What is this game? A miserable pile of secrets.

Elemental is a fantasy 4X.  GalCiv 2 with wizards and swords.

It is currently in what most (honest) software designers and developers would call an alpha.  Not only is it a buggy mess, it's not feature complete.

Stardock has stated that pretty much every single thing about this game is slated to be changed.  Economy, Questing, Combat, Magic... everything.

The good:  They recognize their design sucks and are promising to start fixing it.

The bad:  There is no guarantee they will fix it.  They'll change everything around, but the chance of it actually being fun is anyone's guess.  After all, Brad thought that Elemental version 1.0 -- which runs like crap, crashes all the time, has no AI, and is just a mess of bad, boring design -- was the best game Stardock has ever released.  At this point, I'm not entirely confident Stardock has the talent to make this game what they said it'd be.

Do not buy this game.  Wait for the demo, or better, wait til the first expansion comes out.  It'll be re-reviewed at that point.  If the reviews say it's all clear, by all means jump in.

Right now?  Do not buy this game.

seems like there is a general feeling that Elemental might have lifted off the beta runway too soon and attempted to fly without gaining enough airspeed first? Would that be a reasonable analogy?

If you include a 20 story building at the end of the runway and large theatre type grand stands on each side, one filled with people saying "what crash" and the other comparing it with the Hindenburg to anyone who will listen...

I always use Amazon reviews as pretty accurate indicators of the general gamer's reception. It's not speaking in Elemental's favour though.

http://www.amazon.com/Elemental-War-Magic-Pc/dp/B003BIW7FO/ref=sr_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285020514&sr=8-1

oh this absolutely hits the nail on its head. but you forgot to add the part where the forum mods nuke and lock feedback threads in a matter of seconds. censorship is fun.

@ Wintersong

You are correct.  I misspoke.  What I -should- have said was that "it is a known factor according to official Stardock  polls, polls that would by nature attract the most sympathetic audience, that the majority of Elemental owners are disappointed with the state of the game.  The developers have repeatedly apologized for delivering us this mess.  However, there is still a chance that given SD's history of aggressive patching and community involvement, that Elemental will one day become a decent strategy game."

This is what I meant to say.  Next time, before you curl up into your defensive posture--the haughty pile of misinformed arrogance--please ensure that you have enough background information to support yourself.

Oh it has that same crash problem after 100 turns or so carried thru from all the galciv games? Remarkable!! But at least in Galciv you can spot the signs it is nearing a crash, save and restart the game - can you do the same in Elemental?

Fightingweasles - yea, you could go that way with the analogy.

Tridus - No co-operative multiplayer? Yea, um i saw in another thread, you got that with one of the Beta releases then it was withdrawn but is due in another patch, can anyone confirm?

Delmoroth - Your post seems like a reasonable take on things. Also i would definitely believe the game forces you to be too aggressive.... same problem for sure in Galciv, i either dominate, get bored and quit or flounder hopelessly, get bored and quit, those are your options in galciv. That is why i am so pleased to recently manage to get a fairly well balanced game of galciv as mentioned earlier - it is almost impossible to acheve!

Werewinlefr quote "There was a poll recently, which showed that half the buyers were disappointed by Elemental; and that poll was answered to by people who cared enough about the game to come to the forums"

That gives me a better idea of the support for the game - So half the buyers were not disappointed, which is encouraging. People on other big gaming forums/reviews, eeaaarrr, i don't trust the general opinions there at all, 'mainstream' in the past have often disliked games that i loved, they don't seem to follow reasonable logic as far as i can tell? Oh and i don't think there will be any threat from civ5 for a while if it is going to be imprisoned on Steam!!!

Because the largest online distributor by a factor of 10, the service that has now eclipsed retail sales, is such a restrictive sales environment?

No because where game companies have ultimate control over their software is called a 'console' and Steam exclusive is leading down the path of eventually turning all our pc's into consoles!! We should not encourage this.

And this will somehow impede the salves of Civilization?  I was responding to your statement that Elemental had nothing to fear from the impending release of Civilization.

In any case, by all means, purchase Elemental.  That increases the likelihood that SD will somehow be able to salvage something from this fiasco.  But do not purchase Elemental expecting something that is fun to play or anything resembling a 'good game.'

Took me a moment to figure out what you talking about.... but yea, i get your point now! ..... in that case i 'hope' the fact that civ5 is imprisoned on steam will impede its sales because of blah blah (what i said before).

Thanks for the warning.... but with my personality i think i can probably find this game entertaining.

I think the game is fun, it needs a lot of work.  But no where near where some of these "people" think it is.  It really needs content.

It saddens me to say this, but this game makes me think of Spore. Not in similarity of design, but of something that tries to be a lot of things at the same time, but ends up being shallow in most places... Part civilization, Part X-com, Part Heroes of might and magic.... yea

If SD comes through and adds meat on the bones, the game could rock big time. But as it is, i played it for a couple of days, then havent played it since then

I think I saw a post about that somewhere, but can't find it now. I do know it's not there right now (the custom game option doesn't give you a way to add AI players).

Last night i purchased Elemental!

Never got to play it tho because my computer began restarting itself half way thru the download (first i had to update Impulse because i haven't used that for a long while - i think my computer did not like that happening). I was scared for a moment, because my computer was restarting instantly upon windows Vista 64 bit home premium opening - even in safe mode! lucky for me windows decided to stay open long enough for me to log in a disk check - did that and it opened stable and i found that i had to update my windows Vista, (i always switch automatic updates off) once i did that, everything was fine and i completed the download but by then it was time for bed so i didn't get to play!