My first 10 minutes with Elemental.
Hey, anothe popup, 'you see Janus standing there'. Except I don't see Janus. I look around, nobody. I move inland, I see Janus finally, wanting to join my 'army of one', I accept, and get another popup, telling me to make a city.
OK, I decide I don't like that spot, and want to build a square away. I move again, and another popup, telling me to buy stuff in the shop. What shop? I haven't built my city yet!
I build the city, look in the shop. The only thing I can really afford is the Gnarled Club, the worst weapon in the game. I buy it. I spend 1 minute trying to figure out how to equip the club, finally I guess the correct button and do it.
There is a spider nearby, time to open a can of whoopass. I click the spider, go to the tactical battle screen. I move my guys up. The spider unleashes an AOE spell, killing me outright and leaving Janus with 2 life points. I tell Janus to attack, he misses, and the spider kills him too.
New game. I will research some spells this time. Except you can't do that in the campaign. I come across an elemental shard, I mouseover, it says 'research Shard Harvesting to harvest this resource'. Hey, that sounds really cool. Except you can't do that in the campaign. And if you find the research button and try to click it, NOTHING HAPPENS.
Honestly, this game makes me think of certain Russian developers. You know the type. They manage to get the game out the door, but there's lots of typos, it's kinda buggy, gameplay elements are not well thought out, etc. This is a Russian developer job, what we have here.
(edit) By the way, see all the 10 ratings? They are both sad, and wrong. Sad, because they are, for the most part, fanboys defending what is an indefensibly bad game, and wrong because there is no way on god's green earth that Elemental is a 10. That is not an opinion, that is a fact. The GameSpot review, if anything, is generous. (/edit)