Elemental: War of Magic

Well I purchased Elemental: War of Magic yesterday and got some time to mess with the game today for a few hours. This is a game I've been waiting for a while. It was originally going to be called Master of Magic 2, but Stardock, the creators of the game, couldn't get the license cheap enough so they decided to create their own property. And I believe this caused them to rethink making a full remake, and allowed them to deviate a bit more from the old Master of Magic forumla.

I have a confession to make. I LOVED the original Master of Magic. And I was very much interested in the game. Even though Civ 5 is around the corner and the two games fill something of the same niche. Fortunately, it looks like Elemental does a good job of seperating itself from similar games of the same type. It's very Civ like; but with technology (fantastical) and magic to research. Lots of city improvements. Lots of spells (both tactical, overland, and conjuring). And it has a lot of customization.

I can already tell, this game has got a lot going for it. But, after just a few hours with the game I've definitely decided that it is way too buggy to be very fun right now. It is, in fact, very hard to get very far into the game without some major bug forcing you to restart (or even loose the entire campaign). Tabbing out is a serious danger...it usually crashes the client. In fact, this is the very sort of thing that gives PC games such a bad rep. These are the types of bugs that should have prevented the game from being released--and I'm guessing it will be a month, if not more, before the game is stable enough to be fun. That's a major flaw and one that is completely unnecessary.

The only other problems really relate to graphics. The game itself is pretty nice looking (at times), but the character models and effects are pretty damned bad. Trying to dress your character or unit is a very painful excersise. For this type of game, it's hardly a deal killer...but I prefer games where the characters don't all look like subhumans at best. There are also in-game graphic errors relating to the Raise Land and Lower Land spells...especially along coastlines. Again, not a deal killer but still a problem.

Hopefully Stardock will be pretty fast about fixing most of the major problems. If they do, I think the game is going to be pretty kick ass and stay on my hard drive for quite a long time.

Source: http://malfaire.blogspot.com/2010/08/elemental-war-of-magic.html

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