Multiplayer is the most robust part of the game - it never crashed on me.

Meh he should shut up about the graphics already. It's not like his opinion was the only truth in the world. I for one find Elemental very pretty, and would not find it as luring with realistic Anno style graphics.

that 1up "review" is horrible.  It sounds like he just read about the game and drew his conclusions from there...

Harsh man, real harsh.

This game is easily a b+ atm, and heading for a nice A ^^

That's considering I never crashed once while playing the game. Happened twice while loading a saved game...

Then you haven't noticed the plethora of game mechanics that are flat out broken.  I don't even mean "imbalanced", I mean "they don't work."  And I'm not talking about crashes or frames per second - I mean game rules mis-programmed so that they don't function.  While I believe Elemental has staggering potential, to call the current build an "A" game is patently ridiculous.

It's like playing a huge placebo atm.

Start with several non-functional faction traits (which they've acknowledged, and have slated for functionality after the weekend), continue into at least some of the sovereign backgrounds also being non-functional, throw in spell shards (among god knows how many other mechanics) not functioning at all in tactical combat, an auto-resolve combat system that often gives ridiculous results for anything but straight beater units, plus the numerous glitches that screw with city tile limits, squads of units (hint: don't save your game if any of your squads are damaged - you'll regret it when you reload) and character stats (again, particularly upon loading a save), and likely a bunch that haven't come to light yet or that I can't remember due to the haze of frustration.

And that's only the stuff that doesn't function outright.  Then you get into the realm of poor balance decisions and bad AI...

They're slated to work on literally all of these things, but that doesn't change the fact that the game is currently busted.

Im glad they released it, im having tons of fun with it.

Sure its rough around the edges but its fun and thats all that matters to me to be honest.

It will only get better in the future anyways.

Ive bought tons of games on consoles and pc over the last 5 years and Elemental is some of the most fun ive had out of any of those games.

How people can say this is unplayable is beyond me.

Or maybe I just have horrible taste and like bad games, which seems to be the case these days as I dissagree with 90% of reviews these days.

This was 60$ well spent on a game that I was going to pass on, I am sooo glad I watched some videos of this game the last fewy days and picked it up, the game has surprised the heck out of me.

Yes it has its issues (the late game slowdown is ridicolous), but the good far out weigh the bad for me personally.

Yeah he sounds like a lot of the trolls on this site. He didn't play it (or didn't play it for very long) he just went around reading toll comments on other forums and just drew up a conclusion from all that. Reviewers like that should be sued and taken off the review market. Unless you have 100 full hours of play into a game you shouldn't be allowed to review it.

Interesting bit of history...

-1up was originally a spinoff of Computer Gaming World and Gamespot,  after CGW went south following Johnny Wilson's departure. 

-Gamespot allegedly fired reviewers for not giving a game a better score in a re-review after the advertiser threatened to pull it's dollars,  and a bunch of people left to form Giantbomb.

-CGW and Gamespot reviewed Magic the Gathering Online,  and gave it crap for not having great graphics.  Mind you,  we're talking about a card game simulation here.

-CGW and Gamespot reviewed Space Horse and gave it an abyssmal review.  Problem is,  it's pretty much a direct copy of M.U.L.E.,  a game they both acknowledged as a Hall of Fame game and a Classic.  All becaues the reviewer couldn't play it the way he thought it should work,  never mind it worked just like the original.  Major problem there.

I can go on.  Bottom line is,  everything I've seen for the last 10 years says to me that site is more interested in reviewing Advertisements and not games.

Other sites aren't much better.  Gamespy posted a nice piece on how Fallout fans should "die" for wishing for a sequel to Fallout instead of what Bethseda was developing.  Penny Arcade did a huge piece on why Fallout fans were wrong and shouldn't be listened to as well.  In the 90's,  Gaming Journalists reviewed games,  not did PR for companies.

There's other stuff one should read to.  There's an interesting piece out there about how gaming journalists are given a "List of rules for previewing".

A little bit of research makes things alot more clear.

Edit:  picked that poster to quote because it sequed into my post,  wasn't posting in response per se.

100 hours? 100 hours?! 100 hours?!!! I'm afraid you're wishing for the impossible. 

I own hundreds of PC games, some good, some great others poor. Some hasn't been well recieved by the reviewers but are still great games _for me_, others are bad like they say. The point with reviews are that they're subjective. It's what the reviewer thinks of the game and doesn't have to apply to your taste. Of course you feel insulted when YOU think something's good and you've also invested money into it. When someone "bashes" the thing you like you take it personally and lashes out with "malcontents", "trolls", "must play for ONE HUNDRED HOURS or it's nonsense" etc.

The thing is: You already have the game. You enjoy it. For god's sake: Play the game! Don't get upset over reviews or other peoples opinions. Those people WANT to like the game, they wish it to be more to THEIR tastes. You're already set, you've got a game that's good for you so enjoy what you have. 

For myself, I think the game is OK. Havn't played it that much yet (working through the campaign right now) but I'm hoping it will be a great game and something to play for a looong while.

Well I have put many hours into the game and wihile the reviewer is harsh he

does have some valid points. AI that spams undefended cities that a simply

army can just wander in and own leaves you feeling no game achievement and

that lack of achievement is all over the game. I feel no goal and no real growth.

I hope as in the past more updates make the game seem more but I am not

sure any amount of updates will fill that empty feeling.

"For what it's worth, Elemental tries hard to be the spiritual successor of a fantastic turn-based strategy game cum RPG called Master of Magic."

I pulled this quote from the review and I don't know what this statement means.  Can anyone enlighten me?  Is it an editing flaw?