Okay, it's year 359 AC and my little sorceress and her 4 kids (along with a fully buffed earth elemental) have been rolling up the kingdom of Altar for the last 550+ turns, capturing 37 of his settlements and whacking Relias 17 times. He has another 4 settlements somewhere. But here's the thing - for the entire time, the game has been spawning monster units every turn and taking up at least three quarters of the game play. Just wave after wave. Some of you may remember an old Atari game called Space Invaders where the player moved side to side shooting down wave after wave of alien spaceships. This game has given me the same feeling, only the spaceships have been replaced by bandits, wolves, spiders, bears, and crazed Walmart associates. I have seen this sort of thing before, when a game design becomes too much for the talent, capacities, and resources of the design team. They just shrug their shoulders, pour themselves a stiff shot and turn the design into an arcade game and move on. One example is the original Privateer which had a terrific design and wonderful elements but they were all chucked in favour of turning a potentially outstanding design into a twitch game. I sincerely hope that is not what is happening with Elemental. I have stuck with this game since pre-release days and will continue to do so, but I am becoming rather apprehensive about the non-direction the game is taking. I hope I am wrong. If I am. I will be very ashamed and I will go stand in the corner.