Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is the stand alone expansion to 2010’s worst game of the year, Elemental: War on Magic. The biggest flaw WoM had was that it took the ball from Master of Magic and other incredible, turn based strategy empire games like it and fumbled. Hard. Boring, bland spells and armies, complex and unrewarding economies, deeply flawed gameplay mechanics and game rules. The list goes on. It was my most anticipated game of that year, and it let us all down. With the promise of doing it right this time, new talent was hired (including the lead designer for Civilization V, Jon Shafer) and a much bigger budget was allotted for Fallen Enchantress. People who purchased the War on Magic game were informed Fallen Enchantress would be a free game for them, by way of atonement. The day has finally arrived. Is Fallen Enchantress the redemption Stardock was aiming for?
I am happy to report that so far, my early impressions after starting two games (and getting to a point where I lost both of them) is that this is actually something potentially special and is fun and deserves to be given a try. Is it a perfect strategy game? Well, no, but neither is XCOM or CiV as far as that goes. What it is, however, is well crafted, very polished, and contains seemingly endless possibilities and content.