Elemental: War of Magic. I thought it was going to be this mega-epic successor to Master of Magic. Magical crafting, monster summoning, customizable mage skills, city building, big battles. Then dynasties, political maneuvering, customizable units and such were promised. It has some of that, but in the greyest, most watered-down form I could imagine.
The graphics were about the ugliest things I've seen, all grey-brown and messy with dodgy 3D. They really should've taken a note from Heroes of Might and Magic II. That has colorful graphics and pretty landscapes, even if it's 2D and came out in '96. Elemental's graphics are just so meh, everything's perpetually shrouded in mist and nothing much looks like it belongs in a fantasy setting. Even the spells are jerky and visually uninteresting.
The whole game system is badly broken. Probably the worst mistake was having the leader as an actual unit in the game. It means that your mage - YOU - can be taken out with a casual spell. It also means that you can knock out an entire city, army, or enemy leader with similar ease. Armies - and the overlong technology tree that backs them - are essentially worthless. Any AoE magic can simply annihilate them. It's very easy to level up one's mage to be an unstoppable one-man (or woman) magical juggernaut of instant death.
There's also a disappointing lack of monsters in the game. Oh, you can call up an elemental or giant or wolf or imp, but what's the point when they're roughly on par with the already-worthless foot soldier? The game is in desperate need of mythological creatures, both summonable and wild. To reference Heroes 2 again, that game had over three dozen, some of them coming in multiple forms.
Another thing is the lack of variety in the game. Whether you play as the Kingdom of Light or the Empire of Darkness, you'll still be using the same batch of spells and troops. There's no special healing magic or necromancy or whatever or a particular side or magician. The only real difference is that the "good" side gets horses and the "evil" side can grow more food and ride wolves. The tech tree branches are renamed but they do the same things. There is, again, the issue that the Forces of Darkness are singularly unimpressive when the Dark Lord can be casually incinerated on the way to razing his citadel. Lords of Magic, at least, rectified that by having him actually go out and destroy/conquer and be dangerous.
So, yeah. That's why I found it so disappointing. Maybe I hyped it too much to myself as well.
