Elemental BETA4 Review: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
The Good:
1) Extensive modding will allow the game to become more evolved, balanced, and even more game content such as items, spells, creatures, quests, etc.,.
2) Good Diplomacy in the game for AI and human players
3) Randomly generated worlds where very rare technologies, creatures and resources will only appear in some games.
4) Custom design of sovereign and rumor is the final version will allow custom design of your nation.
The Bad:
1) The map editor was half broken thus the final version being released will not have much beta testing. It seems the map editor was designed by someone who's never used map editors... so creating a large terrain area is time consuming, no method for editing existing stuff placed on maps, single letters used for resources,creatures, etc., instead of an actual name/image, no method to assign creatures/buildings to a player, and so on and so on.
2) No 64Bit version... it's been tossed on the shelf for "later". This means limited map size until who knows.
3) Races/Nations are all human... some with different colored skin. I really didn't recognize any personality/behavior differences so all opponents are just clones of each other.
4) The community provided many topics of advice, but I can't seem to locate any ideas which were actually merged into the game. The Elemental ideas forums is a treasure trove of creativity and the BETA4 seems to only have basics of a game included many which copy a civilization game.
The Ugly:
1) Multiplayer
requires an umbilical cord thru the internet into Stardock. Stardock developers are calling this LAN gaming which has stirred a huge argument of complaints from multiplayer gamers. The same as Gal_Civ_2 the multiplayer complaints will be generating some of the largest threads. More here:
http://forums.elementalgame.com/390801
2) The BETA4 had major bugs such as saved games not loading, crash to desktop bugs, brain dead AI opponents, and heavy memory/performance trouble. I'm sure many of these will be fixed, but like all previous version releases I expect some major game breaking bugs in the official released version.
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Overall I'm somewhat disappointed\bored with the gameplay and battles. No stealth, no black markets, most terrain has no difference on the map, quests are basic, races(all_human) with very minor differences, not much spell creativity/uniqueness, battles lack excitement, and its lacking real character skills such as druids, clerics, assassins, etc., . The battle for good multiplayer seems like a losing battle.
I believe the game can evolve into something great by the community because of the modding.