I think the devs had all sorts of bitchin' ideas for EWOM - until they ran into bugs and memory management problems with the Kumquat engine, particularly for 32 bit users. Then they had to spend time figuring all that out instead of adding cool content. For FE, they had clear ideas on what the engine could handle and had to design within those boundaries. I'd love to see 10 more types of tiles and stuff, I remember Heavenfall's After the War mod where the ice faction made ice tiles and stuff. It was awesome. Imagine elves making forest tiles, all that jazz.

For the record I think the game is great, it's what I choose to spend my time on when I have time to spare. If the expansion is 64 bit, and SD has more time to fine tune the engine, we may see all kinds of cool stuff... assuming the market likes FE and SD decides to keep developing the Elemental world. I would be a sad panda if they threw in the towel. Which is why I discard the opinions of drive-by reviewers whom have not spent any meaninful time with the game. They are one night standers, didn't even by FE a dinner and movie.

I refuse to read fantasy because of this. All high fantasy is the same story painted with a different face. i don't to see elves and dwarves that go and save X because great event Y is about to happen and if they don't do Z then the world ends. 

I just never see any cutting edge fantasy, like those stories that come out of sci-fi or horror.

I like that they didn't toss in elves and dwarves and make a game Tolkien would have sneered at. Fantasy tropes are over done. 

It is subjective, but I personally totally agree on this.

What I meant was for a sandbox game don't jump off the deep end with a setting where so little is familiar. FE bombards you with so many weird names etc you can't (or I can't at least) even start to make sense of it.

I'm not saying I wanted another over the top/forced humor game like warlock or homm. But if the game is going to have such a novel setting (rather than a new spin on existing tropes) then the game needs to tell the story not just dump it on the player. Alpha Centauri did this well.

There definitely needs to be a background history and timeline to refer to in game. At the moment reading the Hiergamenon is like reading  wikipedia from another planet.. only with no hotlinks so I'm just left wondering who  curgen is or what are the fallen etc etc etc. <-- please make this happen

I agree kinda with the comment on fantasy fiction. I've tried reading stuff like salvatore dnd novels and yes they are terrible. But I DO enjoy dnd based computer games; what works in one medium doesn't another... I don;'t think game devs are just lazy.

I don't think I would have been able to get into a strategy game based on robin hobb's work for example; or stephen donaldson, or even robert jordan and george martin. Not without a lot of effort on the devs part to explain the setting.

Don't mean to jump on you, but FE *is* using basic fantasy tropes. Just because they aren't called "elves" and "dwarves" doesn't make it any different. You can basically substitute: elves->pariden, men->altar, dwarves->gilden, wood elves->tarth, orcs->yithril, evil men->kraxis, undead(ish)->resoln, and demons->magnar. I'm fairly certain that Tolkein would have sneered at FE, and I wouldn't call the setting here "cutting edge" by any means.

That said, a 4X strategy game is not the place for cutting edge new fantasy, and I'm quite content with the way things are. It seems to me that a lot of people/reviews are complaining because even though the basic fantasy tropes are there, they're not in an easily recognizable form, and therefore it takes more work to fill in the gaps with your own imagination. And the fact that all the races are visually very similar doesn't help.

rahal, we crossposted but I very much agree. FE is in the awkward middle zone where they stepped away from the basic and familiar but didn't solidify it enough to really drive it home.

It's not a professional review, so really, just a series of opinions. Some are factually incorrect.  Others seem to be the result of exposure to the game for such a short period of time that the writer didn't understand what they were seeing, and gave up rather than digging any deeper.  Much of it just makes me want to wonder what game this person was actually playing--except that, given his willingness to whinge without thought, I'd really rather not know.

That's what the Campaign is for, to give players more backstory on the world they're getting involved in.

Typically when someone complains about how bland a fantasy game is, they skip all lore books/texts/optional dialogue because "it's too much to read". This is almost certainly the case here, too. The game does have plenty of backstory and lore, but it's presented in a way that many of today's gamers somehow can't digest: paragraphs of plain text instead of fancy cutscenes and audio bits. (The world of Elemental doesn't offer the most original fantasy setting, but it's certainly not below what's average for video games, and at least it doesn't have flipping dwarves!) 

Personally, I'd say that is a problem with today's gamers rather than the game, but that's just me. I like it and enjoy it.

For the "average" gamer no this ^ is false. For those that live in their parents basement and played games 24/7 yeah but then again FE's ai is just as easy for these types. lol They will always figure it out.. But, I don't think many of them have played the 140h ai and on impossible I would love to see the saved game win. MOM has always been a challenging game for me.

Lol AOW:SM et all are the WORST of the fantasy bunch. The AI is totally pitiful in the AOW series marching back n forth down a road for 30 turns and doing other stupid stuff like that. Good example of the AI in AOW:SM is I could make an Alliance with EVERY faction, march 3 stacks of units up to their capital doorsteps, declare war and eliminate all of them one after the other with that same strategy. Try it you'll see. The AI in AOW;SM is totally the worst. At least in MOM if you tried that you wouldn't get half a chance because the AI in MOM was already 90% against you from the start.

I still call the game bland. Call me whatever you wish. The graphics and art are charming, no doubt about that, but the lore is generic and uninspiring. Everything seems like an imitation of stuff seen in other games, Kohan Immortal Sovereigns comes to mind. Flavour texts are nice and well written, even the monsters are interesting. But the overall narrative foundation of the game clearly lacks an inspired touch of a competent writer.