RPGWatch Feature: Elemental Review

I give up. I tried so freaking hard to like this game and for awhile I did, but after completing the campaign *cough* bad tutorial *cough* and playing the sandbox game to completion a few times I have to say I'm bored. It's just boring because of all of the issues mentioned in this thread and others.

The AI sucks and is inconsistent, the spells are boring beyond belief although I did like the spells that you could cast on your cities. However, the tactical spells are all the same with a few minor differences between them. The races and factions are an interesting idea, but once again not enough diversity. I'm not even sure if there is a difference between the races. You customize each one exactly the same and it seems you can put any race leader in any faction. You can use certain land improvements only with certain factions (not sure about races), but in the end it didn't make that much of a difference. I still don't know what the death worship does for the Empire of Resoln. It says it gives a 10 HP bonus, but to who or what does it give it to. It didn't give it to my leader. Maybe it was for the cities. I have no idea and I played that faction 3 times to completion.

If what Brad says is true then I might change my mind, but for now it's just boring. Forget this game I'm going back to Solium Infernum or even Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. At least there I know they are fun games and more importantly they are finished!!!

Edit: I will give them credit for the quests. I did have fun with that (once I figured out how to advance my "questing" level), but even that is bugged. The huts won't dissappear for certain quests and I couldn't get into some demon dungeon thing. It just kept disappearing. Argghhhh, I just give up.

I actually managed to finish a whole game last night. I say "managed" because even with the last patch it is still quite buggy, especially late in the game.

It was fun but frustrating too. There are things that just don't seem to work at all, things that are just plain missing or only partly done, and other things that are fundamentally flawed.

There are some obvious (on playing) fundamental design flaws in the game *systems*. For example, the basic combat system.

On first glance it looks reasonable: attacker generates damage between 1 and their attack value, defender reduces that by 1 to their defense value, and the defender takes the difference (if any) as damage. The problem is it is not unusual to get units with attack and/or defense in the 100s *but* it is almost impossible to get units (especially heroes) with that many hit points. That means if your super duper level 20 fighter with 100 attack and 100 defense runs into something like a troll the troll can kill them with one blow or do no damage whatsoever. It's completely random! This pushes you to use almost all archery units and hope you can kill the other guys before they get into range.

There are also problems where I can see them fixing things by adding missing stuff in. For instance equipment seems only halfway done and not thought out well at all. It is almost all for melee fighters with only 2 items for archers and *nothing* for spell casters. Mounts seem an afterthought and are very oddly implemented (they let you shoot bows and cast spells more often, huh?). Plus magical equipment tech is trivial to get and vastly superior to the basic equipment tech which takes forever to develop. There is no limit on the numbers of magical things you can equip on a hero so you can (for instance) put on scores of things that let you take more actions in combat which really distorts things. As others have mentioned there is equipment that does the same thing (like cloaks/armor that add to defense) but costs vastly different amounts. And some equipment doesn't show up on some characters "able to buy" list with no explanation and the some found equipment you are told is unusable by you even when the same things is buyable and usable from the shop.

The strategic AI just seems to move its units around with no plans whatsoever and either creates cities *everywhere* (which is annoying early but kills the economy later) or sits and does absolutely nothing. The tactical AI also doesn't work well and just seems to pick one target and ignore all else while beating a path to it.

Trading stuff with other AIs just doesn't work. You add something to your side and then go add something to their side and it just removes what you had offered with no explanation. This makes the whole diplomacy tech tree mostly useless beyond the single one that lets you make caravans.

Yes, and despite all those gripes it was still fun and I started a new game with a different kind of sovereign.

After 100 hours (incl 50+ this weekend) I am going the "request refund" route.
This was my first Stardock purchase (tried GalCiv but was more a MoO guy), and I definitely will wait for a demo for any future SD games. This game is not immersive, not fun, ever turn is a resilience test to go onwards.

ATK/DEF too generic to be used for melee, ranged and magic (MoM got this right, EWoM not so much). SD dev: "I'm starting to think that squads having DEF equal to (individual unit DEF * NumberOfTroops) is a mistake." http://forums.stardock.com/392831/page/4/#2738296

There aren't any undead or flying creatures in a 4x Fantasy RPG?

MP not implemented and even when it is, you will have to connect through SD servers (no p2p).

As unpolished as this game is, it is even more imbalanced.

Good thing Age of Wonders is coming soon to steam! I need my 4x strat fix around this time of the year.

BillSeurer said:

Trading stuff with other AIs just doesn't work. You add something to your side and then go add something to their side and it just removes what you had offered with no explanation. This makes the whole diplomacy tech tree mostly useless beyond the single one that lets you make caravans.

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I thought that as well, but you have to push "ok" when you are done adding goods. Then it puts it into the pot/middle of the screen. You have to do this with the civ you are trading with as well. Then you can trade. I made that mistake a few times, but after I figured it out there were no more problems with trading.

skavenhorde said:

I thought that as well, but you have to push "ok" when you are done adding goods. Then it puts it into the pot/middle of the screen. You have to do this with the civ you are trading with as well. Then you can trade. I made that mistake a few times, but after I figured it out there were no more problems with trading.

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Gah! That different than negotiating treaties. Interface fail!

Either that or my treaty "trades" weren't being done the way I thought. Still interface fail!

wynams said:

After 100 hours (incl 50+ this weekend) I am going the "request refund" route.
This was my first Stardock purchase (tried GalCiv but was more a MoO guy), and I definitely will wait for a demo for any future SD games. This game is not immersive, not fun, ever turn is a resilience test to go onwards.

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Yet you played it for 100 hours ?!

Um.....ok

You know, if you bang your head against a wall, it feels very good (or you don't feel a thing) when you stop.

JDR13 said:

rune_74, thanks for posting those quotes.




Glad to hear that. I was seriously thinking about getting Elemental, but all the negative reactions from members here scared me away from it. I'll just wait for the revised retail version instead of buying it now and having to constantly patch it.

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+1 for me. The bad part about that is that I've got plenty of games in the queue right now and will probably add a few more over the coming months, so there's a fair chance this game will get forgotten by the time it's "ready". Shame, that.

JDR13 said:

Yet you played it for 100 hours ?!

Um…..ok

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Well, if I were on the fence about it and had the time .. why not?

Even if you get bad premonitions early and often I didn't feel confident saying this game is crap until logging several large map, 5+ opponent games. Not all of that 100 hours was active clicking. About 25% was just looking stuff up on forums that was lacking from in-game information.

Would you have preferred I said I played 5 minutes and thought it sucked?

re: the 100 hours things.

That's a drop in the bucket in the play time of games like this. I've probably logged more than a thousand hours on Civ 4 and still play it quite a bit 4 years after its release.

Yep… I only played for ~20 hours - but given the fact that most games don't last more than 20 minutes with me, it says something about the genre.

I actually really enjoyed it for the first 5-10 hours, but eventually the design flaws became impossible to ignore. Then you play a bit more to make sure, and you try the patched versions.

I have no idea what it is with most people, and why it takes them days upon days to realise this kind of thing. Maybe it's their wish for something to be what it is not, or maybe they don't have the experience. In any case, I think it's painfully clear that this game isn't going to get fixed - just like that.

wynams said:

Well, if I were on the fence about it and had the time .. why not?

Even if you get bad premonitions early and often I didn't feel confident saying this game is crap until logging several large map, 5+ opponent games. Not all of that 100 hours was active clicking. About 25% was just looking stuff up on forums that was lacking from in-game information.

Would you have preferred I said I played 5 minutes and thought it sucked?

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Moste AAA games thise days last abute 8-12 hours, so if you have played a game for 100 Hours, you got that you paied fore?

Phonix said:

Moste AAA games thise days last abute 8-12 hours, so if you have played a game for 100 Hours, you got that you paied fore?

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I don't know about you, but when I pay 50$ for a game - I don't pay for the amount of time I play it - but for the combined experience.

It might be "fun" in small doses, but if the experience is negative overall - then I don't feel the money is well spent.

Actually, I thought that would be the norm.

haha who the hell spend 100h with a game that you feel isnt overall very good. im sorry but that's probably the most moronic thing i've heard on this forum.

DArtagnan said:

I don't know about you, but when I pay 50$ for a game - I don't pay for the amount of time I play it - but for the combined experience.

It might be "fun" in small doses, but if the experience is negative overall - then I don't feel the money is well spent.

Actually, I thought that would be the norm.

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Still, then you spent so much time whit a game, there must be somthing that keep you there? I refuse to belive that one person play a game fore 100 hours, and hate every minute of it?

I can be worng, it's a crazy world!.

I'm not sure where some posters gets the idea that it won't get fixed soon(pulling info from thin air), if any company is going to work on something until it is fixed it would be stardock. I'm not sure where this bitterness comes from?

If you get 100 hours of gameplay, at 50 dollars, you are basically getting entertained for 2 bucks an hour. If you play 100 hours and get a refund because you are done playing, thats free entertainment. I think its a little bit of abuse of the system by the poster. But thats his thing not mine.

There are bugs, but the under mining system is good, with time(yes I said it) I think it will be even better. You ask where do I get that idea? Well, Galactic Civ 2 was released in a worse condition and it got way better, and gets great reviews everywhere. I'm not sure I could ask for a better company to be backing the game to be honest, at least I know they will try damn hard.

EDIT: This by no means I think the launch was great/good/ok....I think it sucked, I wish it ad gone better. But, thats over with and have to look forward.

rune_74 said:

I'm not sure where this bitterness comes from?

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A game should never been released in this condition, regardless of the company backing it. Stardock boasts about not being in financial stress, so why not take the time to get it right?

rune_74 said:

There are bugs, but the under mining system is good, with time(yes I said it) I think it will be even better. You ask where do I get that idea? Well, Galactic Civ 2 was released in a worse condition and it got way better, and gets great reviews everywhere. I'm not sure I could ask for a better company to be backing the game to be honest, at least I know they will try damn hard.

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I thought the Gal Civ 2 release was far superior to this. I'm not really bothered too much about the bugs, but more the system mechanics and implementation which require significant modifications.

I should want to play this game right off the bat, and not be thinking about how great Gal Civ 2 and Civ 4 are.

rune_74 said:

If you get 100 hours of gameplay, at 50 dollars, you are basically getting entertained for 2 bucks an hour.

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Psst! Rune, that would be 50 cents an hour. Don't worry, I won't mention it to anyone else.

LuckyCarbon said:

Psst! Rune, that would be 50 cents an hour. Don't worry, I won't mention it to anyone else.

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Yeah...you are right...totally wiped out today after some grueling physical training.

*sound of falling hammer*

Silence in the audience! So, I see the esteemed jury has come to a verdict... may I hear it? Yes.

So the jury by majority claims the accused as guilty... *hammers* By the power of the hereby gathered gamers I pronounce the sentence. Stardock is hereby sentenced to 1 year extra social labour, being to be spent in servitude of their game.

*hammers three times*

Officer, take out the accused and prepare him for the ritual of tar and feathers...