Greetings !
My favourite game of all time was master of magic only later to be replaced by the Civ4 Mod "Fall from Heaven" and its many modmods so i ve always been keeping an eye on Elemental, Fallen Enchantress and Legendary Heroes but reading opinions in forums where i trust people s taste in games i stayed away from Elemental until now because well: the generall consensus among those MoM and FFH fans like me was that Elementral was a train wreck and Fallen Enchantress still not much better.
Only now with legendary heroes i ve seen people finally giving the game a tumbs up and here i am after two days agreeing with them: this is indeed a really good game now. Possibly even great but i ll reserve that judgement until after i played a few weeks.
However as you can see in the title there s one issue for me: the graphics. its not the maps, buildings or monsters though - those all look good enough to me. but humanoids - urgh i cant be alone in not disliking those hideous faces and poor models. same about many of the armor/weapon/equipment models. it all looks kind of 2003 - 3D. Neverwinter Nights 1 comes to mind. Which i simply dont get because many creatures on the other hand look pretty damn good.
And while i love the idea to be able to customize my sovereign and my units the rather limited selection of ugly faces, ugly armor and ugly gear puts a real damper on this otherwise great feature.
As Elemental appears to be very mod-friendly - is there anything that can be done about ? Are there any cosmetic/aesthetic mods ? Are there mods that give you more varied new armor/equipment looks ? and if not, how comes ? is the underlying engine to blame for it ?
Gameplay-> Graphics so at the end of the day i think i ll continue to have a good time with Legendary Heroes until Age of Wonders III comes around (this one looks fantastic, hopefully the gameplay is good too!) so thanks for that but still .... while i lack the experience to make suggestions for improving Legendary Heroes gameplay for now .... i really recommend overhauling the humanoid(and their gear) graphics/models/textures. yesterday i tried making something resembling an orc warlord and almost burst out in laughter seeing the result with its weird face and tiny battle axe trying to look menacing.
Other than that i can only repeat that i really like the game thus far.
