basic elements (earth, fire, water wind) and you could either control life (good) and death(evil). But no, it's much more complex and chaotic than that. I looked at the XML files and there are other books like "enchantment", "restoration", "ruin" spell book. This completely unstructure the magic system and it create the syndrome where in the end, everybody will control the same spells. You want actually the opposite to happen, you want each player to have a different spell book with different ways to achieve what they can do.1.2.3 Spells are weak: The spells currently in the game are very weak. This is due to a global phenomena among people who design video game, roleplaying games and board games: They fear magic user. They fear that they will unbalance their game. So instead, they weaken their power or limit their powers ("You can cast fireball, but only twice a day"). There are only 2 games up to now that break these limits 1) Mage the ascension RPG: The only drawback is that spells could fail 2) Master of Magic: The only problem was that some spells were cool on paper but innefficient in the game (ex: death wish, warp node, etc) while other spell were too powerful (ex: flame strike, pestilence, etc.). So don't tell me that there is no munchkin player craving for magical power in the whole development team. I am the only one who dreams of creating meteor showers and splitting continents in half. According to the last survey, it seems so.1.2.4 Casting spell is annoying because it's hero specific: Personally, I don't like the fact that the sovereign appears as a unit in the game. I would have not even placed the heroes on the board. Now the spell casting is sovereign specific rather than beign kingdom specific. So it leads to the problem that everytime you want to cast a spell you need to select your sovereign and then go in his spell book and cast the spell. 1.2.5 Caster range problem: Spell casting beign unit specific also lead to the caster range problem. If you want for example to enchant a city, you need to move your sovereign to the destination and then cast your spell. So enchanting your whole kingdom is pretty painful to do.1.2.6 No casting time: Up to now, most spells seems to be cast in one turn. It's not really a con, but I could barely imagine spending only 1 turn on a world enchantment that is going to have a dramatic effect. In my point of view, it would require a ritual that takes much more time to cast.2 --- Economy and production ---2.1 Pro2.1.1 Adventuring tech unlock resource: Considering that the strategy of the game consist only in controlling ressources, making some technology unlock ressource on the map is a good idea, or should I say a very essential idea.2.1.2 Split building and unit production: Finally, somebody who understand, splitting unit production from building production is a very good idea. It prevent the problem where going to war paralyze your city development because you are busy building units.2.1.3 Fixed Production time: A fixed production time for everything is another good idea. I prevent ending up in a situation where a settlement with a weak production level needs 50 turns to bulid a simple buildings. Personally, I find the number of turns too long, but this is my taste.But now you have a 2 level turn wait, first you wait for the resources and second you wait for the production time. So the production time relative to the cities and resources has been transfer and abstracted by the resource accumulation system. The major difference with MOM, is that since the resource income are centralized, so strong cities can help weak cities in elemental, which is a good thing.2.2 Con2.2.1 Ressources are too important, it breaks the game: Resources are the only income in the game (except a few basic buildings that gives 1 income). Which means that if there is an area with no special resources, there is no interest to actually build there. You could consider this area dead. So it means that not all the land will be colonized. So the strategy of the game right now is really focused on controlling special ressources and nothing more.2.2.2 If you have no gold mine you are screwed: There is a serious design bug in the gold maintenance system. Gildar is the only resource that has a maintenance cost from some buildings and mostly unit wages. If you don't have access to a gold mine, you will have 0 gildar income. Now there is a building that gives you 1 point, and there are some buildings and city level upgrade that gives multipliers. But maybe I should remind you that a 100% bonus of 0 equals 0. So if you have no basic income, all bonus are useless. So you will get in a situation where you will be in a shortage of gildar all the time unless you discover a large amount of gold mines. The problem is that everything cost gildar to build and there is a maintenance cost to be paid. So compared to other resources, the expenses are in average higher than the spendings. In civ or mom games, a shortage of gold can be resolved by expanding your empire because your population is taxed and provide gold income. But in elemental, it does not. The gold disapears after being used (like in warcraft). Expanding your empire is actually bad because it means that it will require more units to defend these new cities which increase your spending in wages. SO you will only expand if the new location has a gold mine. Which rarefy the number of locations you are going to colonize.I don't know why nobody found this design bug months before while I could find it in a few hours of game play. Second, all other stuff in the game does not have maintenance cost (ex: spells, summons and most buildings), why should unit have wages? The way the economy is currently working, you must remove unit maintenance, else cities must give gold income according to it's population/size.2.2.3 Too large area of influence: Since the goal of the game is to control resources and any resources in your area of influence could be harvested, there is no interest in building a lot of settlements to cover more area. You just need a few well placed city and you will eventually be able to get all the resources you need.2.2.4 City size does not matter: In the rule book, they said that you should be scared of a player that controls a metropolis. If you think about it, is there really something to be scared about? What is the advantage of metropolis a) You can build level 5 buildings. OK, that could be interesting, but only if your tech level was high enough to unlock these level 5 buildings. b ) You have more soldiers to recruit. well considering the time it takes to train solders, your city will have the time to regenerate these people before their training is over. So if you have 100 or 500 soldiers in your cities before training them, it does not matter. Normally, city size should give more income, but right now only ressources gives income. 2.2.5 Resources block features: I got in a situation where I research magical equiments that I could give to my soldiers. I thought that could be very cool until I realised that I needed a ressource called crystals which I did not have and that I still don't have. So I end in a situation where I cannot actually benefit from the tech upgrade.2.2.6 The food system works weird: From what I understand, special resources give food, which allows constructing hut which increase my max pop to be able to change city level. But city level upgrade also increase the max pop. Why not simply have a system where the surrounding of a city determine the maximum population of the city according the the amount of food. Remove the hut building system, since building huts is not fun.2.2.7 Too many resource to keep track of: I find it annoying to be able to keep track of gildars, material, metal, food, crystal, etc. And that each building or unit will require 2 or 3 resources to build. So you constantly need to check your various ressource and it becomes harder to calculate planning ahead.2.3 Suggestions2.3.1 No resource dependencies: I strongly suggest that you should remove ressources as the only source of income. Most of the problems are related to this system. I would say that each city gains ressources: gold, material, etc, according to it's size (ex: more people = more gold ) and to the ressources around. For example, if there are more forest around a city when the city get's bigger, the material income will raise. Buildings could also modify these income in %. It won't be a problem since the cities have a basic income value. You will never get a +150% of 0.Special resource could either give bonus to resource income like in MOM (gold mine increase gold income, Game increase food income, etc), or unlock access to some new stuff (equipment or building requires resource X to use). But this is more dangerous to the game balance. You must make sure that a player can win even if he does not have access to most of these special resources. You also have the situation where "what will happen if you lose access to the resource".3 --- Research ---3.2 Con3.2.1 Asymmetric research system makes technology essential and magic useless: According to how the ressource and the gui system works, you might think that technology research is as important than arcane research and that each of them offers a different path to success. In reality it's not true. You could probably win the game by not researching a single spell, but you will never win the game by not researching a single technolgy.The reason why is because first, there is a magic field of research in the technology research system. So if you want to improve your magic, you need to do tech research. All upgrades in the magic tech tree should have been transferred in arcane research. Second, the spells are so weak that their effect does not compensate for the lack of technology a player could have if he researched little technology. So tech research becomes essential to survive and magic becomes and optional bonus.In a game that is supposed to promote a strong magic, that is unacceptable. In my point of view, there should be fair duels between magic focused and tech focused players.3.2.2 Weak technology: Like spells, the technology are pretty weak, Still they are much more useful than spells. Intead of saying weak, I should rather say, uninteresting. Most of the time, selecting a new tech was actually painful because none of the tech seems important enough to be worth developing. So most of the time, I pick something randomly or select the weakest level.Up to know, I think Master of Orion 2 is the only 4x game that have very interesting technologies that you would do anything to put your hands on it before other players.3.2.3 Tech and building tree seems to be the same for Kingdoms and empires: Apparently, Kingdom and empires have a different set of buildings and tech tree. The tech tree seems to be the same and the buildings are different. But if you look closely at the buildings, they perform the same effects but have only different names. Personally, I do not consider that very different since both faction type will have exactly the same game style. I found it even more confusing because you have to relearn all your building names when you change factions.3.3 Suggestions3.3.1 Game speed should only affect research: I could not exactly test how the game speed influenced the game. My suggestion is that it should only influence the technology/spell research speed. Which means that you have more time to expand your empire and wage war before the next technology comes in if you play at a slower pace. Else, if you also slow down production time, you are simply making the game more painful.4 --- GUI ---4.1 Pro4.1.1 The cloth map is a good idea: The cloth map is a very good idea. I am currenly playing only with the cloth map. I find it easier to identify the terrain with the cloth map considering that I am partially color blind. If the full graphic mode, everything looks the same. The only things I would suggest is having more colors, or having a mode like in Master of magic where the cloth map appears as colored tiles instead of 2 colors outlines.4.2 Con4.2.1 Too few feedback messages: Sometimes, things happend and I actually have no feedback. For example, if I quick save my game with the short cut button, there should be a small message at the bottom of the screen that tells me that the game have been saved. If I press next turn, have a message indicating that the next turn is in progress. 4.2.2 There is no way to scroll the screen with the keyboard: When I configured my controller, I was expecting that the arrow would scroll the map. Now the only way to scroll the map is to drag the map or move the mouse to the edge of the screen. 4.2.3 Beaches cannot be seen on the cloth map: It is very had to see the beaches (spot where you can build harbors) on the cloth map. By the way, there are so few beaches on the map (random generation). Personally, I would expect the map generator to generate more beaches than cliff. Cliff should be an optional natural defense where you cannot land on.4.2.4 Resource icons are hard to recognise: Some resources icons are very small and hard to recognise. For example, Metal and Material are for me virtually the same things. 4.3 Suggestions4.3.1 There should be a few more keyboard short cut and more use of the mouse right click: For example, it would be interesting that right click of the mouse does the same thing as pressing ESC in the detail dialog. It would be interesting to shortcut Y and N, for yes/no dialog and OK dialog questions (y=ok). It would make mapping an efficient controler much more easily. Right now, I am using a combination of mouse + controller. I map the important short cut on the controller and use it with 1 hand.5 --- Wilderness and quest ---5.1 Pro5.1.1 Wilderness become stronger with time: This is a very good ideas. It makes expansion harder with time and makes the left over pieces of land harder to colonize. It also level the difficulty of the game with the player's strength. It's always annoying in MOM to start besides a node that contains sky drakes.5.2 Con5.2.1 Goodie huts are boring: I repeat it again, looting the map by capturing godie hut is completely boring and non strategic. They should almost be completely removed. See my suggestion below.5.2.2 Monster spawn out of no where: I had this situation where there was a party in the wildernes adjacent to a group of 6 spiders. I killed the spiders, then on the next turn, another group of 6 spiders appeared. First, I thought that they retreated from the previous battle. So I killed them again and verified that every spider was dead and yes, they were dead. 2 turns later, I get attacked by another group of 6 spiders. WTF!I know that monsters should spawn in the wilderness, but first, don't spawns 6 spiders out of nowhere. Spawn them 1 at a time and when there is a group large enough, they will move and attack. Second, don't allow units to move and attack the turn they were spawned. I had this situation where my pioneer got attacked out of nowhere because creatures appeared, moved and attack (6 spiders again).5.2.3 Quest are boring: Quest seems to follow this structure: A) Find the princess in the castle, B ) Sorry, the princess in in another castle, C) sorry, the princess is in another castle, D) Here is the princess. I don't know for you, but I do not find it interesting to run the marathon around the world.Second, the character's stats seems to have no influence on the quest. I thought that quest would have been the place where you would have more role playing elements and where characters and heroes could take advantage of they stats and equipment. But no, it's only a marathon race. See my suggestion below.5.3 Suggestions5.3.1 Making the wilderness more interesting by fusionning the Goddie hut, Monster spawn and quest: You could use a system similar to master of magic. There should be in the wilderness abandoned buildings or monster lairs that offer the following features a) wilderness monsters spawn from these locations, B ) they are a source of quest since characters can visit them to achieve stuff, C) they are goodiee hut because they give rewards.You could also make sure that it must be explored more than once to be completely erased from the map. It depends on how deep the characters are courageous enough to explore them. Superficial exploration works like a goddie hut and have little danger, but the deeper you go in the lair, the more dangerous are the creature and the better are the reward. Also, to follow the concept that the wilderness get stronger, as civilization expand, these lairs increase in power and gets harder to destroy. I would suggest that these lair can only be explored by character units, no soldiers. It makes the heroes more useful.6 --- other ---6.2 Con6.2.1 Combat looks like a backyard fight: Sorry but combat looks like if I invited my family and my neighborgs to make a foam weapon fight in my backyard. It does not look like a warfare since there is only a few soldiers. Lord of the rings movies are a good example of good epic warfares that includes hundred thousands of soldiers. First, all units should be composed of a group of 12 miniatures to give the feeling of warfare, second, the tactical map should cover much more terrain to give an epic feel. It's a bit hard to make because cities spans across multiple squares, and battle only occurs into 1 square. Maybe engaging in battle consist in selecting a 5x5 square area where war is going to be waged.I have seen the civ 5 system with 1 unit per square(hex) and it seemed very interesting. It removed the need of tactical map by making the world map part of the tactical map. I have seen this also in Romance of the 3 kingdom XI. It could be a good solution since your cities expand on more than 1 square.6.2.2 The Start up is very slow: Starting the game is very long because you have nothing, no income, no research, etc. So it takes a lot of turns, before being able to do interesting stuff. I think with an economic system not entirely focused on ressources could solve the problem because as soon as you build a city, you will get some income in gold and research. Else give a minimum basic income so that you could do meaningless stuff at the beginning of the game.6.2.3 The pacing is very slow: I set up my game at normal speed and the game play is so slow. At the beginning, it's not so bad because you only have 1 city to manage, but right now I have 3 cities and it's horribly long to make a turn. I can't imagine playing multiplayer and I consider that my game on a tiny map with 2 opponents will take more than 25 hours to complete.6.2.4 Dominant strategy in building construction: I would say that right now there is little strategy in Elemental and that for example, there is no strategy in selecting which building you are going to choose. Because all buildings are useful and there is no limit on the amount you can build. So there are not any good reason for not building them all. Which is going to lead to a dominant strategy where players will determine the optimal order to build the buildings and always do the same thing for every new city. It also means that an AI could to the city building job instead, why make the player work on city construction when there are absolutely no decisions to take.6.2.5 Armor level must be split between various parts: This is a common tabletop PRG design flaw. Units have a attack and defense value that you want in the same proportions to make it easy to identify. For example: attack and defense range from 1-20. So first you design your weapons, each unit can have a weapons, each weapon have a rating from 1 to 20. Everything is good so far. Now you want to design defensive gear, but you have: the armor, the helmet, the leggings, the boots, the gloves and the shields. Now you cannot range these from 1-20, because you are going to end up with a defense ranging from 6-120. You want from 1 to 20. So you need to split the 20 point in various smaller range which is generally very hard if you do not use decimal values. My suggestion is that like the weapons, you should have only 1 defense equipment. For example: Chainmail give a defense value of 10. The player will decide which piece will be placed on the unit without affecting their combat rating. So a unit that has the chainmail shirt and hood will have as much defense as the unit that only have the chain gloves. In other words, the armor parts should only be used for cosmetic purpose.This has the benefit of simplifying many things. First, you are going to be able to place on the unit card that the unit has weapon X and defense Y. You won't have a huge list of items that can be bought, you will not have a huge list of items unlocked every time you upgrade your technology.For the shields, I suggest that using shields+weapon or 2 weapons/2 handed weapons, should make the difference between having a higher defense value than attack or an higher attack value than defense. In other words, the shield/free-hand system should give a bonus either to attack or defense to change the balance of the unit (offensive or defensive).6.2.6 Character equipment is annoying and expensive: Customizing the look of your character at the beginning of the game is cool and interesting, but customizing it thought out the game is annoying especially if you need to repeat the process for every hero in your kingdoms. It fits well for a game like ogre battle because there is no city management, but for a civ like game, it's too much.I think the most you should have is again like in master of magic, give special magic items to characters but don't manage basic equipment. Or even make the heroes auto equip themselves with the latest technology. I also just find it stupid that giving a horse and a new axe to a character is more expensive than building a whole squad of 4 axe mens.--- Things not reviewed here for various reasons ---DiplomacyShards HarvestingTactical combat--- Conclusion ---In general, I consider that there is no game in elemental. Yes the game is playable and it can be finished, but what you play is actually a prototype to test if the engine of the game works and to make sure the engine support all the features needed. But if you take out all the engine and try to play the game on pen and paper, it would simply not work. They made a container without content ... well there is content for the story, quest, tiles, etc, but there is little content in the rules.Which means that believe it or not, Master of Magic is still the Number 1 fantasy 4X strategy game, undefeated after 16 years of rule. Long live MOM.Now, that does not means that there is no hope for Elemental. It's just a very bad start. Also, the reviews you are reading are a way to point out the problems to make the game design evolve in the right direction. I would not have taken 4 hours to write a non-constructive review.I would have to look closer at the modding options to see what could actually be changed in the game. By modding, I am not talking about map, tiles or quest design. For me, I find it useless to design since most of them could be generated by a computer. By modding, I mean changing the rules of the game and how it works.Considering that some basic structure are different than Civilization (for example, there is spell support) it might be easier to create a MOM like game out of it rather than with the civ engine (Which lead to a game like "fall from heaven" which was not very good).I hope you enjoyed reading the review. Feel free to comment. Use the reference number if it can make you replies easier to follow.Thank you for reading, and I hope everything is clear enough to understand my point of view. Now excuse me, I have to eat.Larienna
Dear Larienna,
a very nice and well written review imho. Right on the spot in most regards. I agree that MoM still beats Elemental in its current state. Can we get MoM with the Elemental graphics engine?
Just a few remarks regarding the city buildings. Depending on the surounding of a city it is indeed possible that you do not have the space to build every building. Also, as you pointed out, a percentual bonus to e.g. food does not help if the city has no food-resource tile. But, most if not all those buildings have an upkeep in food and/or gold (like huts). If you try to get every city to rank 5 and build every building you will certainly run into problems unless every city has a mine and a farm at least.
I specialise my cities and only build e.g. an irrigation in a city with a meaningful food production etc. This way one level 5 food city can upkeep 2 or more other cities of bigger size without food supply of their own.
To increase my zone of control I create "outpost" (e.g. level 1 cities with only merchant, workshop etc) and leave it at that. Zone of control means forces of other soveraign cannot pass without non-aggression treaty and no monsters will spawn (unless triggered by a quest location).
Imho the city building and management part of Elemental is still the best part of the game right now. However I agree on the huts and would rather see the city growth similar to what it was in MoM.
And now, where is my "Call the Void"-spell anway?
Who are you, and why should we give a hoot about your review?
Sorry, but I am getting sick of these player reviews, just as I am sick of the "I didn't pay for beta" whining topics.
Can't people just stop making new topics for their reviews, and post them all in one Player Review topic? Like they did in this one?
I could not agree less. Larienna's post is very well done, and most of his/her points are valid. Also, the topic that you linked is for "professional reviews".
Even if you do not agree with someone's opinion, there is no need to be rude. Especially if it is obvious that the person spent a lot of time and effort.
I agree with most of this, you hit the nail on the head with the backyard fight analogy. I disagree with each unit being composed of 12 miniatures, though. I think Elemental should give you the best of both worlds - your soldiers should be unique individuals to give you the intimate Role-playing feel, but at the same time you should be able to have a LOT of them to form large armies.
I also dislike what Civilization 5 is doing. If Civ 5 is abstracting that each square represents hundreds of miles of land, it makes absolutely no sense that you could block the entire section with a single "unit". In all of the preview videos I've seen, it is utterly ridiculous that you can march an army of, say, 10 units and span it vertically across the entire world map. Sure, it may make combat more "fun", but loses complete credibility when you are trying simulate a world the size of Earth, for example.
People can hate on the "stack of doom" all they want, but it's far more realistic from a geographical standpoint. Ideally, the best scenario would have been if Civ 5 had kept the stack system and implemented tactical battles on their own separate map. Personally, I like combat taking place on a separate tactical map far more than the overworld. It makes each confrontation far more special.
"2.2.1 Ressources are too important, it breaks the game: Resources are the only income in the game (except a few basic buildings that gives 1 income). Which means that if there is an area with no special resources, there is no interest to actually build there. You could consider this area dead. So it means that not all the land will be colonized. So the strategy of the game right now is really focused on controlling special ressources and nothing more."
I like this system, because it allows their to be wastes between cities and nations. It creates a place to explore, producing mystery and intrigue. This is how elemental is supposed to feel and I think it is very well designed.
"2.2.2 If you have no gold mine you are screwed"
This one is solved by attacking creatures which gives you cash. Essentially when you start you need to scout for gold. If you find none you should use the resources you do have to either tech up to palace and other civic economy techs, or start killing for money. It is one of the best strategic aspects of the game.
"2.2.4 City size does not matter: In the rule book, they said that you should be scared of a player that controls a metropolis. If you think about it, is there really something to be scared about?"
Yes. Larger cities train units 50% faster than small ones. Influence is decided by population, which means a larger city has economic, technological, and magical power. I agree that there should be more advantages though. It should also be harder to get.
Just as a quick comment, I disagree with as many points as I agree with. Having your sovereign not actually be a unit, for example? My understanding of this game was to be a TBS/RPG(ish) hybrid. This seems counter to one of the core game designs. Too large an area of influence? Many people dislike having tens of identical cities. Hopefully the devs will take this as just one person's opinion, albeit a thoughtful and well written one.
Nice review. Disclaimer: I only mention things I have something to say about. If I don't mention something, it's because there's no reason to talk about a bug or something I agree upon.
Point 1.2.3 (Spells are weak): They fear them because they can very easily unbalance the game and invalidate other units. While it may be cool to be a god-among-men, it doesn't make it fun or present any interesting choices. If a magic user can duplicate the function of any other unit and do it better, there is simply no reason at all to have any other unit type. If a mage can nuke a stack in one move, erase cites in one turn, it changes the game.
More so in a strategy game which rides on the idea that decisions count, if a single action can completely erase the last 100 turns... that's not fun (at least, not in this context). Strategy gamers (at least in the 4X style) all want actions to mean something as well as build an empire. That the plan they created 200 turns ago finally works out. Being able to derail that on a whim does not work.
Now this isn't to say that it's -bad-. A game based around god-like powers, that sort of thing could work. Elemental as is though doesn't really support that. If this were pre-Cataclysm Elemental and you played Titans, sure, why not? But the emphasize would change from building cities and creating an empire to, functionally, a squad-based wargame with little importance on the world and just on a handful of quick fights.
And regardless of whether you like it or if it'd be fun, the fact of the matter is, Elemental is not that game. It's not designed to be that game no matter how much fun that game would be. Elemental is designed for a different type of fun from that. By nature, 4X games are designed to be somewhat complex systems; it's part of the appeal. It's why 4X gamers and RTS gamers tend to emphasize different things in their games even though both are more or less the same general 'thing' (build something, get powerful, win). It's why city building games (Settlers, Tropico) emphasize different things than 4X games.
Most 4X players would, frankly, balk at a single unit rushing into their lands and taking one or two turns to cast a single spell that destroys their empire.
Now whether 4X games could have better UIs and user experiences, sure, absolutely. There's a reason 4X games are a niche genre. That's a different issue in that while they may both agree that something doesn't work, the answer to it will be very different. Games are an art with many different tastes, not a science where there is one paste sauce for everyone.
1.2.4 (Sovereign as a unit): As with the above, the Sovereign and hero units are a part of the Elemental design. It's one of the core design points of the game. I accept that you don't like them and that doesn't make it appeal to you, but let's not confuse taste with actual poor design.
2.2.1 (Resources are too important): To a certain extent, yes. I don't think the issue is that resources are necessarily too important but that there's little reason to explore terrain with no resources. It's the same problem that sandbox games have - sure, you have these great massive worlds but if there's nothing interesting (whether or not it has game play value), it may as well not be there.
The reason why is because first, there is a magic field of research in the technology research system. So if you want to improve your magic, you need to do tech research. All upgrades in the magic tech tree should have been transferred in arcane research. :: That'd be an interesting change.
In the end, all valid statements. However, we need to take into consideration the difference between "It's X and that's just not how I like my games" and "It's X as a result of poor game design" and even "It's X but it's X to avoid being Y (which may or may not be bad just not appropiate)". Surprisingly, those aren't usually the same thing. You sound like you want very specific things your games - that's great! But just recognize that what you want is not the only right way of doing things. Recognize that just because you didn't find a part of it fun or good does not mean that the game itself (whatever game it may be) is itself bad. I may not have liked Bayonetta but I recognize the value that people who do enjoy beat 'em up games find in it.
If you're particularly passionate about the game system, why not make a mod for Elemental? Certainly it sounds like you have a strong vision of what to do, and I'm sure people will enjoy it along side the main game.
I couldn't agree more, but I guess some people think their opinion warrants its own redundant thread.
I enjoy reading well thought out reviews - critical or uncritical.
Then don't read it, don't comment, and keep on denying reality and pretending Elemental is an amazing game right now.
My point was having people post their reviews in ONE topic. This section of the forum is supposed to be about the game, not a F'ing review forum! There is a new one every day!
If I don't respond to a specific section it means I agree with it, more or less. Well, there's plenty in your review to complain about.
--- Conclusion ---In general, I consider that there is no game in elemental. Yes the game is playable and it can be finished, but what you play is actually a prototype to test if the engine of the game works and to make sure the engine support all the features needed. But if you take out all the engine and try to play the game on pen and paper, it would simply not work. They made a container without content ... well there is content for the story, quest, tiles, etc, but there is little content in the rules.
I mentioned this in my review as well... basically the units, creatures, armor, weapons, spells, champions, etc., provide very few strategic options and lack gameplay balance. I've recently created a new topic with advice for adding gameplay depth:
https://forums.elementalgame.com/396195
Hope the link inspires ideas for Stardock.
I can't say I agree with all your points, but this is a well thought out review. Good work Sadly I agree with your conclusion, MoM is still the champion of fun in the fantasy 4X category. However, I'm convinced Stardock realize that and have a good picture of what need to evolve in the game to become deeper, more challenging and fun.
(...)
I don't know why nobody found this design bug months before while I could find it in a few hours of game play.
When I commented along those lines in the beta, Frogboy said something like "Starcraft is bad because you have to work to earn stuff" and mocked my comment, which was that your starting city had zero gold and you had to wait until you could get a gold-income-generating building before you could do anything. This simple comment was met with mockery and sarcasm by the dev team. Considering how feedback, and suggestions, were treated with scorn, I didn't go any farther commenting the flaws. So, this design flaw was found but the devs just decided to mock and ignore those who made criticisms.
+1. This certainly won't change, though, as Frogboy said that he wanted people to care about growing their cities. Even though I don't care but just click one hut in diagonal in order to maximise the reach of my city for when my troops must cross it.
Of course you can. Just summon a fire giant, you've won the game.
+1. This is SO true. Right now you have to say 'research Trade or the equivalent Empire tech' instead of 'research Trade', too. If the trees were different and gave different effects...
Find 2 sand giant clickies from quest huts and go clean house.
I haven't tried but maybe you can even save/reload until you get those...
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
