Okay, compared to the mess I got when I downloaded Elemental on the 23rd, the current release is a HUGE improvement. I just sank four hours into a nice game, but there are still some things that don't have to be in such a major game.

First, there is something completely broken with the way events are handled in the game. I don't mean quests and such, I mean for instance the order in which battles, research and such are presented. Take this example. My soverign mob (couple of summons plus two eight-packs of foot grunts) attack a wandering hostile and I pick "auto resolve". While my soverign executes her swing, the "research finished" dialog pops up. I irritatedly select a breakthrough, THEN the battle results come in and THEN my spellcasting research informs me that I can pick a new spell. Finally I'm able to select the next research area. Anyone notice how garbled that is? Ideally, first the battle results should be handled in one go, then one research and then the other.

Next, I find the way spell damage is displayed and handled totally unintuitive. Looking at my spellbook, the "Fireball" spell says "Damage done to unit: 70 points". I think "Oh goody, more than enough to fry that pesky Swarm Spider with 12 HP". I cast, and what happens? 2 damage.. Out of a possible 70? I'm aware that baddies have resistances and such, but it would be VERY helpful to see how exactly spell damage is calculated (ie what "dice" are rolled for example. A "d70" would be VERY unfair, considering how much easier it is to get high damage output by simply stacking foot grunts). Then, what's up with healing spells? The basic heal spell heals 0 damage? Consistently? Could it be that there is no differentiation between "beneficial" and "harmful" spells when spell defense is considered? Meaning: "Beneficial" spells should bypass spell defense on caster and allies automatically. There is nothing more annoying than to have a lot of mana, nearly exhausted HP and you can't get back on your feet because that damn Heal does absolutely nothing.

And the last thing: Tactical battles are interesting, from a tactical point of view. But they feel boring, even compared to the ones in MoM. Why? Because the audio sucks, that's why. The music is awesome, kudos to the music team, but there are so few sound bytes. No growls for animals, no earth-shaking foot thumps when my Ice Lord ponderously strides across the field. People, even the 17-year-old MoM did that MUCH better! Hey, if you don't have the manpower or the time to add soundbytes to the units, hack something into the mod editor so that the community can fix that. I'm amazed how that could be forgotten, especially after the nice sound fx in Sins, where every unit had it's own sound set. I'm aware that Elemental has the possibility for infinite units, but looking at the creature types I've seen so far, there are enough broad categories for creature sound bytes. You'd need sounds for Movement, Attack, Acknowledgement, Hello, Death - no need to go overboard as Blizzard did in Warcraft 3. DO that for good humanoids (Kingdom), bad humanoids (Empire) and you've done the most part. Animals like Wolves or Spiders can use their own sample set, and for the other mystical creatures (of which I've only seen the summoned giants and Darklings so far) shouldn't be too hard to add as well.

I'm still flabberghasted why I should have to tell YOU, the programmers, this. If you do a "spiritual successor" to game X, check your sources and improve on them. And MoM was by no means an audiovisual powerhouse, it recycled enough sounds between it's units, but at least evey unit HAD a sound byte for every situation. There is nothing less satisfying than seeing my huge Ice Lord splatter a pack of spiders and all I get is a weak "uuargh".