I have to say, I like Elemental much more than I liked Galactic Civilizations 2.  I love role-playing games and it feels like Elemental has taken the Turn-based strategy/RPG hybrid to a new level.  I really, really like the flavor I get from Elemental in the art and especially in the characters.  Just being able to take a character that I created and have him move around the world, take on quests, gain experience and buy loot is a lot of fun.  Even Master of Magic didn't let you do this to such a great extent.

I didn't get this feeling at all while playing GalCiv2.  The game really felt pretty stale to me and I never felt like I was really a part of my civilization.  I remember the first time I started playing GC2, I wanted to role-play that my scout vessel was something out of Star Trek, going on a distant voyage to explore strange new worlds, etc, etc, but GC2 never gave me that.  Instead, everything I built just felt like a bunch of "units" like some RTS game.

The other thing I like is the feeling of progression.  You literally start out as a small rag-tag band of travellers, armed with nothing but clubs and ambition.  You start out fighting a few wolves and gathering some friends.  I was reminded, a bit, of Baldur's Gate how the main character was simply trying to make some friends in a dangerous, lonely world.  Later on, you gain real armies, some huge beasts and are able to conquer the world.

I guess what makes this game fun for me is that I don't play it as a Turn-based strategy.  I am not approaching the game in the same way I would approach MoM or HMM or even Civilization where my goal is to power-game as fast as possible and wipe the enemy off the map.  I am just trying to play in the way my character would approach a situation, not to necessarily win.  So for me, it's a role-playing game first and a turn-based strategy game second.

The other thing I'm really excited about in Elemental is seeing some more content mods.  I'd love to have a huge, rich diversity of quests to take one, creatures to fight, and new places to explore.  The modding system that Elemental is using (and will be expanded upon) is quite revolutionary and should give us an endless amount of new things to see in the future.

By the way, I have been playing using no patches on a pretty low-end laptop and have been getting a pretty smooth experience with no crashes (granted, the settings were pretty low).