If you heard anything about Stardock's Elemental: War of Magic, it likely wasn't positive. The game was a bug-ridden disaster upon release, and that's being generous. CEO Brad Wardell was openly apologetic about the debacle, but his contrition did little to remedy the scathing reviews and the company was forced to lay off several of its employees due to poor sales.
Now Stardock is hard at work on a sequel, which will hopefully build something respectable about the first game's intriguing core concept. Like its predecessor, Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, is a hybrid of Civ-style turn-based empire building and fantasy RPG mechanics. Second chances never come easy in this industry, but Fallen Enchantress shows some serious promise, as evidenced by this five-minute walkthrough video Wardell recently posted.
One of Elemental's biggest flaws was a horridly clunky user interface, but that appears to have been remedied here, both in terms useability and visual appeal. The way the game view seamlessly transitions into a cloth map when you zoom out far enough is especially slick.
The giant, looming doubts about whether Stardock will be able to avoid the subpar AI and bugs that plagued the first game won't go anywhere until we've played a finished copy. Still, this first look is definitely reason to be hopeful, as is the exhaustive (and suprisingly honest) preview Wardell has posted on the offical forums.
