There is a great game lurking in Elemental but, for me, they got the following things (in no particular order) badly wrong:
- AI
- Magic
- Tactical combat
- Economy
- Diplomacy
- Kingdoms/Factions (they play the same, they act the same, the AI doesn't care)
- Sovereigns (see above)
- Champions (dull all the way to uninteresting)
- Quests
- Absence of choices in world creation (e.g. % land, resource frequency, etc)
- etc
Given how little they actually got right on the detailed implementation level - not to mention the still unacceptably high level of crashing in my game, it is actually surprising that I think that the game has the potential to be great. What I am absolutely sure of is that 1.1 cannot come close to sorting all these issues out. Does this mean that I will be disappointed in 1.1 or that my bar has been set adequately low that I won't be? To be honest, I am not even sure that I will play 1.1; I fired up my old DOS PC and am having great fun playing a bunch of games from the early '90s, including MoM. Elemental is a long way from being fun and challenging; I'll watch with interest to see if it ever reaches it's potential.
