It's a very strange review. He compares Elemental to Shining Force and describes tactical battles as Fallout-style. It seems that this reviewer isn't very expirienced.

That's awesome for a site like Neoseeker to give this game - which I'm still figuring out but enjoy greatly - a very positive review!  It stinks that these days, console games get all the coverage (other than Civ 5, which is understandable), but I'm encouraged that PC gaming will make a comeback (OK, I'm an optimist - so shoot me...).

That`s what suprises me when people bash Star Craft 2.  SC2 is the best thing to happen to PC gaming since A WoW expansion.  SC2 has the potential to draw in new people to PC gaming.  It grow`s the market.  If new peope enjoy SC2 their more likely to buy other PC games.  We should all hope SC2 is as sucessful as possible. 

It`s a good thing for our hobby.

I am glad that for once a reviewer was able to look past the bullshit and see how Awesome of a game elemental is. With that being said though, and seeing that almost every other site out there is on a Elemental bashing spree, I think this guy might end up taking some flak for going against the popular review sites. At least he had the decency to tell the truth about the game working and not being "unplayable" like a lot of other sites are saying.

I saw a review last night where the reviewer said there wasn't even a button to find the next idle city...which there IS, or a button to find the next idle unit...which there IS. Some of the reviews just blatantly lie and don't cover even one of Awesome aspects. If they can't give a whole review, on the the Bad AND the Good, then what's the sense in even reading it?

Kudos to this reviewer for going against the flow and telling the TRUTH about Elemental!!!!

You have to take into account the fact that the reviewer may not have been intentionally lying: he/she may not have know the buttons even existed due to the lack of anything resembling a comprehensive manual / tutorial.

I don't get this argument, the last time I used a video game manual was when they where still used for DRM (go to page 26 and look for the code).  Same goes for the tutorial, I hate games that require you play through it by making it the first level.  Just click buttons and see what happens, that is half the fun of playing with something new!  In any case this game seems to play like every other strategy game out there, I had the basics down 20 minutes after starting it up, within 2-3 hours I had it all figured out.  If a reviewer couldn't figure out how to tell if a city was idle in the time it took to review the game then she shouldn't be reviewing video games to begin with. 

This.

I had no problems figuring EWoM interface. But again, my favorite game is Dwarf Fortress

The main problem is that people can't seem to accept that other people may like things they don't. Release a game consisting of nothing but the tactical battles in Elemental, as it is now, and remarkably, you'll find some people would actually love it. Other people won't.

'Bout time people remembered that there's fewer things of less significance in the universe than their opinion. Particularly when it comes to taste.

meh. Defense stacking and Attack Stacking still bother me.

Anyone else feel like using first stacks of armorless archers, and later stacks of Well-Armored great-hammers, is just cheese?

btw, anyone know if its possible to separate attack and damage just using XML?

I have to echo some of the statements of someone earlier in this thread. I think some of the "confusion" as someone put it about if we are all playing a different game comes from several factors....the least not being different computer specs. 

I got the game a couple days after launch...the same day the 1.05 patch I think it was went live. Im playing on a pretty high end system...actually a laptop...but its one of the ASUS G73 gaming laptops. (  i7  Q 720, 6gb ram, ATI 5870, Win7 64bit) Up to this point I have never crashed and honestly have not experienced much of any of the technical issues I have seen people pointing out and Im running the game on all max settings etc. 

The only thing I have seen is on one game that stretched out a good ways I started getting some slowdown...which on this system...with this level of graphics etc...should not be happening. 

But other then that (and of course Ive experienced the goofy AI) the game has been pretty smooth and enjoyable. 

Ive read other people with systems that are far from a top end system though say they are pretty much the same. So I think it just sorta depends. For me I want them to fix the mid-late game slowdown....and the AI needs major work. But I know those things should be coming sooner rather then later. 

Well I'm running Elemental on 2 Systems... my laptop ( 2*2,2Ghz Intel, 2GB RAM, nvidia 8600, W7 32 bit) and my brandnew PC (2 or 3 weeks old: intel i7 870 (4*2,93 Ghz), 6GB RAM, nvidia GTX 470 W7 64 bit) and the crashes are mostly the same. I get a crash 90% of the time when I try to load a game while playing a game. And switches to desktop often end in a DirectX error. After aome time it just dies anyway. But with the PC I got the problem that after 3 hours or so of gameplay it just crashes cause it claims to be out of memory (while consuming by far more memory than it would be possible on my laptop)

however of course, settings on the PC are all max and on the laptop it's all down (no AA, lightning, shadows etc. .. 1024x768 though) but imo the performance is way too bad... the game is far from fluent every time I actually do things.

€: just started up Elemental, the only thing "out of the ordinary" that was running was the Blizzard downloader which was at 96%. When the choose a tech screen appeared Elemental froze the whole PC (had to shut it down the hard way..) hopefully the download isn't corrupted. All of this after2 mins of gameplay. *yay* But still Elemental - when running is a hell load of fun except for the minor mistakes/UI fails. And I trust in Stardock to make it the game it should be.

€2: yeah it somehow lost 10% of the Download... another 2 hours... yay! hope nothing is corrupted... ok but my own fault for loading Elemental during the DL... but Elemental never froze the whole PC before - just itself.

That review was like a breath of fresh air! 

First off, I do not see how anyone feels like Elemental is a 9 on a 10 point scale (or even 9 on the 7-9 scale...).  Just dont see that.  9/10 is an amazing game.  Elemental might get there someday, I sure hope it does, but as of 1.06?  Forget it, no way.

I also take issue with the reviewer calling out the single player campaign and the tactical combat, for praise.  They are two of the game's weakest points.  The tactical combat is awful.  The single player campaign is buggy and, IMO, a poor tutorial and does not highlight at all what the game does well.

I also do not understand how you review a 4x game w/o mentioning the state of its documentation, another area where Elemental suffers.

Looks like I have a few more reviews to check out after work.  This is a bit of a strange bird... when I look at elemental, I have a pretty good idea of what it will become - I know its going to get better and better.  It just seems rare that some reviewers are keeping that in mind instead of blasting it.  If I were to personally review the game, I'd give it a 6/10 as is and if it was actually re-reviewed in about 3-6 months, likely bump it to an 8/10.  I'm really looking forward to reading the positive review later tonight though.  I get so distracted by some of the negative things that I'm overlooking alot of what's been done well. 

I dunno, for me the way battles play out are like 200% of the game. Not rly "how" its done, but that it gives the player a sense of reason and accomplishment.

A battle system that both makes sense and makes a player proud is a good thing imho. And, while I understand that its easier to do with pre-set units ... I just feel that battles are primitive. AKA not "simple in a good way" just "simple and random."

I'd probably rate the battles a 4/10 at the highest, and the rest of the game a 7/10.  (as of 1.05)