BTW, can anyone who got the copy describe the magic system they went with? Have they kept their promise of discarding the rock-paper-scissors system of "fire beats water" bunch of identical spells (ice bolt = fire bolt) and replace it with something more creative, or not?
I don't know if they ever promised that. But it's pretty bad too, IMO, for a game about magic.
It goes like this. You pick your starting spell access from one of six books, and how many books you pick draws directly out of your points pool for assigning stats. They're very expensive.
These are the books you start with, all the spells you can initially research are defined by this choice. You can research tech later on that makes it so you can find more spell books and learn the spells they offer...but so far that seems way later and somewhat random.
The books are, yes, you guessed it, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Death and Life Maigc, Enchantment and Time. Your choice of access to life or death magic is based on which faction you play, humans or fallen. Humans get life magic, Fallen get death. In that sense, life and death magic are freebie books.
Between campaign and sand box so far, I've seen..
-Teleport to square in friendly influence sphere
-Summon Bear, Little Imp, Wildling
-Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Arcane Arrow
-A 3x3 fire attack spell, Infernal
-Shield Ally, Shield City from magical attack
-Reduce city output, double city food consumption (curse)
-+1 City Resource/Food
-Make a square in tactical battle inaccessible
-Double a unit's strength
-Some others that aren't cool enough to remember.
I've only got two books and am only at Spell Level 5 though.
Then there are the magic shards in the world that when you build a city near them and encompass them in your influence sphere, you can build on them, and it increases the effectiveness of all spells associated with the shard. There are other spells and techs that play off shard possession too.
You can imbue your champions with spell casting ability, by spending your essence stat. Essence, however, defines your max mana pool and mana regen, so it's quite a trade off. You can buy your essence back up by spending your level up points on it though.
Getting new spells is also kind of lifeless and devoid of flavor. You have Arcane Research points. These just pile up. When you have enough, a dialog window pops up and goes "Do you want to learn a spell from this level, or research access to higher level of spells?" Then you pick a spell to research, forget about it since it takes a good long while, and...yeah. MoM at least had the fun of a neat looking spell book and interesting if not always effective spells. What should be the most interesting and flavorful part of the Elemental is fairly bland.
So far in the sand box, where they don't give you a sovereign with ridiculously high stats, magic is pretty meh mechanically too. It's damage is capped by your intelligence, and the damage range is huge. Like...10 to 100% damage when you attack. The rate at which melee gets better because of advances in equipment research relegates combat magic in the early game to low damage, mana limited archery.
I'm sure magic later on is better, and starting with books that offer offensive spells is probably more exciting, but yeah, overall, magic is pretty damn boring so far.
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Topic: Elemental - War of Magic (Read 85593 times)