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[Lap]

I reported a terrible bug back in beta 3 that prevents the game from even booting up and it still hasn't been fixed in retail. Looks like refund time.

[SeaBee]

That doesn't sound promising.

Any other first impressions? $50 is a heavy price to pay for mediocrity.

[Lap]

I've been with them since the beginning of beta all the way until the last two (I couldn't join the last couple of months since the game wouldn't even start). From everything I experienced early in the beta and from what I've seen on the forums it really looks like they had to rush to meet a deadline. There are still many problems being reported even hours after release on their forums. I simply cannot imagine how they can go from a nearly unplayable game with little content to a finished and balanced game in only a few months. The later phases of beta needed way more testing.

I would really wait to try and demo and for many more patches to come out. The saving grace of this game is going to be how well they made the mod tools. So I'd say to wait a few months until the bugs are fixed and some of the better mods rise to the surface.

Also, the campaign is 6-8 hours long so don't count on that keeping you busy. The maps are also not very random at all and it's common to see near exact replicates of maps over and over.

[SeaBee]

Thanks, Lap. I'll just pretend it's still in beta ... which may not be far from the truth by the sound of it. 

[Lap]

As far as I'm concerned it still is in beta and I'll probably be getting a refund and put that money to Civ 5 assuming it's any good. I'm estimating a metacritic rating of in the 70%'s for Elemental (I'm 11 for 13 in these estimates so far).

I kind of feel bad from them since they have such friendly devs and support staff, but I simply can't tolerate having to pay for an unfinished product after already being a beta tester for so long.

Always worth checking out the support forum of games before you buy them. This is a few hours after the beta testers and most preorders have played the game: http://forums.elementalgame.com/forum/877

[Heavenfall]

One of the "big" bugs in beta was a memory leak it took them until the end of beta to find, which affected ati cards on 64bit windows 7. I remember gleefully reading that they'd finally found and fixed it. But apparently they did some other fix and now it's back. Which pretty much makes the game unplayable for me.

I haven't used a single curse word (here), but I'm seriously mad about this. Now I can either wait until it's fixed, or turn every setting imaginable down to below bare minimum and play a 10 year old game.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

[Lap]

affected ati cards on 64bit windows 7.

So when, if ever, they fix my problem just booting into the game I'll have to deal with this too? Sweeeeetttt.

[nenjin]

affected ati cards on 64bit windows 7.

So when, if ever, they fix my problem just booting into the game I'll have to deal with this too? Sweeeeetttt.

I swear to god, I don't know the specific problem with Win 7 64 bit and ATi cards is, but it's seriously fucking pissing me off. I have one and I just got Win 7 a couple of weeks ago, and every game acts strangely or has issues.

[Lap]

That's odd, I've actually had 0 problems with anything on Win7-64bit with an ATI. Elemental has been the only failure here. Otherwise I'd have to say this is the smoothest OS transition I've ever had.

[janekk]

That's odd, I've actually had 0 problems with anything on Win7-64bit with an ATI.   ...   . Otherwise I'd have to say this is the smoothest OS transition I've ever had.

Same here. So is it out yet?

[nenjin]

I ordered about an hour ago. I'm hoping their system is automated, because if it has to be validated by hand, I won't be able to download for several hours.

That's odd, I've actually had 0 problems with anything on Win7-64bit with an ATI. Elemental has been the only failure here. Otherwise I'd have to say this is the smoothest OS transition I've ever had.

I don't know, maybe this card is going. It's a 4770, which I think is an off model, but still. Everything about this OS transition has been ok except how it reacts to this card. A few games I have are crippled by problems, and others run fine but have flashing textures and crap like that.

[janekk]

Here's their (incomplete) 4-part game play walk through. It goes in and out of character, so there's some non-informational reading, but it covers all the major parts of game play.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

[Lap]

I'm really interested to see how modding Civ V compares to modding Elemental. Both of which are shaping up to allow crazy total conversions. I might end up modding with Civ V just because I love Lua so much.

[nenjin]

I be downloading now. Praying I get to play without having major graphical issues, but I'm not holding my breath. More than likely I'm about to spend 30 minutes wiping drivers and reinstalling an old card.

[Heavenfall]

One of the "big" bugs in beta was a memory leak it took them until the end of beta to find, which affected ati cards on 64bit windows 7. I remember gleefully reading that they'd finally found and fixed it. But apparently they did some other fix and now it's back. Which pretty much makes the game unplayable for me.

I haven't used a single curse word (here), but I'm seriously mad about this. Now I can either wait until it's fixed, or turn every setting imaginable down to below bare minimum and play a 10 year old game.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

Quoting myself. I am able to play for about an hour before it crashes. Certainly annoying, but something I can live with... for a few days.

The single player campaign seems like it's a lot of fun, feels very polished (no difficulty setting?  ). So far it has been a straight path, no real choices to make. Just started, though.