Elemental:Reforged from Stardock

[Acrux]

Elemental: War of Magic was a fantasy 4x released about 15 years ago. While Stardock had some big ideas, they were constrained by 32-bit architecture. Elemental was then followed by two other games (Fallen Enchantress and Sorcerer King) that were intended to flesh out the vision. Breaking it up into three different games obviously meant that you couldn't get the fully intended experience in any game. And while they weren't perfect, but there was a lot in them that was really, really good. In my mind, Fallen Enchantress ended up being the second-best fantasy 4x game after the Fall from Heaven 2 mod (and it's mod-mods) for Civ 4.

This new release is intended to take the best parts of those three previous games and be closer to Brad's original vision.

The full release was expected in February, but there's been enough player response that they've decided to do an EA release in October, with follow-up slices in November and December before the official release.

15 years ago we released Elemental: War of Magic. It was our most ambitious game ever and a bit of a technical disaster as all the tricks we used to make it fit into 32bit resulted in it being very unstable.

Then we released Elemental: Fallen Enchantress (and Legendary Heroes). We gave that game away for free to the early buyers of War of Magic as a show of gratitude for the player's patience and support.

While Fallen Enchantress was pretty well received, it was a shadow of the original design to make it fit better into 32bit.

And then we made a game that focused on the Crafting and Quest parts of the Elemental design but, once again, to fit in 32bit, other things had to come out and so it had a more mixed reception because it was not a 4X strategy game.

Over the past several years, we have been gradually porting the underlying engine to 64-bit and changing to a modern version of DirectX and porting the assets to modern FBX format. It was a pretty massive effort as you can imagine but as a result, we now have this 2010 game running on what amounts to a modern game engine with modern graphics standards even though the assets are, of course, still over 15 years old.

Now, the question today is: What's next? That is up to you guys.

THE ORIGINAL plan was to finish the integration of the 3 games into a single cohesive game, reexport the 2008 era art assets to their native resolution (the source art was much higher quality than what could fit in the game) and release it.

HOWEVER, the fan reaction has been a lot greater than we expected. The team thought that only we really wanted this game. This is a labor of love for us. But it turns out we are not alone.

So here we are. How much interest is there in this? Now we can find out. By fan request we are putting this into Early Access. Fan reaction and, to be honest, sales, will determine the scope.

For starters here is what we have in mind:

October 23: Early Access #1. BETA 1
- 64bit port
- DirectX 11 engine
- Crafting is in
- Graphics refresh
- New items, quests, etc.
- New balance pass
- ENGLISH only

November: Early Access #2. BETA 2
- German, French, Polish, Russian, Spanish and other languages arrive.
- Dynasties
- Player feedback integrations
- Steam Workshop support

December: Early Access #3: BETA 3
- Chinese, Japanese, and other languages added
- Campaigns: The War of Magic, The Fallen Enchantress, The Sorcerer King
- Player feedback integrations

BEYOND:
Depends on what the community wants. The marketing folks care about "Player Sentiment" (I love that word, "Sentiment") and the publishing folks use the term "Sales engagement".

The bottom line is that there's nothing stopping us from continuing to work on this game basically forever now. With Fallen Enchantress of Sorcerer King, I couldn't even add a new goodie hut without it potentially resulting in running out of memory. Those limits are now gone.

We have reunited nearly all of the original Elemental team from 2010 to work on this. We're all a bit..older but also hopefully a bit wiser. We are very excited!

Elemental: Reforged Key Features include:
•Ultimate Fantasy Sandbox. Players can create their own leaders, their own factions, and build a fantasy Civilization with its own history and lore.
•Unified Elemental Experience. Brings together the strategic depth, smart AI, and rich gameplay from Fallen Enchantress, the immersive crafting and quest systems from Sorcerer King, and the dynasty-building, terraforming, and innovative mechanics first introduced in War of Magic.
•Rich, Dynamic Worlds. Enjoy endless replayability through procedurally generated fantasy worlds filled with lore-rich quests, evolving environments that respond to your magic, unique fantasy civilizations, and bustling cities populated with individually simulated characters.
•RPG-Infused Unit Design. Customize heroes and armies through an intuitive RPG-style character designer, crafting each unit with their own unique history, stats, equipment, and abilities, growing stronger with experience.
•Compelling, Short Tactical Combat. See how your designed units and characters fare in battle in highly refined tactical battles that reward strategic thinking, or leverage a sophisticated auto-resolve system powered by advanced AI for streamlined empire management.
•Deep Quest and Story Integration. Embark on rich, narrative-driven quests seamlessly woven into the empire-building experience, influencing diplomacy, unlocking secrets, and offering meaningful rewards.
•Modernized UI and Graphics Engine. Explore enhanced visuals powered by DirectX 11, seamless zooming from strategic cloth-map to detailed tactical view.
•Integrated Modding tools. A comprehensive built-in modding and map-editing tools, and a fully redesigned user interface optimized for modern PC gaming with Steam workshop integration.

[Kalarion]

In my mind, Fallen Enchantress ended up being the second-best fantasy 4x game after the Fall from Heaven 2 mod (and it's mod-mods) for Civ 4.

The systems in the game are extremely cool; cool enough that I actually picked the game back up again earlier this year after a 7 year hiatus. But on the pickup I ran once again into the problems that made me quit in the first place; tons of bugs, chugging slowdowns after less than an hour of play, a story campaign that was badly disjointed and directionless. While I could appreciate the cool magic, the hero system and the ability to fully customize your units, I couldn't enjoy them enough to get over basically not being able to play the game after about 25 minutes each session.

Did it get a fan patch or something that fixes these problems? What am I missing that makes it second place for you after ffh?

I should add that Fallen Enchantress had enough really cool **** in it that I'm genuinely interested in this game and hope that it doesn't suffer from the same technical problems.

EDIT: final sentence.

[Jordy]

I've followed it but the whole aesthetic looks like it's designed for mobile.

[Acrux]

Did it get a fan patch or something that fixes these problems? What am I missing that makes it second place for you after ffh?

I never really experienced too many slowdowns and crashes, but I know it was a problem for a lot of people. I also haven't played FE in a couple of years, so it's very possible that it's nearly unrunnable on Windows 10/11.

But the things you pointed out are what I think made it so good. The quest system is great - I can't think of other 4x games that have branching path questlines - and this game has a lot of them! I like that the magic system accounts for both city-level and tactical-level spells, and it has a wide variety of uses.

I like that itemization is based on both what you've built in a given city, but there are also merchants or events that can provide items as well. From what they're saying about Reforged, it looks like this will be expanded on even more by adding something that's more like Sorcerer King's system.* Similarly, the hero customization (and unit, although much more simple), talent tree, and role specializations really make you think about what your needs are in the particular run you are doing.

Where you build a city matters a lot, I'd say more than even in many other 4x games, because the yields are overall low so specializing each city (Magic, Commerce, Production) is important. And there's additional specialization for each of those 3 types once the city is large enough. So, if you want a city that's great at military production, you're probably going to have to sacrifice magic (for instance). It makes your empire interdependent much more than other games like this where each city tends to become a self-sufficient city-state.

I've followed it but the whole aesthetic looks like it's designed for mobile.

It's not at all. It does have the typical janky Stardock graphics and UI (and these particular ones are 15 years old, they've said they have no intentions to update. To clarify, they are "remastering" them to higher resolution, but the models will still look the same), but if it follows what the previous games have done, it's a pretty deep strategy game.



*Sorcerer King is flawed, but mostly because it's in the shadow of Fallen Enchantress. It was trying to do something different, and is really more of an RPG than a 4x game. I hope they will build on that more - I'd really like to see a Sorcerer King game mode: the bad guy has nearly already won, you are trying to stop his final ascension. If you've played the original Fall From Heaven scenario (not the fully fleshed-out mods that came later) it's similar to that.

[GhostCow]

I've had this on my wishlist for a while but I'm not sure where I first heard about it. There's been a lot of bad games in the 4x genre over the last few years, so I hope this breaks the trend.

[Acrux]

One of the things I realize I forgot to mention about why I think I like the Elemental series so much is that the lead designer was Derek Paxton (aka "Kael") who created Fall From Heaven.

I noticed today on Steam that Brad Wardell has said he personally thinks that Early Access isn't a great idea. He doesn't like it in general, and he's afraid that negative reviews could tank it if the initial EA launch doesn't meet the (high) expectations fans have. But his devs have said they need to make tradeoffs on whether they should work on Feature A or Feature B, and are wanting to use EA as a way to gauge interest in different systems (I'm guessing through telemetry/usage data). So, he may be making a mistake, although from what he said it should only be in early access until February and I think he's usually been accurate in the past about releases.

[rusty_shackleford]

Very Positive, anyone played?

[Acrux]

It started off pretty buggy, so I set it aside for a while. More recently they were able to stabilize it. I haven't played the Beta 2 that dropped this week, but it had already been greatly improved over Fallen Enchantress:Legendary Heroes and included elements from War of Magic and Sorcerer King. This update added dynasties, which was in the original WOM and they've added a lot more variety of monsters and lairs.

Although it's technically a 4x game, it's very nearly an RPG/TBS hybrid. The only thing closer is the Civ 4 Fall From Heaven mod.

[Tweed]

Sounds like they're doing everything right and taking all the best parts. I spent many happy hours with Fallen Enchantress and was deeply disappointed at how Sorcerer King turned out.

[GhostCow]

Very Positive, anyone played?

I played for a few minutes and hated the UI. I'll wait another year or two before checking it out again

[Acrux]

Very Positive, anyone played?

I played for a few minutes and hated the UI. I'll wait another year or two before checking it out again

You won't like it in a year then, to he honest. This IS the standard Stardock UI. Maybe someone will mod it...

[GhostCow]

Very Positive, anyone played?

I played for a few minutes and hated the UI. I'll wait another year or two before checking it out again

You won't like it in a year then, to he honest. This IS the standard Stardock UI. Maybe someone will mod it...

Is it? I've played the last three gal civ games and didn't have any complaints about the UI. Maybe because those are different types of games. For this kind of 4x game, I definitely prefer a UI much closer to civ.

[Acrux]

Out of Early Access today! I'm really hoping I'll have some time to play it this week.

Brad mentioned they've secured funding for DLCs and free update expansions for the next two years.

Elemental: Reforged Key Features:

A world of unique characters: Players can design their own units with desired visual customization and attributes, recruit champions, equip gear and watch them develop over the course of a game.

Three Story-Driven Campaigns: The original Elemental trilogy’s campaigns are all included: Prelude, The Fallen Enchantress, and The Legendary Heroes, each exploring an era in the history of this world and its ultimate destiny.

Hereditary Dynasties: Sovereign rulers can marry, have children, and pass down traits and visual characteristics across generations.

Deep Crafting System: Create unique weapons, armor, enchantments, and magical artifacts to equip your armies.

Hundreds of New Quests, Characters, and Dungeons: Never-before-seen content, including new storylines, encounters, and explorable locations that expand the world far beyond the original games.

10 Distinct Civilizations: Each with unique traits, playstyles, and visual identities.

World Terraforming: Reshape the land itself using shards of elemental magic.

Tactical Combat: Turn-based battles with intelligent, non-cheating AI.

Full Modding Suite with Steam Workshop: Create and share custom maps, scenarios, and total conversions.

[Irenaeus]

Can you please tell us how it compares to Fallen Enchantress? I had a good time with that game, even if it was a bit generic. It had some great ideas for generating new fantasy worlds.

[asf]

i played all elementals and i hated every single one of them, is this last one any less crap

[Acrux]

Can you please tell us how it compares to Fallen Enchantress? I had a good time with that game, even if it was a bit generic. It had some great ideas for generating new fantasy worlds.

Fallen Enchantress was the most fleshed out of all the Elemental games, and this is like an upgraded version of Fallen Enchantress. Basically, there were things they couldn't do before because they were limited by the engine and now they can: the dynasty system for champions, more and better quests, and so on.

[Kalarion]

Hello good saars I would like update please and thanks