I don’t mind the occasional redundant spell. For instance, I think each Sphere needs some sort of offensive capability. But no Sphere has any sort of theme or personality to it. It’s not that a couple spells are redundant, it’s that they almost all are. You get an attack spell that does 0-INT damage and you get a “Summon X Elemental”, a bunch of spells of questionable value, and none of them are effective past the early game. Where’s my Fire meteor swarm to turn an enemy’s city into a giant crater with the wonderful deformable terrain this engine has? Where’s the floods I can raise with water, or the kraken I can summon to wreck havoc on coastal cities and ships? Or Earth letting me uncover more metal/gold mines, raise massive fortifications, or shake apart enemy structures with earthquakes?
As it stands right now, if you want to go with a magic-heavy approach, you need to grab all the elemental books because you have no idea what shards you’re going to be able to find. The only decision I make regarding magic is, once a shard is found, I focus on that Sphere’s spells, and that’s hardly an interesting decision with pros and cons. There’s certainly no reason to research Fireball (or any fire combat spell) over Lightning Bolt when I have an Air Shard handy, or vice versa.
And then there’s Champions, which are the appendix of elemental, the part of the game which serves no discernible purpose. I want champions to be, first of all, effective at something. They are champions after all. But other than that, I want them to be more interesting than raising stat points per level. I loved particular champions in Age of Wonders because of particular abilities they had. Maybe one had fire breath and could fly, another one was great at counterattack, or a heal ability they had tucked away. On leveling up, I want interesting choices, to borrow phrase from Sid Meier. I want the choice to grant my Champions special abilities every few levels, even if it’s something like a Charge, a Shield Wall, immunity to counterattack, dual-wielding, leap attacks, traps, camouflage, backstabs, leadership bonuses, etc etc etc. There’s some real excellent games to take idea from: Master of Magic, King’s Bounty, Age of Wonders. This community, and that on the Elemental forum, are full of ideas and flavor that is ripe for plundering.
I don’t mean to bash on the game, because like I said, there’s a lot to like about it. But it frustrates me because because it could be terrific with a few reworked systems and a few balancing/bugfix passes. I mean terrific. It’s got the potential to be a game I’ll happily play for years and years, someone just needs to give it a giant kick in the ass to get it into shape.
