While I think Elemental's sandbox mode can offer some flawed fun, the Campaign is another story altogether. The story it tells is weak, the functional aspects of its quests and story progression are clumsy, and the entire thing is too short. In other words, it's throwaway.
The story of the campaign is told in broad strokes. Pop-up messages describe what happens, or maybe a dialogue "choice" is offered but there is only ever one choice offered. But regardless, the conversations are brief and there is only the thinest of stories to hold it all together. While many kingdoms are involved, each is represented by a simple quest or two, and a dialogue interaction or two, and not much else.
The game directs the player to create settlements, and while you don't have access to technology or spell research, those unlock occasionally anyway. There's very little to explain how or why this happens, but it does and that's the progression you experience during the campaign.
There appears to be absolutely no way to prevent users from breaking the campaign. Pop-up messages sometimes mention something that you as the player should do in the near future but they are phrased as happening in the past. If you ignore them, figuring them as nothing but flavor text, you will likely miss a plot point and be stuck. It takes repeated visits to the campaign log to decipher what's really intended. Or it may instead take a visit to the Elemental forums to pick another's brains!
In the end you complete the campaign, banish the evil and finally end it. And while it's not a bad campaign it's not what I would expect from seasoned game developers. Yes, I know Random House created it but Stardock allowed it in. If they knew it was terrible then shame on them!
Let's hope that future installments are better. Maybe Stardock will wait until after Python programming is exposed and future campaigns will not only be longer and better but offer a much deeper experience. One that cannot be easily broken by someone who doesn't understand what they are asked to do.
