Been playing around with the Beta, and I have to admit that I'm a bit disappointed.
Elemental has a fantastic concept, but it just seems to fall way behind when compared to other games in the Genre.
1) The tech-trees
Nice concept, but there's only what? 20 Warfare, 15 Civic, 8 Adventure and Magic and 5 Diplomatic techs, bringing this in at less than 70 techs across the whole gamut? Isn't that a bit few? I was hoping for massive tech-trees a la Civilization or the school of spells with Dominions. I want to be forced to specialize, instead I get the feeling that everyone will research the same ten techs in the initial rounds.
2) Magic spells
Where exactly is the difference between fire, air, ice, earth and water magic? Ice looks like fire in blue. I'm a bit underwhelmed with the whole magic system - it seems rushed and unfinished and the spells are not very interesting. I think Age of Wonders did a better job in giving the spell-classes more individuality.
3) Tactical Combat
Ugh. Maybe I'm missing something, but there's three things very, very wrong with the combat system. First, it favours the attacker in a ridiculous, gamebreaking way by letting him move first, which means a spellcaster wipes out half of the defending army. Or your archers do, in case spellcasting in combat gets (hopefully) fixed. Why can't individual units attack by their combat speed/initiative, a la HOMM? Secondly, spellcasting in tactical combat is just wrong. A first level caster with a level 2 attack spell can cast three times a round. Even at Int 10, this averages to 15 damage (up to 30) per round, unavoidable, and before the defender gets to act. This means you can instakill a level 5 sovereign who did nothing but spec for Constitution and survivability, without giving him the chance to retaliate. I think a much, much better solution would be to only allow one casting action per round. And finally - kiting! It can't be that I can just stand around and happily one-shot enemies that come close without ever being in any danger. Units deal way too much damage and have way too little hitpoints - changing damage and hitpoints might make combat more interesting.
4) Customization of Sovereign and Units
The Sovereign customization is really nice, though I wish that race would do something. Like giving allegiance bonus or dislikes, or other benefits/disadvantages. Again, I'm underwhelmed with the units though. I can only grant them more hitpoints by putting a magical backpack on them? Really? Let alone that a damage-soaking unit is not necessary unless fighting against enemy spellcasters (who'd never target them anyway). I would love if I could slap special abilities on units and have some proper interesting ones like in MoM or AoW.
I'm not even going into quests, goodie huts etc which absolutely lack in randomization.
So, overall - I pre-ordered Elemental, but what I'm seeing in the Beta leaves me disappointed as in a "Yeah, this is nice, yeah, I'll play two or three games, oh, Civ V is coming out and has real depth"-way - which, as the self-proclaimed spiritual child of Masters of Magic is a real real shame, because I should be all over this game drooling from here to the next Water Node.
Seriously though, just make tactical combat more interesting/less broken and I'll be a lot happier. I can't see that happen until the 24th though, or whenever you guys print your gold discs.
By the way, please feel free to show me the error of my ways and point out what exactly I'm missing.
