The issue there is retail, and Stardock's size. Because they're small and we're coming into christmas season, they could only get retail shelf space at two dates: August, or February 2011.

February 2011 is a LONG way off, and at some point the beta process gets so long that it becomes stale and pointless, and people want a release.

So that's why August was chosen.

The street date being broken compounded the problem because they wound up releasing a digital version that wasn't originally going to be released. That doesn't excuse issues on the retail disk version, but most of us were intended to be playing what we're playing today (which is unquestionably better then what was being played on Monday). With that in mind, some of the problems people ran into would never have existed without that problem.

Even the article author at PC gamer notes that he's going to restart writing his review now that the day-0 version is out. So it's not like he's trying to do a hatchet job here (if he was he'd have just continued with a review using Monday's version).

It is a good point that Empire: Total War got a free ride and that game is complete crap compared to Napoleon. It was a buggy mess and still is. Napoleon is what Empire should have been.

Glad you brought that up because just like Age of Wonders, Daggerfall was another game that was horrible upon release (so they said) and it too became a classic. I remember both and I loved and enjoyed them both. So, Elemental is going to be right up there with them (already is for me).

The cloth map, however, works fantastic on low-end machines.  I actually prefer it because it's easier to tell at a glance what's going on in your kingdom.

OMG I was going to bring up the exact same game.

It had no naval invasasions and the developers lied about it even going so far as saying it was in but once the community found out about it and bitched about it enough, it was finally patched in.  Then the developers screw over the tacical AI (Units shooting themselves and mass melees) and didn't try to fix it until the community yelled themselves horse.  Yet that game has a metacritic of 90 or something (user scores tell a much different story).  Then the developers work on an expansion pack but later decided to make it a stand-alone game thus making sure E:TW would never be fixed.  Even after a year of patches (a grand total of around 6 patches), the game is still buggy, they never fixed the bug where AI units in a siege just stand there and do nothing (if attacking you from their fortress).   Not to mention the amount of technical issues like invisible cities for nvidia users or the crashes due to reinforceents.  Yet it's a 9/10 game which has more flaws a year after patches then Elemental did in Beta. 

I swear if you don't pay off reviewers, you get slammed.

At least Stardock has a reputation of constantly supporting the community and communicating with them.  Looking at the evolution of GalCiv2, I played that like a month when it first came out and it's nothing like it is today.  Also unlike some PC companies who have become very stingy on patching games, the stardock guys continue to support their products even after they take our money.  I mean they could just take the same attitude of "don't care, you already bought it" like most companies now.

A handful of vocal malcontents does not equal a ruined reputation.

In my experience...

Most game companies today review based on the size of the company's advertising budget,  not on their game. Gamespot's controversy a few years back is a very good example.

I've been informally keeping track,  and watching how certain sites make sure "User reviews" below a certain threshold...disappear.  One day I'm going to compile a mountain of data and start sending it out to demonstrate modern day Payola,  which is actually a criminal offense. 

I'd actually have to investigate PCG's site before saying anything further.

  When Empire Total War was released I picked it up expecting great things; it was a horrible mess of bugs.  It was much worse for me than Elemental is(I have only had a crash or two with Elemental so far.)  A week later and all the reviews were out.  The sites I frequent gave the game high 8's and 9's and made little to no mention of the plethora of bugs and balance issues.  Most reviews did a short blurb about there being a few issues.

Worse still, Creative Assembly was slow to react.  I don't know if the publisher(Sega) had anything to do with this or not.  When they finally got the game close to balanced they started adding "gamey" changes to a historically themed game that attracted a lot of flak from their forums.  At this point I uninstalled it and put it in a box with Rome and Medieval 2(which had similar issues but not on the same scale)

I remember Civ4 being buggy and having glaring balance issues and bugs that were posted and discussed on the forum from release until the second expansion finally fixed them.  Again, got good reviews(mostly deserved) but the extent of the issues weren't mentioned.

Elemental isn't going to get a fair shake due to the nature of its release(Aug as opposed to Feb) and the fact that Stardock is going to be improving the game for years to come.  The expansions will however, get high marks(just look at Twilight of the Arnor.)

**Leave the A.I. alone, it is as good as many other simpler 4x games but Brad will have it top notch in no time; its what he does.  Don't believe me?  Go check the Gal Civ 2 dev journals for his multitude of posts concerning A.I. improvements.  While your at it go play on Challenging where the A.I. doesn't cheat but will still whoop you.

+1 more.

Take reviews for a grain of salt.  Read between the lines for actual facts rather than opinions.

I haven't been this disappointed in a game since Master of Orion 3. If I could get a refund for this game, I would.

I am loving the game so far... 6 hours into the game and NO CRASHES!

I did come across some issues like later on in the game things slow down a bit which sucks and also that my Archers would not attack (which ahs now been fixed).

Other then taht im loving this game, simply awesome, glad i bought it.

I use to like PC gamer but I will nto be buying anymore of there magazines again, this article was childish.

Damm good point!!! PC gamer gave Empire total war a 90% + review. That game is total crap!!! I dont see how the review industry could give empire such a high all over score!

I loved the total war series but empire was brutal. Even with the terrible AI (so far) I like elemental better.