No, just no.  DoW2 was released to early.  THQ was on the verge of bankruptcy.  They had to push it out.  They also supported the shit out of it after it was released.  The 2.0 patch that was released after 1 year added new unit`s and graphic improvements and alot of new voice over work.  DoW2 has seen the best post release support I`ve ever seen.  It is an absolutely fantastic product, One of the best PC games I`ve ever bought.

If not, NM.

If so your current view is... interesting.

I've been banished as a fanboy for appreciating this game so I won't say much. However, I will say I'm still on patch 1.05 because I don't want to lose my save game I currently have, which is a massive battle between myself and Yithril where are adjacent cities were 2400+ and 1600+ defense respectively.We've been SLUGGING it out. AI needs improvement, that's for sure, but this has been pretty darn fun.

It's been great fun, needs to be a bit more magicky (if that's a word), but the review is pretty good.

I agree, the game has been very well supported and is fun as well. I had no idea THQ was in such bad shape though.

Must be why I have seen that THQ pack on sale for so long.

It's a very strange review. He compares Elemental to Shining Force and describes tactical battles as Fallout-style. It seems that this reviewer isn't very expirienced.

That's awesome for a site like Neoseeker to give this game - which I'm still figuring out but enjoy greatly - a very positive review!  It stinks that these days, console games get all the coverage (other than Civ 5, which is understandable), but I'm encouraged that PC gaming will make a comeback (OK, I'm an optimist - so shoot me...).

That`s what suprises me when people bash Star Craft 2.  SC2 is the best thing to happen to PC gaming since A WoW expansion.  SC2 has the potential to draw in new people to PC gaming.  It grow`s the market.  If new peope enjoy SC2 their more likely to buy other PC games.  We should all hope SC2 is as sucessful as possible. 

It`s a good thing for our hobby.

I am glad that for once a reviewer was able to look past the bullshit and see how Awesome of a game elemental is. With that being said though, and seeing that almost every other site out there is on a Elemental bashing spree, I think this guy might end up taking some flak for going against the popular review sites. At least he had the decency to tell the truth about the game working and not being "unplayable" like a lot of other sites are saying.

I saw a review last night where the reviewer said there wasn't even a button to find the next idle city...which there IS, or a button to find the next idle unit...which there IS. Some of the reviews just blatantly lie and don't cover even one of Awesome aspects. If they can't give a whole review, on the the Bad AND the Good, then what's the sense in even reading it?

Kudos to this reviewer for going against the flow and telling the TRUTH about Elemental!!!!

You have to take into account the fact that the reviewer may not have been intentionally lying: he/she may not have know the buttons even existed due to the lack of anything resembling a comprehensive manual / tutorial.

I don't get this argument, the last time I used a video game manual was when they where still used for DRM (go to page 26 and look for the code).  Same goes for the tutorial, I hate games that require you play through it by making it the first level.  Just click buttons and see what happens, that is half the fun of playing with something new!  In any case this game seems to play like every other strategy game out there, I had the basics down 20 minutes after starting it up, within 2-3 hours I had it all figured out.  If a reviewer couldn't figure out how to tell if a city was idle in the time it took to review the game then she shouldn't be reviewing video games to begin with. 

This.

I had no problems figuring EWoM interface. But again, my favorite game is Dwarf Fortress

The main problem is that people can't seem to accept that other people may like things they don't. Release a game consisting of nothing but the tactical battles in Elemental, as it is now, and remarkably, you'll find some people would actually love it. Other people won't.

'Bout time people remembered that there's fewer things of less significance in the universe than their opinion. Particularly when it comes to taste.

meh. Defense stacking and Attack Stacking still bother me.

Anyone else feel like using first stacks of armorless archers, and later stacks of Well-Armored great-hammers, is just cheese?

btw, anyone know if its possible to separate attack and damage just using XML?

I have to echo some of the statements of someone earlier in this thread. I think some of the "confusion" as someone put it about if we are all playing a different game comes from several factors....the least not being different computer specs. 

I got the game a couple days after launch...the same day the 1.05 patch I think it was went live. Im playing on a pretty high end system...actually a laptop...but its one of the ASUS G73 gaming laptops. (  i7  Q 720, 6gb ram, ATI 5870, Win7 64bit) Up to this point I have never crashed and honestly have not experienced much of any of the technical issues I have seen people pointing out and Im running the game on all max settings etc. 

The only thing I have seen is on one game that stretched out a good ways I started getting some slowdown...which on this system...with this level of graphics etc...should not be happening. 

But other then that (and of course Ive experienced the goofy AI) the game has been pretty smooth and enjoyable. 

Ive read other people with systems that are far from a top end system though say they are pretty much the same. So I think it just sorta depends. For me I want them to fix the mid-late game slowdown....and the AI needs major work. But I know those things should be coming sooner rather then later. 

Well I'm running Elemental on 2 Systems... my laptop ( 2*2,2Ghz Intel, 2GB RAM, nvidia 8600, W7 32 bit) and my brandnew PC (2 or 3 weeks old: intel i7 870 (4*2,93 Ghz), 6GB RAM, nvidia GTX 470 W7 64 bit) and the crashes are mostly the same. I get a crash 90% of the time when I try to load a game while playing a game. And switches to desktop often end in a DirectX error. After aome time it just dies anyway. But with the PC I got the problem that after 3 hours or so of gameplay it just crashes cause it claims to be out of memory (while consuming by far more memory than it would be possible on my laptop)

however of course, settings on the PC are all max and on the laptop it's all down (no AA, lightning, shadows etc. .. 1024x768 though) but imo the performance is way too bad... the game is far from fluent every time I actually do things.

€: just started up Elemental, the only thing "out of the ordinary" that was running was the Blizzard downloader which was at 96%. When the choose a tech screen appeared Elemental froze the whole PC (had to shut it down the hard way..) hopefully the download isn't corrupted. All of this after2 mins of gameplay. *yay* But still Elemental - when running is a hell load of fun except for the minor mistakes/UI fails. And I trust in Stardock to make it the game it should be.

€2: yeah it somehow lost 10% of the Download... another 2 hours... yay! hope nothing is corrupted... ok but my own fault for loading Elemental during the DL... but Elemental never froze the whole PC before - just itself.

That review was like a breath of fresh air! 

First off, I do not see how anyone feels like Elemental is a 9 on a 10 point scale (or even 9 on the 7-9 scale...).  Just dont see that.  9/10 is an amazing game.  Elemental might get there someday, I sure hope it does, but as of 1.06?  Forget it, no way.

I also take issue with the reviewer calling out the single player campaign and the tactical combat, for praise.  They are two of the game's weakest points.  The tactical combat is awful.  The single player campaign is buggy and, IMO, a poor tutorial and does not highlight at all what the game does well.

I also do not understand how you review a 4x game w/o mentioning the state of its documentation, another area where Elemental suffers.

Looks like I have a few more reviews to check out after work.  This is a bit of a strange bird... when I look at elemental, I have a pretty good idea of what it will become - I know its going to get better and better.  It just seems rare that some reviewers are keeping that in mind instead of blasting it.  If I were to personally review the game, I'd give it a 6/10 as is and if it was actually re-reviewed in about 3-6 months, likely bump it to an 8/10.  I'm really looking forward to reading the positive review later tonight though.  I get so distracted by some of the negative things that I'm overlooking alot of what's been done well. 

I dunno, for me the way battles play out are like 200% of the game. Not rly "how" its done, but that it gives the player a sense of reason and accomplishment.

A battle system that both makes sense and makes a player proud is a good thing imho. And, while I understand that its easier to do with pre-set units ... I just feel that battles are primitive. AKA not "simple in a good way" just "simple and random."

I'd probably rate the battles a 4/10 at the highest, and the rest of the game a 7/10.  (as of 1.05)

I've got an 1.5 year old, fairly standard i7 920, 6g RAM, gtx260, win7 x64large raptor system.  Prior to I 1.06 didn't play more than a few minutes, and the only stability issue was 1 white screen during tac battles.  Currently playing a large map, 5 foe, ridiculous difficulty, all settings maxed but only 1024x768 game, and just hit turn ~300.   Things were pretty smooth until last night starting ~turn 200.  Got a few 'generic' crashes, then after an ~2hr stretch with no crashes, all of a sudden got the 'stutter' in framerate.  Immediately tried to save and before it could do that got an OOM crash.  Wasn't more than 5-10 seconds max from the first sign of low memory to the crash, so whatever the cause it wasn't a relatively slow buildup.  Restarted and ~10 minutes later it repeated.  Haven't played since to see if it's going to be a regular thing from this point on.  Am hoping not, as I'm still really in the early stage of the game.  Reading this review I didn't see mention of how far into a game he got, size of the game, etc., to judge if he'd played long enough to encounter this type of problem.

While I played a friend I bought the game for finally got it installed and he played while I guided him along over voice comms.  He had an ~4 hour run before it crashed (small map, low settings, 1 foe, I think easy difficulty) which wasn't bad, especially considering it was unplayable for him during beta.  He (also) likes the game and we're looking forward to MP (with a few others in our group) -- especially MP with the option to include tac battles.  Him having someone to answer a few basic questions made getting started a lot easier/funner.  He especially liked the graphics, something I think gets overlooked in the reviews here and on the net.  The graphic look is very nice, and the artists should be commended.  It's a unique look, impressionistic without being 'cartoony'.  He also liked the general design (gameplay/etc.), and like me hopes the improvements will continue and bring the game up to where it shows what SD is capable of.

Yep ... art style is currently the BEST thing about the game. Seriously.

I see several feeling the game is 6/10... I can't even give it a 4/10 at this point. Brad himself said it's mostly intended to be a single player game, and it's just too easy to beat it.

I've hardly ever even lost an army in this game, much less ever felt challenged. If the goal of the game is to give a challenging singleplayer experience, for me, it currently doesn't do that at all.

Sadly, it will have to be shelved until the AI is smarter than a 2 year old who was slipped a bottle full of brandy.

Congrats on the review, but it is my humble opinion that that reviewer was under the influence of some sort of drug. Elemental is in no way a 9/10 and needs quite some work to get there. I believe it WILL get there or even better eventually but dont try to tell me its a 9/10 as of this moment, that is pure bs. I'll remember to avoid that site for good/precise/honest reviews .

Game definitely hits a wall around this time, OOM-wise.