Elemental: War of Magic Review
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Exploring your options outside of one-off games reveals little of value. Most notably, Elemental's multiplayer options have yet to be activated 10 days after the game's release, in spite of the promises made on the retail packaging. The single-player campaign is at least functional, but it fails to take advantage of its original fantasy world. The game's opening cutscene, starting with its initial cliched shot of a thick tome placed upon a desk and lit with a flickering candle, sets the stage for a generic backstory. The campaign's scenes feature some nice 2D art, but the dull voice-over isn't likely to move you, and the short text dialogues fail to give the characters much personality. Sovereigns fulfill their simple duties, moving the plot along without offering the player any reason to get invested. The campaign doesn't function that well as an introduction to the gameplay either, providing many tutorial hints after they would have been most valuable and leaving basic mechanisms unexplained. Intrepid players may find the most value in Elemental's modification tools, and there are maps and other mods already available for download. Most of these features are actually pretty simple to use, so if you're the creative type, you may lose some time to them.
Elemental: War of Magic could have been a good strategy game, and given Stardock's history of supporting its products long into the future, it may yet be one someday. But that day is not here. Perhaps your faith in a respected developer and your love of the 4X formula will inspire enough patience in you to see the solid game foundation buried amid all the smoking rubble and swarming bugs. Certainly, Elemental's ability to make you lose hours at a time to an expanding kingdom in spite of its major problems is proof of many worthy ideas and ambitions. But ideas only hold so much value if they're not executed properly. If you can feast on ideas alone, Elemental: War of Magic might have something to offer you. If you prefer finished strategy games that don't actively impede your enjoyment, you should focus your attention elsewhere.
