A Critical Game Diary: Part 1

Mostly I have enjoyed elemental so far. I love the art, concept and feeling of being in the game. However I still believe there are some simple and some fundamental problems with the game.

With this in mind I have written the following game diary. This includes insights from the few games I have played so far (none of which have reached the end game – in fact, i've only ever conquered one city), but also things i'm learning from this time round and things that I remember from my first experiences this time last week.

First my sovereign. I decide to focus on magic and mental attributes. I really enjoy playing with the character creator, but creating this character there were a few things that bothered me.

I put a few points into int and wisdom since i'm told that these attributes are important to spellcasting, I also put a few into char and then suddenly....

Woah! I'm out of points! This is fine until I realise that these points aren't just for attributes, they're for everything! I cannot imagine how it could ever be possible to remotely balance stat increases versus traits versus equipment, versus traits and weaknesses. I am almost certain this is open to massive abuse though I do not have the patience to figure it out. I come from a D&D background and work on the basis that 10 is average intelligence, 12 is bright enough to go to college nowadays, 14 is very intelligent, 16 is mensa level and 18 is frogboy. So I am surprised to find that I cannot get two 14s and a couple of 12s without sacrificing almost everything else. As I later play the game I come to feel that my starting attributes are actually quite insignificant compared to the rate that I change them. Personally I can only see how this will end up making all characters into opportunistic jack-of-all-trades, rather than following a particular starting path. But i'm getting ahead of myself.

Eventually I choose the stats shown. I take merchant background because I figure that money is always useful and there's nothing else there that fits my saruman-type vision. I take meditative and cruel because I feel that it suits my style and because I assume that focusing on neither stats or traits will give me a balanced mix (this is based on nothing other than hedging my bets).

The next thing that bothers me is the spellbooks. I assumed that four of the five would be quite a lot and so was massively surprised to discover on later playthroughs that all the default sovs have all the starting spellbooks. I can see the argument: it's too big a risk to let the AI end up with a shard they can barely use. But if it's too big a risk for an AI though, why is it acceptable for a player? If it works out in my favour it's either because i'm lucky or because I regenned enough maps to make myself so. Is either worth rewarding? I shrug and move on without the earth book.

I proceed to the equipment screen. I experiment with the robes and notice that every time I select one with a hood it deletes my hair, which is a little annoying.

I figure i'm not a fighter: I don't want much, but a staff would be cool, and would make my unit card look better. Then I realise that even a basic wooden staff costs 8 points, which is equivalent to 3 attribute points. I decide it's not worth it for something I intend not to use and will probably discard before I do.

Overall i'm quite happy with Cyrus, but I'm glad I spotted some huge pitfalls before I made them (hindsight helped here massively).

Generally I enjoy character creation, but some of the principles just seem messed up. It's ridiculous paying for everything with the same points pool. IMHO the number of points for attributes should be set for every character and separate from the points used for history, traits and weaknesses (there also needs to be enough points to allow me to make a character with some strong and weak stats, without making me miss out on other things). I'm not sure why anyone would ever waste char points on equipment. Either don't bother or give everyone a separate pool of gildar to spend (and if they don't want to, add it to their starting gildar).

But the big one is the spellbooks as I said before. Either make small selections viable (and put your money where your mouth is by doing this with AI sovs), or force all of them on everyone. Personally I prefer the latter as I don't want my Ais nerfed pointlessly, nor do I like rerolling when I find out after 50 turns that the nearest two shards are for other spellbooks. If you really want to give players choice, then allow them to buy extra (non-elemental) spellbooks with their gildar.

That's the end of my character creation post, next one tomorrow!