Combat is fairly tactical, but the game mechanics (particularly "aggro" management, the system which dictates which monsters attack which characters), power level, skills of the characters, and overall feel seem to be a bit too much inspired by certain MMORPGs. One sprang to mind in particular, especially after noting the existence of a lizardman monk character whose skills included Mend and Feign Death. That should ring a few bells with a certain crowd. The standard fighter character (the Swordsman) has, of course, a Taunt skill, something not normally found in games other than MMOs.

Players start out with a few basic character types to purchase prior to each battle, and more are added with each new level, while each overall level has multiple rounds of increasing difficulty which occur on the same battle field, and culminate in a boss fight of some kind.

The graphical style is fairly simple, even cartoony, but attractive enough, and has some nice battlefields in the main campaign (3 in all, one for each level), and an arena-style battlefield for skirmish mode (which is unlocked as you progress through the campaign). I particularly liked the character design of the Necromancer and Druid.

I decided to keep notes as I progressed through the campaign, and formed a journal or chronicle of sorts as I went. I've decided to include it here, as it is a good indicator of how I felt about the game as time went on.

Kingdom Elemental notes:

Tutorial and Level 1:

Quite simple, some cheesy humor and the occasional spelling or grammar problem (such as saying "manor" instead of "manner") but not too bad. Teaches basics of camera control (mouse and keys), selecting and ordering units (mouse only), unlocking and purchasing, etc.

Nice idea: camera controls incorporate the WASD keys, and the keys around them, which is nice for those of us familiar with that control setup. If not, the mouse is fine to use also.

Tutorial annoyance: narrator will make fun of you when you don't do a command right away, it seemed like it should have had a longer delay before starting with the mockery.

The graphics are fairly cartoony and simple, not too bad from what I've seen. I didn't like the look of the elven archer, though. If you're going to have a scantily clad female character (which I have absolutely no problem with in general), it helps if they're actually attractive, and have a decent shape to them. The archer model, unfortunately, looks more like a skinny man in drag from the neck down, and is not very appealing.

Update: I ran into a similar problem with the Bard (unlocked in Level 2). I genuinely thought it was a man in a poofy outfit, until she said something.

The Swordsman (referred to in the tutorial as a "Swordsmen" even when talking about one) is described as being from a tribal culture in the north, but looks more like a medieval european knightly sort of fellow, with tabard and hood, though no shield.

The names of units seem random, and it's possible to end up with duplicate names. (I had 3 Swordsmen with the same name in one battle, out of 4 total.)

The game desperately needs a "move-to-and-execute" style of order for skills, instead of just for standard attacks. As it is, the target must be in skill range to begin with, otherwise the unit has to manually be moved closer first.

Skills are on timers, which have to run the full allotment of time before they are even usable to begin with. It makes sense for some skills, such as Fire Arrow, to have this limitation, but for others it is rather annoying, and seems unnecessary.

Enemies have an annoying tendency to run around madly when near death, which can be exasperating when trying to run them down with melee troops. I found it's better to ignore them if they do that, until it's mop up time...or just shoot them with something.

The first battle (Normal Diff.): Lost horribly when I used 2 Swordsmen and 1 Cleric. The Cleric is unable to attack, and has less than 20% of the HP of a Swordsman, though the heal is nice. He spent more time running around healing himself than anything else, while I used taunt (a Swordsman skill) in a vain attempt to keep him alive. When he ran up and healed a Swordsman who was about to die, he was quickly slain by simultaneous bolts from 2 goblin crossbows, and the Swordsmen were then picked apart, badly outnumbered. The Swordsmen had their first 2 skills unlocked (taunt and block), while the Cleric had his first, a standard heal spell.

2nd attempt: Used 3 Swordsmen, with all 3 skills unlocked (3rd skill is stun). Dished out enough damage to keep up with the waves of foes without getting outnumbered badly. Ganging up on enemies seems to be key, though it's embarrassing to be doing so against kobolds and such. Took the fight to the enemy gates, attacking them as soon as they appeared, locking down the archers in melee right away. Won easily, with no severe damage to any of the Swordsmen. Block, Stun, and a good offense kept them alive rather more effectively than having a cleric and an unlocked heal spell.

Round 4: Swordsmen still winning up to this point, same battlefield (each level has multiple rounds in the same spot). The gold amount is suddenly reduced (it had been going up). 295? It's an odd amount, and I don't know what combination of units out of the 3 available now would make it work. I bought 4 sworders, with change left over (55).

They didn't quite make it, though all enemies save one were dead or reduced to near-death-and-fleeing status. The archers took too much of a toll, but it was down to the last hit against the only kobold left in the fray. Not a bad run for the all-swordsmen contingent, especially with judicious use of taunt to trade off opponents when needed.

Lvl 2: A dark dungeon. 4 new hero types unlocked: Necromancer, Monk, Bard, and Druid. Necromancer looks and sounds cool in an exaggerated, cartoony way, but the animate skeleton spell's targeting was very picky, had trouble targeting a corpse. It was quite good once I got the hang of it, though.

The Druid is pretty cool-looking as well, though the voice is nothing special, and has some nice skills which focus on buffing (with some crowd control via the Root skill). They look rather intimidating when paired with the Necromancers in particular, stag-headed guys wielding sword and staff while hanging out with something that looks like a floating robe with glowing eyes and a built-in fog machine... it's an interesting image.

MMO-style aggro system is getting annoying. Difficulty seems much higher in general, though the heroes aren't any tougher.

Cleric is still a toss-up: useful abilities, but obnoxious to keep alive himself, feels like playing "keep-away." The bard isn't as bad in this respect, since she has 200 HP rather than 45, but shares the restriction of not being able to attack, and tends to generate a constant level of monster "aggro" that requires a lot of attention. It's not as bad as having the Cleric use Group Heal though, which is worthless considering the threat/aggro it generates from multiple monsters versus the small amount healed.

Enemies seem to have unlimited spellcasting, while yours are on lengthy timers, and they do not have the same casting requirements (no corpse needed to summon skeletons, for example). Also, your fighters do less damage than theirs, and enemies are more deadly in general, making it necessary to gang up on them despite being outnumbered by them. Combat is very chaotic at times, which makes it insanely hard to protect your troops using a single-target taunt, or other single-target spells such as fear and root. MMO-style aggro and combat system stereotypes don't work well with the sort of scenario you are faced with here, having to repeatedly face down waves of tough enemies, constantly outnumbered, etc. (enemies are better than you pound for pound, don't follow the same rules, your fighters are "tanks" who can take it but don't dish it out well without buffs, necessity of healing/crowd control, etc.)

Level 3: Unlocked Cutthroat, Paladin, and Elementalist character types. Their abilities are more extreme than those previously available characters have, but the cost is high, and the charge times for the abilities tend to be quite long, sometimes to the point where the battle is over before the ability is usable.

Elementalist problem: his standard magical attack is getting to be an issue, it constantly causes monsters to go after him, even when locked in melee combat and taunted by Swordsmen. They switch back to him before taunt even has a chance to recycle, in some cases, meaning he has to stop blasting, which somewhat defeats the purpose of having a strong standard attack in the first place.

CTD: While battling during the final wave of a very difficult round on level 3, I had a "memory access error" which crashed the program. I was a little bit irritated.

Can't get past that battle anyway, the time I crashed was the best I'd done on it, and I was still starting to lose by that point. The foes are too powerful, too numerous, and the waves happen too quickly to make any headway. Can't taunt that many off the support units, couldn't take the damage even if that were possible, and can't do enough damage quickly enough to make any headway. The speed and damage of the mounted foes is such that they are capable of shredding support units before you can taunt them in some cases, and after you kill the mount, you still have the rider to deal with. The newer characters are quite powerful, but they cost about twice as much as the previous hero types, and aren't able to make up for the lack in numbers when using them.

Normal difficulty is supposed to be normal. I'm a veteran of many tactical games, RPGs, and many which were combinations of the two. When I was a young gamer, many RPGs featured pretty hardcore tactical combat systems, in fact, much more so than they do now. I also sought out and played some which were squad or skirmish-level based, tactical games, mostly turn-based but some with real-time features or options. I'm more than familiar with the genre, and related ones. I have been for years. I know what I'm doing, believe it or not.

Sometimes, therefore, it's possible and warranted to say this: It's not me, it's the game. I don't feel like starting over on easy mode, feeling like I'm copping out, when the game balance and design is at fault, not my skills as a gamer. Taking inspiration from MMORPGs is one thing, but designing core game mechanics based on their's in a single-player game is asking for trouble.

An addictive game in some ways, with a simple yet appealing graphics style and presentation, Kingdom Elemental is in need of further playtesting and balancing at the least, and I can't in all honesty recommend it, except perhaps to hardcore types used to the grind in the MMOs that inspired this game. As for me, I don't have the time or inclination to endlessly retry battles in the quest for the perfect combination of troops and circumstances.

Also, I realized something else: the issue isn't necessarily just about having trouble getting past some battles, or being stuck on one (those things don't help, of course). Even when those obstacles are finally passed, what remains is the evident feeling that the game is forcing a playstyle on me which I don't enjoy, based on a particular type of MMORPGs which I also didn't enjoy when I tried them, and which I'd rather not relive in any form, especially not in a single-player game which ostensibly seems to be trying to present something with the trappings of heroic fantasy. The feeling it leaves is not of something heroic at all, particularly when one of the genre conventions we're stuck with here is that the "heroes" are automatically weaker than the majority of the monsters, and are constantly in a position of having to gang up, even on creatures which are relatively weak (kobolds, goblins, and other conventional fantasy cannon fodder) in order to survive, let alone stay abreast of the waves of attacking creatures which inevitably end up outnumbering your forces.

We're facing heroic-level threats, such as the challenge of being surrounded and outnumbered frequently by foes, without really being equipped to handle it, and dealing with game mechanics derived from games which revolve around single groups of co-dependent adventurers who are incapable of doing anything on their own, whose gameplay largely consists of ganging up on one monster at a time, using a designated "main tank" who hits like a feather and performs a role similar to that of a rodeo clown taunting away, a dedicated healer, some crowd-control types to prevent the calamitous situation of having more than one foe to fight at once, and some sort of damage-dealing type. I decided long ago that I didn't want to live that particular virtual life, nor do I get so nostalgic for it that I need that style of thing put into my single-player experiences.

I'll miss characters such as the Necromancer, Druid, and piratical Cutthroat, though, those were some fun ones, with a good visual style and interesting abilities.

Thus, aside from any other problems or flaws, the basic one is probably a matter of my gaming tastes being incompatible with this game and its seeming design goals. I like indie developers, I definitely feel for their plight in a difficult industry which is becoming increasingly crowded, so I'd love to be able to describe this game as a "diamond in the rough" and tell everyone to rush out and download it immediately. I can't do that though, because I'd feel dishonest about doing so, and I always try to tell the truth as I see it.

In the beginning, it felt a bit like the aforementioned gem in some ways, but as frustration mounted, and outweighed the fun and campiness of the game more and more, it became to look ever more like a simple rock after all. With a good bit of polish, it could become more pleasing to be sure, but I'm not convinced it'll ever be a gem to me at this point. Someone with different tastes may find it more appealing, but that's where I stand.