Neoseeker’s Elemental: War of Magic Review

Dang...I certainly didn't expect a review like that after last week! Joy += 2

I don't know what the guy smoked to write this.

I give Elemental 6/10 now.

 

I am glad that EWOM got a good review - it deserves it.   The best game to hit the PC for many years.

A bit unexpected but nice! A boost of positivity doesn't hurt.

More fuel to the engine

 Look I know the game needs work but I am on a Vista 32b system\W GTX480  and have had very little problems, sound problems with combat after playing for 2hrs, and also 1 crash after playing for 4hr+, and once  or twice lock up during battle and Auto combat was the only way out, but I still love this game!!!!

EWOM is a brilliant game with a few serious bugs that should be fixed within a few weeks if not sooner.  This review gives me hope that EWOM's release will not hurt Stardock as a company.

What the hell? Off the top of my head: starcraft 2, mass effect 2, dragon age, dawn of war 2 + expansion, resident evil 5, company of heroes, half life 2, portal, tropico 3, torchlight, fallout 3, GTA 4, left 4 dead 2, borderlands, hell even alpha protocol have all proven to be more enjoyable experiences than what Elemental has has to offer so far.

 

Hm, either Brad has some useful contacts in the reviewing industry or this guy has really been smoking ...  

Accessible? So that's the reason for the urgent tutorial being added ...

No Tactical Battles are not "great fun" yet. "Cleverness will get you everywhere, here."   (see the numerous threads on first strike etc).

 

What is more annoying although understandable is that I happened to notice that at least another offical review was blasted from the forum recently. That one was like 3 out of 10 and, unfortunately, not polite at all. 

Well, the game will get much better ... 

We cannot recruit mages as units! He hasn't played the game!! (sorry, but I had to say that! )

No comments on Dynasty, wonder why. Congrats anyway, Stardock.

This review, again, leaves me confused.  Are all of us playing the same game?

 

I see bug reports about crashes (I have 2 current BIG crashes going on: Out of Memory; and another that randomly just "has stopped responding" the game) yet any mention of the crashes in the forums has people screaming that THEY don't have crashes, so to shut up.

 

I see complaints about slowdowns (after about an hour or two of playing my framerate in game drops so far that when I click the "big" box on the right hand side to expand and see the "little" boxes about what city improvements are built I can probably hand-draw the lil' boxes and their contents by the time they appear, and autocalcing battles means I sit there and watch my Sovereign  step up to the baddies, slowly swing, then sit there for 15 seconds or so while waiting for the autocalc box to pop up and I know if I won or lost ... yet, others are shouting the game runs perfectly smooth and complaints of slowdowns are false/wrong/whathaveyou.

 

I see complaints that the AI is too docile, even at higher difficulty, and makes silly decisions (I'm currently playing on Challenging, small map to try and force the AI to fight, and it just stands around (literally the Sovereign was standing next to his town, which I just took, with an army that could potentially beat me and did not attack .. so I LEFT, and left the town empty, and he stood there and did nothing for many turns before I killed him and defeated his faction) , or it just walks in circles in strategic map, and in combat it chases 1 unit of mine, leading to easy-kite-victories) ... yet ... posts about AI problems get shouted down ... or worse, people claim the AI is "too hard."

 

I see posts about maps being devoid of resources, and others about there being so many its too crowded (I have had both experiences in different patch versions).

 

Now I see reviews that are negative, listing some aspects of the game erroneously, and using concept screenshots that aren't actually from the game being reviewed - but pointing out some actual negative points I have experienced.  Also, I see a wonderfully positive review ... which seems to use proper screenshots, but still mentions things in a way that makes me think "what the heck was this person playing ... no bugs? .. good balance? .. etc?"

 

 

... are ALL the reviews of EWoM randomly generated?  ... are they all fabricated? ... is there some weird, "Liberal-vs-Conservative" style fight going on, where each side has their own stash of "facts" and never the two shall meet?

 

Did half of us get one copy of the game with bugs and weird features not working, and the other half got the "fun" copy? ... is this all an elaborate social experiment?  You give some of us a placebo copy of the game, and others get the working one? LOL

 

 

I'd go back to playing, but my current game (the fourth one to fall apart on me) has slowed down so much it takes too long for me to finish a turn ... and it just crashed badly ... so I figured I'd pop in here to look around, and I leave here confused every time.

I have no major issues with the game at all.  I get a slow down as the game goes on...im at turn 200 right now, but other than that its a blast.  I would give it a 9/10 as well, but like I have stated, I dont have the crashes others do, so why would I hold that against them.  My gripes are small things...like caravans destroying my improvements when I go to war with their owners lol.  Sneaky merchants!!  You guys deserve the praise and everyone should know by now...this is Stardock...they wont leave us hanging!!

 

ACTUALLY .. just noticed .. that review is from Wednesday, September 1st.

 

So ... maybe I don't agree with it because its from the FUTURE ... two days in my future actually ... there is nowhere on the Earth currently that can be Wednesday the 1st of September (New Zealand being the first timezone, and it is still Tuesday the 31st there, morning).

 

Obviously the reviewer was playing a FUTURE patch of the game ... with much of the issues fixed.  HURRAY!!!  Everything will be 9/10 in two days!

Crashes are system-specific. So yeah, some people have them, some people don't. I've played the game on several different machines - on my main desktop it crashes on startup (ATI Radeon HD48xx card) , on my other desktop with GeForce somethingicantremember it runs with no crashes, no OOMs, and almost no slowdowns. On my notebook with GeForce G102M it runs w/out crashes as well, altho I lowered settings to avoid slowdowns.

 

The reviewer was in the beta of the game and as such is probably very familiar with the still continuing progress and with the passion, work ethic and standards of Stardock. In light of this, the game was likely reviewed by its potential and expected evolution, i.e. reviewed as the game it will be rather than the game it currently is.

In that regard, I agree with the general tone and impressions given in the review, as I trust Stardock to follow through completely.

Lastly, although it appears the release was somewhat premature, I believe that the majority are thankful that it was released now rather than February next year, despite any teething issues.

kudos on the praise... i'm one of the ones who have had < 3 CTDs in the last week, so i honestly have nothing but praise for EWoM...

my only real gripe (other than the balance tweaks, and improvements to the tech tree and magic system *grins*) is with the "end game" slow.... churn....... of............. death.....................

 

oh, and for what its worth, PCGamer has revised their opinion for Elemental... http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/08/27/elemental-now-works-old-savegames-now-dont/

Elemental: War of Magic was updated to version 1.06 this morning (UK time), and I’m happy to say the game is finally stable. I haven’t encountered any crashes to desktop since the patch Tuesday night, and the last major issue with the game on our systems is finally fixed.

Well as of 1.06 I'm now getting a crash an hour and it is quite annoying; enough that I think I'll play to the next crash then shelf the game until the next patch. My machine does not have an ati card or 64 bit os and does have 2GB of memory. Grrrr.... the mechanics need work but crashes are just plain annoying.

I have to agree in that I would like to know what this reviewer was smoking.  9/10 may be realistic in 6 months or a year, but unless you're just giving points for potential the game ranks at more like a 6/10 right now due to missing mechanics, disfunctional/broken elements, or mechanics that need massive overhauls.  For me it has nothing to do w/ performance issues at this point(although those would be nice to have worked out as well).  I enjoy the game and I love Stardock, but the game does not deserve a 90% rating at this point.  I'm glad the homepage link comes to this thread instead of going straight to the full review...maybe this way potential buyers will get some additional perspective on the game as it stands instead of reading a 9/10 review and rushing out to spend their $50 right away.

And to the person saying this is the best game on PC for many years...you evidently need to play more games, or at least read more PC gaming magazines.  You've clearly missed titles like Empire: Total War, Warhammer 40K Dawn of War 2 and Chaos Rising, Torchlight, fallout 3, Arma 2, Batman: Arkham Assylum, along with the slew of others another poster mentioned, plus many more.

Admit it, he was paid !

Part of the problem is that Elemental seems to be a very different beast on different machines.  At least from the stability side of things. I do sympathize with those of you out there with the "wrong" graphics cards or chipsets, that is pretty raw and no fun.  Being told to be patient does not make it better, or right.  We can only hope that Brad tries to QA the game on a wider variety of machines next time (and right now would be good too, if the problems are to go away.)

As to playability, I am well into a 250+ turn game on a large continent and the AI is finally waking up a bit.  The critters remain the most aggressive elements, but if you don't research Adventuring (beyond quests) they don't begin to spawn until later.  The game played like a pure wargame (without critters for the most part) for the first 200 turns.  After that, when the AI apparently opened the adventure gates, all heck broke loose, literally.  By then, I'd covered much of a continent so the critters were mostly a peripheral threat.

Glitches there are.  I built my capital on a seacoast and now it won't expand to give me the remaining tiles.  Frustrating to find out when you really want those extra large improvements and can't build them.  Also, I have yet to divine why some cities are allowed to build some improvements and not others.  That is especially frustrating when, for instance, I have specialized the cities by building them near map resources like lost temples, only to find out that even when they reach level 4 or 5, I cannot access the temples in those cities, but can in cities with no arcane labs even yet built!

So for those of you that can't play at all at this stage, you have an absolute right to be pissed off and I hope for everyone's sake that your stability problems are taken care of first.  Then, later, we can ALL enjoy the game's gradual improvements in gameplay, UI, AI, mods, whatever.

This situation reminds me of the 3 blind men who were asked to describe an elephant.  The guy near the elephant's trunk felt it and said, "Its like an anaconda, wrapped around me."  The guy standing next to the belly reached out and said "Its like a wall."  And the guy near the tail said "All I did was pull on the rope and the next thing I know, I was covered in crap."

Demigod...

... wasn't developed by Stardock. It was developed by Gas Powered Games, Stardock only published it.

 

I love when people post stuff that is wrong:)  Bet he won't say anything more.

*smirk*

Well well well. You seem to be forgetting Empire's launch. How it was literally unplayable, and how you were invincible as Britain for the sheer fact that the AI couldn't use transports...all that seemed to be handwaved away by most (a little uproar, and then it was fine...not to mention CA's continued sub-par AI) while you all are jumping on this bandwagon of easy hate.

DoW 2 and expansion: mediocre.
Torchlight: Meh. Pretty decent, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing.
Fallout 3: boring and really quite poor
Arkham Asylum: Undeniably good, just not my thing.

Plus many more.


Doesn't mean you can't like any of them, and it doesn't mean any of them need to be so lambasted for things like being horrifically broken down to me simply not being into it.

The reviewer gave his score, he liked it. A lot.
Get over yourselves, haters; it is feasible whit ALL the variables in PCs that he didn't really get crashes or instability. It is also feasible that he just plain liked it where you do not.
...or do you? Maybe you do and hate anyway. Anyway, that was a brief thought. I don't actually care.

Back to the point: was the reviewer false anywhere? Nope. (you can have mages...for an essence sacrifice...and BAM, that unit is a mage in addition to whatever else. Perhaps it was too simply lumped in with the others, but by no means false)
Ignorant? Nope...was a beta tester, too, so he knew about the process and much behind this launch.
He likes it.
Accept that. It is likable, no matter how much you want it not to be so the hate is justified. Well...even then it wouldn't be justified.
Release sucked, it (and we) are being supported (RAPIDLY), and the game is likable and can be great fun. Too many enjoy it quite a bit to contest that.

That's why these things are subjective.   If he had fun with the tactical battle, then so be it.

Hey why we are at it lets blame them for hearts of iron 3 and silent hunter 5....oh and all the other software they have on impulse which they don't develop...seriously Dudus need a wake up call slap around with a fish.