SpellForce 2 - Anniversary Edition

Really an awesome game from the developer. Also played other titles from this game all are equally great.

A game of my childhood. Holds so many memories, its always good to come back to it.

The game has a simple RTS/RPG concept that it performs excellently. I have played RTS at a decent online level for 15+ years and can't knock this game's RTS section. At first I found the RTS parts boring as I was playing it RPG, but after I actually tried it out, it is actually fun, and it is very reminiscent of Warcraft 3, except that it requires a lot less micro and you can customize your heroes a lot more both in the skill tree and with items. The last part has some inspiration from Diablo 2, with a couple of sets that have bonuses (Dragon Storm expansion especially). Dialogue and voice acting rates from poor to good, with your main character's male voice being the best. The female voice is cringy. Some parts of the dialogue is cringy without any fault belonging to the voice actors, because the script of the story is simplified for progression's sake. The story itself is good in both the main game and the expansion. Far better than the other 2 expansions. Some have reported bugs with the camera. I have not encountered any bugs in this edition, as I play with isometric view. The camera bugs do not happen neither at the mosaic or at Malacay's Lab. In my opinion this game is the best Spellforce game. Better than 1 because 1 is dated and a bit boring. Better than 3 because 3 lacks charm. Some cons: The game doesn't let you customize your sidekicks properly. In the main story, you can fully customize your avatar and Jared, but not the others, who will - every other level - drop points in their "main storyline abilities". This prevents you from optimizing your party. Nightsong is a liability in combat in both games, doing little damage and dying easily. Pathetic as she is prebuilt as DPS. The skill tree has many fun variations, but some spells are devastated by level caps, where they aren't effective on anything other than the lowest leveled enemies making them very subpar for your avatar. The pathfinding can sometimes be annoying. 4,5/5.

Game ends at level 5, when you clear the stage, beat the map, then the game tells you to return to Sevenkeeps but there's no way back across the map to get to the portal. The designers deigned not to use any map markers to even give the player a hint as to what to do, just assuming the player would go and run around looking for a walkthrough online so they wouldn't have to correct their own unbelievably lazy and stupid game design. Where you beat the map, kill all enemies get the 'victory' pop-up, and can't figure out any way to actually leave the stage and get to the next level, that's gotta be some kinda puzzle you need to solve. Abysmal 0/5.

They say: "Fool me once - shame on you, fool me twice - shame on me". In the case of Spellforce 2 it is exactly right. Once, long enough ago, I played the original Spellforce. It was fun for a while, but I never finished the game. It was too long, too tedious and, ultimately, it was boring. Spellforce 2 Anniversary Edition is another such game. It brings nothing new to the original game. Nothing new that I can see anyway (except for better looks and wide-screen support); -- Voice acting is still *abysmal* (and it IS a problem because there is A LOT OF IT and it completely kills whatever mood, atmosphere or immersion that such a game could potentially have). -- A game like this MUST have Turn-Based combat because the AI has suffers from NO delays but you do: Imagine 20 enemy units mixed up with your units and you need to 'focus-fire' the most dangerous enemies (such as mages before they nuke your army), but the only feasible way to do it is to TAB through ALL enemies until you find the one you need to kill FAST, and by the time you find that enemy it is often too late; -- Camera is INSANELY annoying: It is always reset to inconvenient isometric view after EACH NPC dialogue (and there are a lot of those dialogues) and you must always fiddle with it to get it back to the usable state; -- There are NO shortcuts to speak of and you must ALWAYS perform half a dozen clicks on the interface to execute simple actions, and with many units under your controls and many enemies it becomes... hmmm... I don't even know what to call what it becomes; -- There are NO controls settings except ONE (the Camera control key) and you CANNOT set it to something convenient. The only options are middle mouse button and Insert key. Guess what? The middle mouse button setting does not work, and while you control movement with WSAD every time you want to fix camera you have to hit Insert on the other end of your keyboard. There's more to say, but friggin' GOG does not like detailed reviews...