Platforms: PC
Publisher: Stardock
Developer: Stardock
ESRB: Teen
Official Website: http://www.elementalgame.com/
Price in peso: P2,200.00 ($49.95), P3,100.00 Limited Edition ($69.95)
Not many people know about Stardock Entertainment, regardless of the critical acclaim the developer manages to accrue. Due to this, Elemental: War of Magic is a title you’ve not likely heard of, especially with it sandwiched between the releases of Starcraft II and Civilization V, among others. It’s also a title you likely won’t hear about again, because despite Stardock’s successes with their previous titles, Elemental: War of Magic just isn’t as polished as it could be.
To be fair, the game should have garnered more hype considering what it promised to deliver. A 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) game imbued with RPG elements and 16-player online multiplayer with varied game modes and randomized maps is a huge cake to bake, and the refreshing art style and fully customizable units – not just the heroes but the armies, too – makes for delicious icing. However, it’s the map, spell effect, and character editing tools supplied with the game that serves as the proverbial cherry on top. This all amounts to an enormous undertaking which few other games of this genre have even attempted to pull off. While not necessarily a lie, this cake simply is too big for any one company to handle.
It’s only been several weeks into release and the game has already been patched eight times. While the vast majority of PC games don’t ever reach eight patches, most of them don’t see the need for it. What this does prove is that the Stardock team is fast at work trying to stamp out the numerous bugs left in the game, and to actually release a working multiplayer portion (disabled and unavailable at the time of this review), which was and still is an advertised feature of Elemental: War of Magic. This does not, however, reverse the damage done by a poorly-planned release; only graceful, excellent PR can rectify this, which – to date – is something Stardock seems capable of doing right.
Scorecard: (Rate using 1 to 5 scale, 5 being the highest.)
- Graphics: 4
- Sounds: 3
- Fun Factor: 2
- Replayability: 3
- Overall Score: 3