It depends on who you ask. I didn't have any real issues with it, personally. I got stuck in the geometry one time and the computer hacking mini-game is annoyingly hard late in the game, but everything else was gravy for me.
Underrated gem, that one. I wrote a long and very positive review of it on amazon and it got a lot of agree votes. The game has a large fanbase that would love to work on the game were it made possible.

Thank you, no seriously thank you. I have met TOO many people saying "Isn't that the game that is terrible, everyone said they hated it and blah blah blah" to which I respond, "Well did you read a review NOT made by the big companies that are paid to hype and not hype certain games?" I bought it when it was on the 40 buck sale after release and it has been one of the most fun games I have ever played. I have never had ANY problems described in all these "Terrible" reviews. Since then I have just stopped looking at reviews completely.

It's called this isn't Gears of War/Halo/Splinter Cell-itis. Where it's something completely different, so they don't like it at all. AKA - Death of originality.

Yeah, damn them for hating games we don't like.
Seriously, I always get annoyed when people accuse others of being unfairly biased against games while bashing the generic ones.
Honestly, I have noticed that most 4x fans who can run the game tend to like ELemental. Maybe not love it, but at least like it. But, as has been made clear, there is a lot of bad PR against Stardock (much because of their PR guys). And that goes a long way.
That being said: Unlike an Obsidian mess, or even Demigod, this probably WILL get all the bugs ironed out. Hell, didn't Demigod (which, again, Stardock weren't the developers) get almost all the bugs ironed out and a few DLCs before it died?

Sorry, guess Gears of War/Halo/Spinter-Cell are just perfect games, and big name reviewers are not given kick-backs and incentives for hyping popular games and not hyping the others. Or when all the reviews list these game breaking glitches on Alpha Protocol, yet the HUGE majority of gamers never experience one of them is just completely normal.
Watch where you step, the sarcasm is deep around here.

I think there are a lot of people who only want to play popular games that feel big-budget, just like a lot of people only watch summer action movies and Oscar winning dramas, or only listen to music that gets radio play.
It has more to do with the time they allow for playing games than it does anything else, I imagine.

Which is the reason we have crap sequel after crap sequel over and over. All the developers have to do is package the same game over and over, just re-texture and add a couple new things and those people will gobble it up like candy.

I was just talking about bugs and such.

It's a factor certainly... you make games to fit the market you are selling to and in the case of 50 million dollar productions your market is every damn person you can get, which leads to mainstreaming, streamlining and using established IP with massive marketing budgets.
At the same time though I find it hard to be too pessimistic because a) I like those games too, and b) there are so many small dev teams or indie developers working on niche games it's insane. Just today I read on RPS about an isometric turn-based RPG set in a post-zombie apocalypse world that is coming out... that's awesome. The PC especially is going to continue being at the forefront of the indie game movement, or just the smaller dev team movement. As it gets cheaper and easier to make games that look acceptable we'll see more and more niche product, as well as the blockbusters.
Then we can have the same width and diversity of game releases as we do movies. If people refuse to play anything without a massive budget and then complain their niche desires aren't being catered to, well... it's their own damn fault.

I like that idea and point of view. And I would like to play that game even more, haha. I don't mean to sound too pessimistic, it's just, I am kinda fed up with games like that. The first Halo was AMAZING. Then they regurgitated it so many times, it's just bland and boring now. And new IPs that are copying these games down to a letter, just makes me pop in Deus Ex and wonder what has happened.

Yeah, DoubleBear Productions kinda reminds me DoubleFine Productions. You know that dude whom I used to worship so very much who created Grim Fandango, and co-created Monkey Island and then went on to the console market and disappear from the PC audience and ignore their cries of betrayal.
But at least I think that's not gonna happen for this RPG since they already announced it for PC. :D

Well if you have the ability to raise the capital needed for a console release there is the potential for a much bigger payout there for sure, depending on the genre. For people without a name or publisher though the PC will always be the place to prove yourself. On top of that a lot of these niche releases, like DoubleBear's, only work on PC.
I think we'll be the home to these sorts of things for a long while :)

Wow, there actually has been a (single) review in the last 30 messages. The more thanks go to Gundato.
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Actually, there is no need to bash Impulse too much. It's not worse than Steam. It claimed it's better (Bill of Rights) and removed this ad later, so its kind of honest again :). Since I am against online DRM and are abstaining from Steam, I should extend my avoidance to Impulse. No hard feelings actually, they still have my sympathy, cause they are a relatively small company and actually produce turn based strategy computer games which is rare - I see them more like a misguided friend, if ever they find back to the right way, I will welcome them again.
This meaning, if ever they really offer that archival DVD with the uptodate patched version of Elemental not requiring any online activation, I will buy it.
I bought Galactic Civilization 2 in the past and did not regret it. It was a really nice game and run out of the box without any bugs und with most of the gameplay contained. Registering and applying the many patches was not neccessary to enjoy the game and added maybe 10% to the gameplay, not more.
These days seem to be over, but may come again or may not. For Steam I doubt that they ever will open up like this before judgement day comes or something similar.

What's a shame is that if the game was in good release condition in the box you could buy it and never really worry about activating on Impulse. Unfortunately this was not the case.
I assume the Sins of a Solar Empire "trinity" boxed release with both expansions also is patched up and DRM-free right? So you can get that, and Elemental will likely get a similar release down the road someday, assuming it is at all successful.