Fallen Enchantress: 5 Things That Have Improved Elemental, and 5 Things That Need to Improve

Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is part sequel, part mega-patch, and part total conversion for Stardock's deeply flawed fantasy 2010 strategy game, Elemental: War of Magic. Reeling from the assault of disappointed reviewers and angry fans, Stardock admitted it'd done wrong and vowed to make it right. CEO Brad Wardell stepped aside from design and brought in star modder Derek Paxton, who led development of the highly-regarded Fall from Heaven for Civilization 4, to take over and make Elemental a better strategy game.

I've spent some with the Fallen Enchantress beta in advance of its October 23rd release date, and while I've seen some big improvements, I've also still got some big questions about whether Paxton, or anyone, can really tame Elemental's daringly open-ended, ambitious design into something 4X strategy gamers can grow to love.

What's Improved

1 - Personality

War of Magic is one of the brownest games I've ever played. Not in the snarky way people say military and post-apocalyptic shooters are gray and brown, but in the literal sense that Elemental's world is made entirely from shades of khaki and cinnamon. That aesthetic extends to the characters you meet there: vague heroes who are mostly there to give a name to stack of inventory slots and stats, and to boring kingdoms that all look and act behave identically.


In Fallen Enchantress, the default kingdoms and heroes have some character -- even if it doesn't necessarily translate to gameplay -- and the world itself has more variety. You have shadowy magical forests with what look like fairy lights twinkling in the leaves, and huge old ruins dot the landscape. Meanwhile, technologies come with a bit of flavor text that gives you a sense of a broader story and world. It all makes Fallen Enchantress feel a bit more lived-in than War of Magic ever did.

2 - City Management

Fallen Enchantress does away with War of Magic's odd city-planning mechanic, where you locate new buildings on the strategic map to connect the city to new resources and increased housing. It's interesting, I'll give it that, but ultimately it adds nothing and I'm glad it's getting kicked to the curb. Now cities just make more sense: you pick what kind of city you're constructing, and then start slapping buildings down. Your cities' needs are now viewable via an eminently sensible interface panel that highlights the important stuff at a glance.

3 - Research

Fallen Enchantress simplifies Elemental's slightly randomized tech tree and makes research goals something you can plan, rather than just hope for. It's got a traditional tree layout, not just the confused categories that define War of Magic's research, and it doesn't just arbitrarily increase the difficulty of unlocking the next technology in a given category. The big improvement here, in other words, is that research works like it does in a traditional 4X.


4 - Magic

Ironically, this was the most disappointing part of War of Magic. You research spells and in no time, your Sovereign is lousy with magical abilities. So many, in fact, that magic feels trivial. Fallen Enchantress fixes that by making it much harder to increase your arcane arsenal, and you have to pursue the right kind of magic to suit your strategy. Spellbook management is also a lot better, sorted neatly into different contextual trees so you never waste time leafing through all your spells when all you want is a magical buff for one for your cities.

5 - Default Units

Customization is great, to a point. War of Magic demands a lot of customization. Default units are kind of crummy and super boring, so every new tech level required another trip to the customization screen to update old designs and create new ones. Fallen Enchantress doesn't make that mistake, it just spits out a useful variety of units with a solid description of what that unit is for. Customization is still possible, of course, but not mandatory.


What Still Needs Work

1 - Disjointedness

War of Magic and Fallen Enchantress are both three games in one. They are an RPG, a 4X strategy game, and a tactical wargame all ambitiously mashed together. Fallen Enchantress still suffers from the same problem of making all the pieces feel like they fit together well, because it's not always clear how much a new pair of bracers and an enchanted longbow are going to change what my hero can do on the battlefield, or whether I should be out grinding experience or just conquering a neighbor. That leads to the next problem...


2 - Learning Curve

Fallen Enchantress is easy to play, but hard to be good at. There's a lot of trial and error as I decided how to balance grooming heroes, expanding my kingdom, and researching new techs. It's not really intuitive, and because the world is so harzardous, it's hard to go exploring and trying new things.

3 - Combat

Tactical combat is still a little too simple and a little too ugly to be an appealing part of Elemental. I'm still waiting for the enemies and battlefields that will demand tactics more involved than lining up a bunch of meat shields and ganging up on targets while ranged units plink away from behind.

4 - Diplomacy

Interactions with other kingdoms still seem a little weird so far. My rivals are kind of antisocial (they get in touch to make outrageous tribute demands or to beg for aid, but not much else) and negotiation involves way too much fine-tuning.

5 - Story

Fallen Enchantress does a better job of setting up the history of its world and who the major characters in it are, but it does less well at making each game feel like it's adding a new chapter in the story. This is a time when the world is being renewed and great forces are supposedly awakening, but... it doesn't always feel like that. I'm hoping for more late-game content and quest lines that give me a sense of the fiction.


Overall, Fallen Enchantress changes enough to make Elemental worth revisiting. There was a lot that needed to be overhauled in War of Magic, and Stardock has done a great job of sanding down a lot of those rough edges. Judgement on whether Paxton has carved a great strategy game out of Elemental's raw stone, however, will have to wait until October 23rd -- a lot can change very quickly in a 4X game. They're kind of magical that way.