And excellent game with massive potential, but its not finished, not quite yet.
Elemental has made that claim and, well, the end result is a mixed bag. When I first booted up the game I giggled in anticipation...well almost. The first thing that struck me was the lack of a tutorial. Sure, there were tutorial pop ups in the main campaign, but they dont explain everything and sometimes you are just left to your own devices without know how to progress...that was really my first niggle.
The graphics for this game are charming, clear and have their own style. Sure, they arent cutting edge, but that doesnt make the game any less fun to play. However, for graphics of this quality to cause a slow down on my machine is an unforgivable slip in coding, one that I hope is addressed in future patches. Its quite possible that there is a memory leak in the engine somewhere. Mostly, its not really noticeable, but as you get further into the game, the slow downs become more frequent, even leading to crashes.
There have been some complaints about the AI in the game being too easy...this isnt something that I have encountered. For the most part, the AI is extremely aggressive. Often several of the computer players have been beaten before you meet one of them yourself. So there is no problem with the AI that I have seen.
I suppose one of the big attractions of this game is the ability to mod it. You can mod almost every aspect of the game as it is all written in XML, so nearly every stat or attribute can be altered or changed in some way, shape or form. You can create your own factions, your own custom buildings that can be placed as city improvements or items you can find across the world map.
One of the complaints leveled at the game is its small maps, well, with a bit of modding even this can be changed. Saddly at the moment, anything really over 20x20 can be a little unstable mapwise...so be warned.
In short, this game is good, has such massive potential, but, its not finished. Its not great secret that the game was rushed out before it was finished because of how shelf space reservation works leading up to christmas. So it was either release it early in August, or some time in Feb next year. Well, the chose August, despite people asking for it to be delayed.
In the end that isnt our decision to make. One things is certain though...given Stardocks great record at making patches for their games, we can be assured that in no time flat, Elemental will become a great game. More and more will be added, stability will be increased and maybe, just maybe, this will be a worthy successor to Masters of Magic...maybe.