Sorcerer King

The elemental series has (with the exception of the totally broken War of Magic) been a series of "great almosts". Each game in the series has gotten more finely tuned in gameplay and balance, but they've just never gotten the UX elements to the point that the game stopped being annoying to play.

I bought Sorcerer King (with the loyalty discount for having tried all the others) expecting that the fresh take on the 4X genre would be worth playing, even if the long term replayability was still a mess.

I was thus very happily surprised to discover that this time around, the game is as playable and engaging as it is conceptually interesting and balanced.

There are several elements to this, but the one I'm astonished by is how much finally cleaning up the graphical appearance of the game world mattered. This is the first game in the series where figuring out what something is on the map - be it a wandering enemy, a visitable location, or a mountain (!) no longer required conscious effort or decoding a special overlay icon. That drop in unnecessary cognitive load and unnecessary frustration may well be the single biggest improvement.

It's not the only one, but even the remaining list has a surprising number of things that are equally "cosmetic" in nature. For example, your starting army has a move of 3 instead of two, and the remnants of a road network mean that your first hour of play is filled with exploration instead of tedium.

The encounters near your starting point are also balanced appropriately to range from doable to challenging with that first army, so your first hour of play isn't filled with helplessness and futility either, and taking time out from building up your city to add an extra unit pays off enough to make the choice whether to do so interesting.

The satisfying balance continues through the game to the end, too. While it's possible to focus on one killer stack with several champions in it, you need a contingency plan against the SK beaming a nasty army into your back door - and there are multiple viable choices for that, too, whether it's strong garrisons or keeping enough mana on hand to bring your heroes home and still have enough left to support them in a nasty fight.

All in all, this is the most fun and interesting game Stardock has ever made. Time will tell whether the massively better play experience is an accident or a lesson they've finally learned.