Review by: Troy Goodfellow

The story of Elemental's condition on release and subsequent week of patches has been fair sized news in the strategy gaming community. Out less than a week and already on version 1.06, Stardock has scrambled to fix the worst technical sins of the game. The interface now alerts you when new resources are available to be uncovered. Some of the instablity has been addressed, though people with ATI cards might still want to save often. It would be a shame if that were the entire story. Elemental is not just a bad launch that can be cleaned up with a couple of weeks of overtime. It is an ambitious design that needs to refocused, rejigged and rethought.

A few hours with Elemental are enough to impress you. The world is generic, but the game map always seems alive. The continent is full of fantasy tropes like lost treasure and inns with mysterious quest givers as well as rival empires and dangerous random beasties. Then you advance your technology and uncover abandoned temples, dragon eggs, and new metals that make your soldiers the most deadly in the world. Stardock's turn based strategy game is one of the first to bring a fantasy novel backstory to life.

But a little learning is a dangerous thing and those first few hours are deceptive. By your second campaign you realize how many of these quests repeat from game to game, so fetching that dragon egg is not much of an adventure any more. The richness of the tech tree doesn't carry over to the magic system, which becomes repetitive and boring very quickly. By the end of the second few hours, you will have seen almost all Elemental has to show you.

If you aren't the type who pays attention to these things, you might not notice. Elemental looks simple, but it isn't, so the lack of any real documentation is a major problem. Want archers? You better remember what tech you used to unlock them since the in game encyclopedia and manual won't tell you. Want to get married and build a family? I had to ask a colleague where this option was (hidden on the action button of characters of the opposite sex of your leader; if you have a male leader, you won't see many female action buttons). Need to know how to raise your quest level so you can explore that tomb or what shards are for or how you can discover Reunion so you can exploit that darkling den? Guess! This is inexcusable in a game such as this.