In my opinion: this game rocks.
It has:
- Spell research
- Global Spells (à la Master of Magic and Master of Mana)
- Cities like in Civ5 (with Hitpoints and ranged comabt)
- 3 Factions (Humans, Undead, Goblin)
- Neutral factions like Dwarfs, Elves, Minotaurs (they (can) provide different buildings, units, if conquered)
- Buildings/Improvements (which also reduce movement cost, btw.)
- an AI who knows what it does, i.e. it does use global spells.
- DLC (cheap)
- terrain which provides boni (attack against a hill etc.)
The amount of different spells is quite impressive, without being "too much" - at least in the beginning.
The Buildings/Improvements work like in Master of Magic, e.g. you have to build a farm before you may build a warrior guild, a library before you can build a mage guild things like that.
They work also a bit like in Civ4, because on Resources you can build special buildings/improvements.
The graphics are new.
Food isn't used for citizens but for your army. You need this army. It's nescessary to have a balance of food, money, mana.
The game suffers a bit from ICS. That being said, you can't build improvements/buildings like hell, but you have to decide for each "population point", which one (1) improvement/building you want to build in that city.
Animations (movement, combat) can't be switched off, but you can push the mouse button (again) to get fast movement/combat, after you gave an order, or while an enemy is moving.
This game is, what Elementals was not: A MoM-Clone. With certain aspects from Civ 4, Civ 5, FFH2, Master of Mana-Mod. It has even something like "Heroes" (units which cost 800 gold and are only available if you manage to find a Resource where you can build a Shrine to a god). Well of course it's not FFH2, but it IS a turn based, fantasy-setting-game, with global spells, spell research, city management, different races, resource management.
you want more? well, after waiting 17 years for a game like MoM which never came (aside of FFH2 of course, but you know what I mean), I dont. I'm really happy with this clone. It's better than most. It's civ-ish. It creates the "one turn more"-feeling. Could they have done more? Well, of course, look at the Master of Mana mod for the FFH2 mod, and yeah sure: you can always do more. If you have 7 years and many many volunteers at hand.
