i can actually sort of see quite a lot of this. personally i think the game is guilty of holding back the shiny, fun stuff until it is far too late, or the shiny stuff is just unnecessarry. personally, i think bows, leather armour, shields, small squads, a couple of spells, and a couple of buildings should be available from the get go. it shouldn't about people racing to get these things, it should be about getting BETTER things that makes the game. currently this first 100 turns at least are spent getting to this basic level, which isn't fun.

so far i get the feeling i'm the dominant power (i've conquered a city pretty easily, but i can't be sure since there is no empire comparison screen and scouting is impossible without entering territory and starting a way), yet i still haven't even worked out how to get bows...? (though i'm playing empire, and it's possible they don't even get them). i don't even know what shape the world is.

generally though, i think stardock should be counting their lucky stars as far as reviews go. it's really lucky they have enough goodwill that the big places don't want to review the game yet. so far elemental has yet to earn a reputation amongst gamers as a "bad game," which is cool. given it hasn't even been released physically in europe, i would say the window for a european launch is still wide open.

the people crying sour grapes are really missing the point. reviewers are just people with opinions. being an indie game never stopped gal civ 2 getting great reviews on release, so don't use that "industry influence" line on me. to use a rock band analogy, the only bands who complain about bad album reviews are people like Limp Bizkit, Nickelback and Creed.

the best chance that this game has is for them to sit down and completely rethink the aspects of the game that are supposed to be fun but aren't (casting spells, designing units and fighting battles). the settlement management is actually quite good imho. redesign the interface, make the endgame playable on my quadcore with GeForce 9600, ditch Combat Speed and 1dN and come up with a tutorial. then release that all as a big free patch (give it a shiny new name like Dawn of War did with their Last Stand patch to make it seem like a mini-expansion) and THEN tell people to review that version of the game.

oh, and actually make a trailer so i can show my friends the game  even exists. so far the game's awful publicity has actually worked well in it's favour.

But the "big places" won't wait around until February 2011 (a discussed release date during later beta) which is the likely date that Elemental should have been released.  Elemental will probably end up with a similar MetaCritic and GameRankings score of Masters of Orion III.  And as most strategy game players know, that's not the pedestal I'd want to be on.

Elemental's going to get a 60 or so metacritic average and you think they should be counting their lucky stars? Only an idiot or asshole would consider that lucky, take your pick. Go out onto Metacritic and look at the types of games that get a 60 metacritic average. MOO 3, a total POS game got in the 60s. 

Elemental has its flaws but it's a masterpiece compared to MOO3 when it launched.  And only became marginally better because of fan patches later. So spare us the hater bullshit that Stardock is somehow getting cut a break. 

The game is getting the reviews it deserves, negative ones, because they released it with bugs, out of memory problems and a UI that's extremely unintuitive.  I find the game fun. A lot of  other people do too. Back when MOO3 shipped you couldn't find anyone having "fun" with the game because there was no fun to be had, when it worked that is. 

The abomination, Temple of Elemental evil has a 71 metacritic average. Even Dungeon Lords got a 45 and that game wasn't even as good as the early Elemental betas. So get some goddamn perspective. 

Metacritic scores are essentially flawed, as there's no point scaling for time. Quake II still boasts a huge metacritic score on Steam, and well... let's just say the old girl hasn't aged so well. We can argue over gems such as System Shock, Deus Ex and so on.

But, truth be told, Elemental isn't going to hit anything above an 80, even if it was working. Low-fantasy is great if done properly, but you have to work damn hard to make it work well [Gothic I / II are perhaps the best examples of it working well, and yes, I'm aware of the fatal bugs in those, but at least they were ambitious for their time period].

Mud + researching bows in mid-game doth not an exciting game maketh. Nor does ever-lasting-ever-spawning mobs of wolves & spiders. To which you add insta-teleporting Crime-busting sovereigns to fix said wolf problems. Who use spells that are broken in the code and do minimal damage. With archers who kill summoned stone golems with arrows.

Ugh. Ok. Let's just say - getting an 80 in six months time is still going to be tough.

IGN just issued a statement:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/111/1117649p1.html

Well metacritic is actually a perfect example of the special treatment they are getting. Currently it has no overall metacritic score because so many sites are waiting to review it. Obviously the ones who are reviewing it are going to give it low scores though because the initially released version deserves them.

I agree that MOO3 and ToEE deserved low scores, but I disagree that elemental is in any way superior to them. Yes there are people who still think elemental is fun, but there were plenty of people who argued that for the other 2 games as well (I've in fact had this same argument on their forums back in the day). But all three were released an incomplete buggy mess with broken mechanics and incomplete game play.

MOO3 was judged on the basis of what came in the box and Elemental is being judged on how people imagine it will be in 6 months.

It has no overall metacritic score because there aren't enough reviews yet (same way rottentomatoes works), it's not special treatment.

And there aren't enough reviews yet because most reviewers are giving elemental extra time before they review the game

Edit: I'm not saying that metacritic itself is giving them special treatment. I'm saying that most other reviewers are and it's reflected in their metacritic score (or lack thereof).

Just opening the manual, I was thinking "is that all there is to the game?".  Then when I started playing, I'm saying "Wow, there's tons more, but where and how do you learn to use it all?".  Then, as I slowly, painfully, figure out all the mechanics and UI (mostly by trial and error), I'm realizing "How is your average gamer ever going to learn to play this game?".  Now, I'm pretty sure I've learned 90% of the rules and UI, and I've played for several days, and I have very mixed feelings.

I really like the city building and how research is done (your never really sure what research you'll get).  Of course, it all needs a lot of balance, but what new game does'nt.

The UI is awful.  Info/stats are either hard to find (or actually disapears when you most need it, like when your cities level up or you try to build a building).  And the tactcial battles, well, they are "primative" to the point of being like a 1980s game.  I like the questing and Adventure research that lets you go/do/see more dangerous/profitable loot.  And no MP at launch, which I can deal with, cause I like to play lots of solo before MP, but the AI is SO bad, I wish they had included Hotseat so I could play my cat and get a more difficult oppoent.

Yes, Stardock is VERY lucky they have such good relationships and reputation.  I could not imagine other games/companies getting such "stays of execution" from reviewers.  I'd give the game a C- at this time, with a potencial A- for the future (and I don't mean in the next couple weeks).

Reviewers aren't unbaised, even if they pretend to be. They let other things get in the way of their reviews. In particular, Stardock has three things going for them

1) A lot of good will. People like underdogs and Stardock qualifies. They are an indy developer, they run the underdog online game purchase service etc. Also they are rather nice, open people. That makes people like them, and want to like what they do.

2) A good history. They've published two top flight 4X games (GalCiv 2 and Sins) in the last decade. Both were extremely well received. Thus people expect their next product to be good as well. They'll rate it higher than they might, even if it isn't. You can see that with Valve. They can do no wrong according to most. They release something like Left 4 Dead 2, which is very much just a samey expansion pack branded as a game that has some graphics/performance issues due to the old engine that is Source, yet it got nearly perfect reviews. People wanted it to be great because it was Valve. Same deal here.

3) A real desire for this kind of game. A lot of gamers and thus game reviewers really, really want a good fantasy 4x game. They want what Elemental aims to be. As such they find it hard to rag on it, because they want a game like it so bad. It has been so long since there was a good fantasy 4x game.

Thus, they are getting probably more of a break than they should. Over all, I'm glad. While I am not happy with Elemental now and I do think people should have consequences for what they do, I do have faith. They just released it too early. This should be Beta 3 or 4 here. Given that they do have a history of support, I have hope that it will be great in 6 months. However I don't want to see everyone pass it over because it wasn't great at launch. It would suck for it to be a great game that gets overlooked.

We'll see what happens. I have a feeling they'll have a rather different timeline and schedule for their next game.

Yeah, it was a different era when MOO3 came out. Back then, if what was in the box was pure crap, it was game over. You suck as a dev. All the reviewers would maul you. Now, "indies" like Stardock can get away with selling $50 boxes that say "IOU: 1 finished game" and use the sales of those boxes to finish the game. It's a catch-22 for fans like me: Either support "indies" and reward that kind of behavior, or rage against them and contribute to big corporate domination of the games industry.

If you ask me, this industry is heading for another crash. All our heroes are either dead or have gone to the dark side.

Wow, and vanilla ToEE was a bugfest basically. [Note: Imo it's the best CRPG at it is now with the huge community patch...]

Oh really? I played MoO3 retail version, w/out any patches, and it worked. And MoO3 has muuuuuch more content and gameplay depth than Elemental. Maybe, someday, if Brad does not back out of supporting it, like he did with Demigod, E:WoM WILL be better than MoO3, but reviewers should judge what already is there, not what Brad promises there will be.

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That doesn't seem to be the case at all, to me. Quite the opposite. Aside from Neoseeker, who gave it a fantastic rating (and apparently is a member of this community, on the beta team, which does make his review somewhat idiosyncratic), almost every other reviewer constantly pointed out the virtues of Stardock and often repeated their claim that they believe that this game will be, if not excellent, then probably great or at least good at some point in the future. I read a LOT of good will in those reviews, almost all of which seemed fair. The French one seemed the only one that was aggressive, and the "game enema" one the only one which seemed very questionable. Most of them seemed fair, and some of them right on spot. Of course, that's only my opinion.