Arguably, it all started back in 1983 with the release of Reach for the Stars, a computer game where players explored space, developed technology, and tried to take over the galaxy. Years later, in 1990, Civilization would be released and the entire genre of turn-based strategy games was assured a long and healthy life. A full decade after Reach for the Stars (in 1993) Alan Emrich wrote in the pages of Computer Gaming Review a preview of an up and coming strategy game entitled Master of Orion. He described it as an XXXX game (now known as 4X). In it, players control an empire and use it to eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate their opponents. With the continued success of 4X games based on space and history, it was a no-brainer to combine the genre with the fantasy genre. The next year (1994), Master of Magic was released combining aspects of the 4X genre with fantasy and a few overtones of the hot new card game, Magic: the Gathering. New to the game was a personal avatar with which to explore the world, capable of casting magic spells during battle as well as global enchantments to help out their particular side. While Master of Magic (MoM for short) was a fairly big hit, there has never been a true sequel. Elemental: War of Magic produced by Stardock Corporation is the latest attempt to do the genre justice. While it is a bit advanced for gamers new to 4X style play, it has a plethora of options and features to keep more experienced gamers happy for a long time to come.

In a standard game of Elemental: War of Magic, you select a civilization and a leader of their empire, similar to other 4X games. However, in Elemental: War of Magic you can fully customize both your leader as well as your civilization. Leaders (and other heroes within the game) have six basic attributes like strength (how much combat damage they do) or intelligence (how much magical damage they do). At the start of the game you can spend points to upgrade your attributes as well as choose available spellbooks and talents for your leader. Spellbooks allow you the opportunity to learn spells of a specific type while talents provide some sort of starting or ongoing benefit (such as bonuses to technological research or extra money every turn.) Your leader also gets one profession (for free) which will give an additional benefit. Finally, you may also choose some disadvantages (such as reducing morale, or increasing the cost to hire other heroes) in order to gain a few extra points to spend.

Once your leader is chosen, you can choose or design a nation as well. There are two main types of nations, Kingdom and Empire. Kingdom leans toward diplomacy and long-term growth while Empire leans towards early aggression. Your nation type will even change the look of the local terrain, Kingdom land becomes lush and green while Empire lands become blackened and dark. In addition to nation style, you get to choose a race (which affects what units are available and a few other details) as well as spend a few points on special strengths and weaknesses for your nation (like especially diplomatic, brave, or even Master Archers).

After all this customization (note that it is entirely optional, several default leaders and nations are available from which to choose at the get-go), you are surely ready to dive in and play. Use your starting hero (your customized champion) to explore the world and found your first city. The city expands and develops like most 4X games, by adding buildings and doing research to unlock new buildings. Research is performed in any one of five areas at any given time. (The two nation types each have their own set of five areas to be researched.) An area of research is selected and when it is finished, you are given the choice of which specific advance you wish to acquire. Additional research in that category becomes more expensive while additional research in the other categories also become slightly more expensive. There are several choices at any given time in a category so a player can delve deep down one path in a category or continue to select the lower level choices to have a broader selection. Of course, spreading your research out over several of the five categories is wise since specializing in a single area can get fairly costly.

While the city is building up your empire (and you are making new cities with additional pioneer units trained up in your initial city), you can explore the map with your champion. As you explore, you can find ruins to explore, wandering monsters, and even be given quests. (Quest levels are one area of research so you must research those if you want to go on more advanced quests.) In your travels, you will come across wandering neutral heroes. They may be hired for a fee and will then become an additional unit you can use as a city administrator (some grant bonuses when stationed in cities) or a wandering general, as capable of exploring and performing quests as your main champion. Be sure to drop in to a friendly city with each of your heroes (including your champion) in order to purchase additional arms and armaments to make your heroes more powerful. Research in the appropriate categories will open up even more items for purchase later in the game. In a rather odd twist, if you meet a hero of the opposite gender you may even option to propose marriage. If you do, a whole other realm of diplomacy opens up where you periodically have children appear, grow up, and then become eligible to marry the children of your opponents. In fact, if you have a successful marriage alignment, grandchildren (with some of your initial traits) could be born who then have a chance of returning back to your side to assist you in your nation building.

All this flexibility comes at a cost. Your entire empire generates plenty of information at any given time, and a good ruler needs to keep track of it all. The interface is well made, but also has its own learning curve. It takes a while to come to terms with its ins and outs. Unfortunately, there is no significant game manual (even the PDF is pretty lightweight with a list of hotkeys being the most useful page) included in the game. There is a game-wide information or help page available at any time during the game, but it is listed in very broad categories like “improvements” or “combat”. Looking a specific thing up, like how caravans work, can be fairly tricky – are they under improvements since they help your economy or under something else – there is no “unit” category. There is a “campaign” game available that places the player on a large map with many triggered events provides a minor introduction to the basics of building an empire. While it does help step a player through the extreme basics of building up an empire, it doesn’t help much with using the interface. Since the campaign provides a somewhat artificial, stepwise introduction to the game, I quit partway through and started full game in order to get a better grasp on how building an empire works as a whole.

What is the final verdict? It’s mixed. On the one hand, this game has a wealth of options and choices to provide a near limitless amount of replays. Just playing through with an emphasis on each of the various spellbooks will end up with a different style of game. On the other hand, the game does require a fair bit of commitment to learn the ins and outs of all the various options. Once a player has a game or two under their belt, things come fairly easily, although managing a sprawling, large empire can become tricky at times. There are queues and other basic construction functions to help with management, but most unit management (such as movement) has to be done by hand instead of setting up queues or waypoints. The game can be played against other players (up to 16 total) but due to the length of the game (at least a few hours) it will most often be played against the computer AI. While Stardock is known for its excellent AI programming in Galactic Civilizations (and similar follow-up games) the AI for Elemental is still on the weak side. Given, I haven’t played at the highest settings, but at the normal setting the computer AI is still doing some rather poor decision-making. However, what Stardock IS known for, is ongoing support of their games. Updates continue to come out and I would expect the game to only become better and more balanced (for example, ranged combat seems to be a bit too easy at the moment) as time wears on. While the game isn’t quite polished enough at the moment for me to crown it game of the year or anything, it is very engaging and will easily drag you into that “just one more turn” type of feeling for which 4X games are known. If you’re hankering for a 4X style strategy game with a strong fantasy/magical theme, look no further. While the game is good at the moment, I expect it to get even better over the next few months.

Kid Factor: This game has a fairly steep learning curve and has enough complexity that it would probably frustrate younger players. Know your audience here, but a gamer who thrives on the more complex side of things in games like Civilization may take a likeing to Elemental: War of Magic. I’d recommend a strong strategy gaming middle school student if not even a stronger high school student. There isn’t too much heavy reading required but there is a lot of information to process. From a more conservative standpoint, there isn’t too much to object to here. There is virtually no blood nor gore in the battles (bodies just tend to fade away) and I found most of the graphics to be fairly tame with people nearly always wearing appropriate levels of clothing. For those uncomfortable with the fantasy genre, there are references to summoning monsters as well as demons or devils to help your (or your enemy’s) side.

Tags: Game Reviews