Elemental: War of Magic

Courtesy Link.

I think there was another thread for this, but I couldn't find it after a couple attempts (turns out my sig line infects searches for "Elemental").

I bought this game on Friday and, while very rough (as is expected from Obvious Beta games like this), I think it has the potential to live up to the high standard set for the Fantasy FourX standard set by Master Of Magic in the 90s, that has never yet been matched (Even Age Of Wonders: Shadow Magic didn't quite get there).

After about 10 hours of play, trying both the campaign and a random map, here's my impressions:

• City Building: merging the city screen with the main map is a good idea. I like how it looks, and how you can scroll in to see the little workers slaving away. Seperate queues for unit training and city enhancements are welcome.

• RPG elements: Pretty minimal, but they at least made some quests a little more complex than just walking over the goodie huts. The inter-character interactions are generally either "click to continue listening to the NPC's diatribe" or "I'll do exactly what you want" vs. "fuck off", but, again, it's more than 4X games got in the old days... not sure about all you youngsters with your Civilization V and your Sins Of A Solar Empire get.

• Units: I really like where they're going with these. You can research grouping technology, so that instead of only 1 pikeman per unit, you can get four or eight or more. This is where the game finally lives up to the promise of Master of Magic... at least I hope it does; I haven't been able to test to see if units get weaker as they lose figures from damage yet.
  • The other really good thing they do with the units is allow complete customization. You research various weapons, armor, and gear with your tech points, and then you can design units to use any or all of that gear a la carte. Like, if you give a unit a battle axe, leather leggings, a plate helmet, and padded greaves, each gives a different set of bonuses to the finished unit, and affects the cost and time necessary to produce/train. You can keep six or so soldier gear spreads at a time, and re-name or upgrade the templates at any time, though if you upgrade the templates, the existing units don't get upgraded. You can even select the appearence, pose, name, and quote of each unit. With certain technologies, you can produce veteran units to start off.

• Research: Split between spells and technology. One of the interesting one is the ability to research "adventuring" tech, which increases the level of adventures and wandering monsters in the world, as well as giving you some advantage in dealing with it. The level of the world adventures and critters increases off of both your and your opponents' adventuring tech level, so, in theory, you could have a serious monster problem if everyone researches that upgrade. The spells feel a little bland (I've used combat spells and some terrain altering spells), but they may be addressing that in the upcoming 1.1 patch. The spell descriptions are pretty crunchy, showing exactly how much damage you get per point in various attributes (mostly Intelligence). The spell I like the most is the one that lets you imbue one of your heroes with spellcasting, at the cost of a permanent reduction of your max mana (though you can buy it back up as you level your leader unit). Having more casters is always a Good Thing.
  • The bad part of research is that it seems like you have to research even things that seem like they should be automatic... you have to spend a bunch of turns learning how to get married? Hmm, that might not be a bad idea in Real Life...

• AI: No thoughts on this yet. The campaign really doesn't have much more than fetch quests and Curb Stomp Battles to the point I've gotten to so far.

• Diplomacy: Interesting addition of "Diplomatic Currency," which is essentially another form of money representing intangible political capital, earned through researching diplomatic upgrades. I was able to make a non-aggresion pact with a neighbor in my randomized game, but he wouldn't stop bothering me until I declared war on a third guy.

Anyway, I'm going to be massively distracted by Fallout New Vegas in T-minus 31 hours, but I'll keep playing this from time to time; the next patch should be out early November, and is apparently being helmed by the dude that did that well-recieved fantasy Civ mod awhile back, so it should be good.

edited 18th Oct '10 1:03:35 PM by Dracomicron

Original thread.

Hm, that was for the beta. It's out in stores now.

And still a beta.

Argh.

^^ Ouch, man...

edited 19th Oct '10 8:52:54 AM by WillyFourEyes