You don't get it? Well, it's not so hard. I personally was very disappointed by Elemental, and the reviews shows I was not alone. Even FE does not quite cut it for me, because it is not what it tried to be.
And what was it, you may ask? A true successor to Master of Magic.
While Master of Magic was not a perfect game, and parts of it, notably the AI, were outright broken, it fascinated and charmed people by its ambition, and by the vision of its creators.
What was wonderful on Master of Magic (and on Dominions, which I use as a comparison all the time, but only because I consider it something of a miracle in game design), was the incredible richness byt unit traits and types and various synergies between units and spells. You have units that are incorporeal, immune to normal weapons, but fall easily to magic. You have illusions that can kill or burn, but once hit, they dissapear. You have undeads with specific sets of resistances and vulnerabilities.
Let me give you an example from a game of Dominons 3 I played - I was controlling a race of fallen, decadent giants, and was fighting against a forest kingdom of Pans, maenads and other mythical creatures. So it was a few, incredibly powerful heroes against hordes of weak, naked, berserking chaff he could summon for free, so I fought armies thousands units strong, literally. Nevertheless, I was winning - I kitted my giants with boots of flying, I gave them various resistance auras, they ploughed through the weak hordes with ease, killing hundreds and scattering the rest.
Until one point, where my enemy has researched a single, but crucial spell - one spell out of hundreds the game offers, but for his situation, critical component. He invented a spell that turned the skin of those howling, naked madmen and madwomen into gold - thus offering each of them the resistance equivalent to a knight in a plate armor, without the encumberance. Suddenly, my giants could not plough through the hordes and scatter them - they became bogged by the numbers, tired themselves by striking foes whose golden skin deflected swords and spears alike, and fell to fatigue, and were overrun.
I had to resign the game at the moment because I completely lost the strategic momentum.
Now will you find something like that in FE? I have not played it extensively yet, but I dare say you won't. Fallen Enchantress is an accountants paradise - you add +10% here, point of defense there, the battles are more like bar brawls then epic clashes, and in the end, you will hopefully win.
True, Mr. Paxton's influence helped the game, the flavor text are rich and pleasant, making the exploration phase of the game interesting, the monsters are nice to look at, but compared to Master of Magic or Dominions, the whole system is simplistic. You won't meet a monster you could not harm because its substance is different. You won't meet monsters or races that work fundamentally differently game mechanic-wise, like in Sword of The Stars, or again, Dominions, or Fall from Heaven. There won't be a moment where your wizard emerge from a laboratory with a spell that will change the whole balance of power in the continent (bar that last spell that is predefined to autowin). For the AI, it's a blessing, because it can understand and play the game reasonably well.
For me and maybe others, it's a pity.
I am not saying that FE is a bad game, it's a fair attempt to bring another interesting fantasy TBS to the market. It's just not what certain people are looking for - and some are bit vocal in expressing their feelings.
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