Elemental: War of Magic Review

Elemental: War of Magic is the first turn-based strategy game I’ve played in a while; which, turned out to be a sad reentry into the genre. Elemental: War of Magic was made by Stardock, the same developers that made the Galactic Civilizations series. They released the game on August 24, 2010 but allowed all those who pre-ordered to digitally download it a day early. I attempted to download it a day early but had some problems with the download. Little did I know, that was only the beginning of my troubles with this game. After four days of no response from Stardock, I finally got some help with the download process and began playing the game.

Upon starting up Elemental, you’re met with a typical fantasy fiction story opening: there was once a world filled with magic, magic nuked everything, the planet is now starting anew, and you are one of the leaders that comes to power in this new world.

My first few experiences with the actual gameplay were rough. I hardly ever regret buying a game, but Elemental is the exception. The game as a whole is not intuitive. It’s very difficult to understand what exactly you are supposed to be doing and where you should be going. Hardly any of this is explained even in the tutorials in campaign mode (by the way, you’ll want to start with the campaign mode and not the “Start New Game” option. The campaign mode is the only place you’re going to get some helpful tutorials).

For the first few days I was only playing campaign mode, but after a game update one day, I went to load my last save and got a message saying that my campaign save point wasn’t compatible enough to play anymore due to the changes made with the update. Beware the updates.

There is a multiplayer mode listed in the options but so far I haven’t been able to access it. It always states that the “Multiplayer is temporarily unavailable due to server [sic]maintainence.” Reviews say that multiplayer will be fun and robust which I hope will be the case.

The customization in Elemental is the only thing that makes this game stand out from other games in its field. You can personalize a number of things in the gameplay. You can create your sovereign(main character), from scratch changing their hair, clothes, equipment, skin tone, hair color, and race, as well as assign them different stats to make them play differently. You can use this same character customizer process when creating units in your city. This is really cool because if you wanted, each unit you create can be a totally unique kind of class, be it archer, tank, warrior, mage, or scout. This system is very versatile. You’re also able to create kingdoms and change things like attributes your cities will possess; city colors, emblems, and that kind of thing. The game’s customization is the hook that will keep gamers playing this game. Even with all of Elemental’s faults, this is one area they really nailed.

Your characters can learn different classes of magic: Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Enchantments that either help you, or harm your opponents. The magic system takes a little while to figure out, but that’s the trend with most functions in this game. It is not intuitive at all. You’re also able to equip your characters with different armor and weapons that you upgrade throughout your civilizations development, which helps with making your units feel more individual and unique.

The combat sequences in Elemental are tedious, long, and can feel pointless. Once you encounter a mob on the world map screen, you engage in combat with that mob. Your party of characters and the enemy’s characters are placed on a combat grid and you move your guys to attack their guys. Battles can be auto resolved, meaning the combat screen isn’t even shown, the computer calculates which side should win, and you’re given the results of the battle. After the first few grueling times actually playing through the battles, you’ll soon be choosing the auto resolve command for every encounter.

When playing the game, you’ll notice that there are pictured buttons at the top, bottom, and sides of the game screen. Some, if you hover over them, give you a word or two-word description of what that button does, but this help feature doesn’t always work. The buttons are also so ridiculously small that I guess Stardock thought it would be cool to make clicking the BB size buttons a game in and of itself. Yeah, the BB button game is not fun.

Every now and then, you’ll see a cut-scene or movie. Video scenes are choppy and sad to watch. The sound cuts in and out, the video goes black for a few seconds, and sometimes the video just cuts off; however, since the last patch helped a bit with these problems, I’m guessing Stardock is still working on these issues.

Elemental: War of Magic has a nice soundtrack. The medieval/Lord of the Rings type music theme sets the tone quite well. Other than the music and ambient noise, there aren’t a whole lot of other sounds. The dialog kept me laughing but only at how bad it was. The voice acting is sub-par and you can tell that they didn’t even outsource it.

The map-scenery and art in this game isn’t all that bad, in fact, it’s very clean and simplistic. The style looks like a cross between calligraphy and cel shading.

I did enjoy playing the game, all glitches aside, but the bugs greatly detracted from my experience and left me frustrated. The point here is that while there are still major glitches with this game, Stardock is working on them and it will probably be a polished, finished game in a few weeks.

Although my initial reactions to the game were very negative due to the glitches and since the game feels incomplete, after playing the game for a few hours, it started to grow on me—a little bit. Even with the somewhat addicting civilization/character customization options, Elemental: War of Magic was lacking on too many fields of quality, with save states breaking during updates, cut scenes being choppy, and there being lag throughout the whole game, to even consider recommending this game to anyone. This game might be a good buy later on down the road after Stardock does some heavy patching, but for now, it’s as glitchy as they come.