4X Stardock's Elemental: Sorcerer King War of Fallen Legendary Heroes

[muds_animal_friend]

This one flew under my radar. Are Stardock trying to release Elemental yet again? Available on Steam Early Access today:

http://sorcererking.com/



http://forums.sorcererking.com/458072

Plymouth, Michigan – October 2, 2014 – Stardock announced today the Early Access beta of Sorcerer King, a new breed of strategy game in which the player must stop a single, overwhelmingly powerful enemy from destroying the world. In Sorcerer King, the doomsday counter is always advancing; only by recruiting powerful champions, crafting magical artifacts to customize their capabilities, and expanding your kingdom can you stop the Sorcerer King’s apocalyptic plan.

The Sorcerer King beta is available now at http://store.steampowered.com/app/241990 for $39.99 (discounted 15% to $34.00 for a limited time). Players are able to explore a vast and detailed world, finding treasure and adventure throughout the monster-infested wilderness. Overcome tough but often amusing dilemmas in hundreds of quests written by Cracked.com’s Chris Bucholz, and command your armies in tactical battles against the Sorcerer King’s monstrous hordes. You must defeat the Sorcerer King’s terrifying lieutenants to unlock the Shadow Gate and eventually battle the dark demigod himself or all will be lost. Again.

A sophisticated "Game Master" AI controls the Sorcerer King’s unscripted assaults. Unlike traditional 4X games where evenly matched rival factions race toward diverse victory conditions, Sorcerer King has the player and his enemy playing by an entirely different set of rules. The Sorcerer King doesn’t need to crush your empire, he just needs to destroy the magical shards in order to enact his doomsday plan. Defending the shards, not careful plotting toward economic victory, is the only way to save the world.

"Sorcerer King is a new model for 4X games," said Derek Paxton, VP of Stardock Entertainment. "Instead of competing against equal players, you’re behind the eight ball trying to stop the Sorcerer King and his minions from destroying the world. It’s strategy gaming under a guillotine."

Many additions are planned for Sorcerer King as it proceeds toward full release early next year. Among those, minor factions that can be wooed by either the player or the Sorcerer King are being fleshed out with deep questlines and unique units (though from the Sorcerer King’s perspective, the player's kingdom is a minor faction too – beware of envoys bearing gifts). Five more sovereigns to play as, each with their own skill trees, spell lists, and special units, are coming soon. A limited number of maps are available currently for the purpose of focusing feedback, but many hand-crafted maps as well as random maps will be added as the beta continues.

The graphics appear to have taken a step in the direction of Warcraft.

 

[hoverdog]

excuse me if I don't hold my breath.

 

[dehimos]

This game appears simpler than the others.

 

[mastroego]

I mostly like the people at Stardock but I'll be VERY wary of anything they do from now on.
Only the most glaring consensus of awesomeness could convince me to buy another game of theirs.
For now at least.

 

[Agesilaus]

oh good another game just like elemental, watch me not buy it

 

[sser]

Damn. Seriously damn. There's been news of a new and improved Elemental being in the works for awhile, but this is awfully disappointing.

It's from the same game universe. The gameplay and the visuals are pretty dramatically different but we have tried to keep some elements consistent with the other titles in the series.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

The setup intrigued me in that the AI is already a superpower before the game even begins. I've found that with recent 4Xs the only single-player entertainment to be had was in 'Player versus Environment' rather than 'Player versus AI Player', so I was hoping this would bring something new to the table. However, at the moment, it looks as soulless as a games journalist that's just made a 'surprise' career move to PR at a major games publisher.

 

[mastroego]

The real reason behind this has to be the traditional AI issues for this kind of games.
This solves the issue by basically not having it (I'm not saying it cannot work, and Paxton did salvage what he could for elemental so far).

Still, the fantasy 4x game I'm waiting for is Worlds of Magic.

 

[Mortmal]

MY first impression too when i saw it, they want to sale elemental once again. I dont know anything about the new gameplay but i can already say i dont like the graphic style much . Endless legends has its problems, but graphically its considerably better looking than this generic wow like style.

VS

or better the tactical view:

VS

 

[Hobo Elf]

lol 31€ on Steam EA. I was willing to entertain the idea of biting the bullet here, but not for that price.

 

[Irenaeus]

I'll buy this shit just to support Stardock, as usual. But Endless Legends is the one I'm buying AND playing this weekend.

 

[Hobo Elf]

In the end I caved in and got the game.

I've put 5 hours in the game and so far I can say that the game idea works really well. It feels more like a 4X / RPG hybrid where your army could be considered a kind of party of heroes who you outfit in gear that you craft and go on a adventure to save the world. It's also pretty challenging because there's a lot of pressure to go out and save those Crystals before the Sorcerer King's minions get to them and crush them. Each game has a finite time limit as the doom track advances each time a crystal is smashed bringing the Sorcerer King closer to destroying the world. You can't just turtle and grind your guys into godly units because you need to make those turns count and always push forward.

The goal in each game seem to be the same. Save as many crystals as you can, find the two Generals who roam around the world, kill them and then storm the Sorcerer King's castle and kill him. It's a neat concept and it works well, although there are several wonky issues with the balance which I guess is to be expected from EA. I haven't played any of the Fallen Enchantress games before so I don't know how they compare to this, but I like what I see so far in this game. They put an interesting spin on the genre and it works well imo.

 

[SuicideBunny]

stardock can go shove their elemental games up their asses. never again, even more so after i didn't get the updated version despite buying the first one for full price.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

The change of focus is interesting, but the pricing is unrealistic. I paid half that price for Endless Legends when it was in early access. Hell, even the full release of Endless Legends is cheaper than Sorcerer King EA. Gonna wait for a Steam sale.

 

[whatevername]

A sophisticated "Game Master" AI controls the Sorcerer King’s unscripted assaults. Unlike traditional 4X games where evenly matched rival factions race toward diverse victory conditions, Sorcerer King has the player and his enemy playing by an entirely different set of rules. The Sorcerer King doesn’t need to crush your empire, he just needs to destroy the magical shards in order to enact his doomsday plan. Defending the shards, not careful plotting toward economic victory, is the only way to save the world.

Translation:
This time we have degenerated too much to even write scripts, so the assaults are completely random. We are too dumb to make shit on the level of traditional 4x games. Sorcerer King gets +100000000 gold. It's much easier to have the 'AI' destroy some shard than win against non-monkeys when the 'AI' is completely random. No fucking idea what that sentence says.

 

[DeepOcean]

I once believed on Star Dock, really wanted a decent and atmospheric fantasy 4x. Played the AoW series and while the games were good, I felt it lacked some more deep and satisfying mechanics. When I heard about elemental, I tought it was an improved version of AoW, didn't even compared it with MoM but even that was too difficult for Stardock to accomplish. Fuck them and their spreadsheets with lazy Ai and dead art direction.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I know it's not a popular game here, but I decided to give the game a look to see if it had been updated and report my findings. To my surprise it had been updated. Two new sovereigns have been added, the Tyrant and the Guardian. The Tyrant is as what you'd expect from a guy with a title like that. Basically he's like the Sorcerer King himself: a bad wizard. Where the game is about protecting the crystals and stopping the SK to destroy them, the Tyrant on the other hand can destroy the crystals for personal gain and power just as the SK does. His troops and powers grow stronger as the doom counter goes up and he has the ability to cast the same spell that the SK is trying to cast to ascend into godhood, giving you a new and different victory condition should you go down that research path. Basically it's SK vs SK. Kinda neat.

The Guardian is like a mixture of a Druid and Priest, I guess. She has some land altering spells to heal the land from blight so you can settle even further into the SK's territory as well as the ability to heal the crystals as well to prevent them from destruction.

Other new additions are land altering spells as stated before. You can now create mountains to protect strategic locations, destroy mountains for metal resources, destroy forests so they don't hinder your movement, cure blighted land or I think make blighted land yourself. The usual stuff you'd expect. They also added minor factions that you can help to make them join your cause (before they join the SK) or you can just crush them yourself so they won't become a hinderance later. There is some kind of reputation system as well. I'm not sure what the benefits are with getting positive reputation with the Sorcerer King himself when you are trying to end him before he ends everything, but it's there. Maybe it's just to make him less aggressive towards you for a while?

That's about all the new things I noticed from my short time playing today. I haven't been able to test out the new Sovereigns very far in, but they seem a lot more interesting than the first one which was a generic Wizard. It's a pretty fun game that has the potential to become quite good if you can look past the uninspired art style.

 

[Great Deceiver]

For all the flak they get, Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes is actually pretty good. Brad Wardell showed some actual character in realizing he couldn't design games for shit and bringing Derek Paxton in. I agree that the original Elemental was total shit, and it took them many iterations to get anything decent out of it, but at least they did it.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

For all the flak they get, Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes is actually pretty good.

 

[Irenaeus]

So I'm actually having fun with Elemental Fallen Enchentress Legendary Heroes, call me easily entertained. I'll wait on this Sorceror Kings, for now.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Beta 4 was released yesterday. I only gave it a very, very brief spin, but it seems to have been mostly a polish update. They added more animations, they added a new Sovereign which I haven't tried yet, there seems to be new buildings I can do in my main city etc.. Crafting system seems to have been revamped as well. I might give it a deeper look later today.

Edit: I finally gave it a try last night. It's still quite buggy but feels a lot more meaty than before. I like the direction the game is headed. Balance is still completely off the walls though. Some units are just absolute wrecking machines and I see no point in building the low tier units since they tend to die pretty much instantly. Most of the sovereign abilities are pretty crappy except for the Wizard one, Hypnotism, which is the absolute best. Why on earth would you pick the ability to summon a super crappy Earth Elemenatl when you can Hypnotize pretty much any unit and keep it forever. Hypnotize a few dragons and it's GG.
tl;dr: Game is getting good but still buggy and subject to many changes in the future. What it is now is probably not very close to what the game will be like when it is finished.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Game's out, any impressions?

 

[ArchAngel]

Game's out, any impressions?

Considering their previous Elemental games I would say shit. Or maybe this one is even playable since it is 5x smaller in scope than a normal 4x game like Endless Legends.

Personally I would rather play EL for 7th time than play another Elemental game again.

 

[Grokalibre]

Dat pack mentality tho

 

[MoLAoS]

I already broke the game a few times. They are nerfing Varda and then Imperial hero. Not totally because of me but still. I exploited the shit out of this game. I won on Brad's recommended settings for max difficulty after a mere 2 serious games. My total time played is 32 hours according to Steam but that's not totally accurate. I'd leave the game up when I was at work sometimes. Granted I abused Varda and got a 0 mana spell that would tame a dragon 30% of the time and had no cooldown but w/e. Not my fault they put that in the game.