SpellForce 3 - The perfect blend between RTS and RPG!
It is the year 518. The rebellion of the renegade mages, known as the Mage Wars, has been quashed by the Crown. However, it was a Pyrrhic victory: Whole regions have fallen into anarchy, refugees roam the lands in search of shelter, and a myster...
SpellForce 3 - The perfect blend between RTS and RPG!
It is the year 518. The rebellion of the renegade mages, known as the Mage Wars, has been quashed by the Crown. However, it was a Pyrrhic victory: Whole regions have fallen into anarchy, refugees roam the lands in search of shelter, and a mysterious, deadly plague called the “Bloodburn” has arisen and is spreading rapidly.
In times like these people cling to any sign of hope they can find. The Purity of Light, led by a charismatic man called Rondar Lacaine, claims that mages are the source of all misfortune – and that only the second coming of Aonir, the father of all gods, will return Eo to its former splendor.
Innovative Mix: Unique gameplay blending RTS and RPG naturally together
Create & Customize: Create your own hero and choose between distinct skill trees
Build to Fight: Raise your own army and fight epic mass battles
Epic Storyline: Immerse yourself in a rich world - Unravel the secrets behind the current situation in Nortander. Explore Eo, a fully-realized world filled with interesting characters and heart-wrenching stories.
Make new friends - assemble your party from a diverse cast of companions that not only complement your skills in interesting ways but also have an impact on the narrative. Manage their skills and equipment to ensure victory on the battlefield.
Choose your side: Strengthen and command one of three factions – Elves, Orcs and Humans. Prepare your troops and fight the mother of all battles. Play strategically, taking advantage of terrain, troop formations, visibility, scouting, etc.
Experience an epic tale: Enjoy a fully-voiced 30+ hour campaign on your own or with friends in the campaign coop mode. Face opponents of all skills in the online battles.
Multiplayer: Strong multiplayer component with various modes - Compete against each other in the PvP and Domination mode or play cooperative either together on one faction or classic where everybody plays a faction.
Reforced Edition Features:
Enhanced campaign experience
Improved RTS mechanics and reworked RTS faction (Humans, Orcs and Elves) designs, introduced in the expansions Fallen God & Soul Harvest
Updated Skilltrees with new spell mechanics introduced in the expansions
Improved Questflow
Improved loot distribution for a smoother progression
Reworked crafting
RTS AI Balance overhaul
Complete rework of the hub for minimizing downtimes
Complete purge of campaign/quest logic issues
Improved Coop Mode
Visually and functionally enhanced User Interface used in the expansions
Full Gamepad Support for controls and UI
A new skirmish map “Bitter Canyon” set in a mountainous environment
Journey Mode: An additional game mode similar to the original SpellForce’s “Free Game Mode”, providing more than 20 hours of unique content and a lot of replay value. Can be played in Coop!
Journey Skirmish: Play PvP skirmish matches against other players with your journey heroes
Arena Mode: An additional endless game mode where you start with a fresh character, fight against waves of monsters, and buy loot and spells from merchants to compete with other players in the leaderboards which can also be played in Coop
Improved Mod Support and mod support for the new Journey and Arena modes. Create your own Journey or arena maps and share them with the community.
I was scared to buy this because there were so many bad reviews, but I liked Spell Force 2 so I gave it a chance. And it's the best game I've played in a long time. It's got heart -- an "it" factor a lot of games don't have. The voice acting is immersive. Watch a let's-play video if the other reviews put you off, see if it might be for you. I'm surprisingly happy with my purchase.
I don't care that this is not a review, the game deserves it.
You need internet to use almost every part of the game, including skirmishes with bots.
I'm fine with requiring it for online multiplayer, that's a given.
The only option you have if offline, is the campaign in any of the games. GOG's DRM-FREE policy is incredibly flexible with this one.
As an RTS it lacks in some aspects, but as an RPG it's absolutely great.
Pros:
- Great story
- Interesting skill trees with an interesting ability combination system
- Interesting characters with their own backstories
- Minor descisions can affect story
- Beautiful graphics
- RTS layer that adds to feeling you're not a lone person fighting, you have armies that help you
- On the other hand taking on an army of 50 using only your heroes feels really satisfying
- Buildings have lots of hp so there's no need to have high APM to defend your base
Cons:
- It's often hard to distinguish anything in minimap without opening it
- With 4 heroes each having 3 different skills combat can be spammy. Especially if you have a lot of high interlligence/willpower heroes that regenerate focus points quickly
- Factions are very similar with minor differences
- Finding resource nodes can take some time if region is big
- Mining out resources node only results in one notification meaning it can be easy to miss it or forget about it if you were in the middle of the battle
- To see your idle workers you have to hover over region when map is open which doesn't really scale when you have 10 regions
This game is much better than its predecessors on many aspects.
+ The RPG parts are good.
+ The voice acting is great and high budget. Feat. General Geralt.
+ The story is well crafted and fully voice acted.
+ Graphics are great
+ The characters are interesting and fleshed out. Too bad you can't recruit the dark elf.
+ The lore is pretty standard but easily digestible
+ The game on the hardest setting has you fight and obliterate LITERALLY ENTIRE SCREENS OF CONSTANT ENEMIES. This is awesome!
Still it has some downsides
- AI is pretty basic
- UI is clunky
- Animations often glitch, ambient characters usually glitch during cutscenes
- RTS economic elements are clunky and hard to manage
- No really special units on the different races. It's always pikes vs cavalry vs soldiers and no abilities on units
- RPG elements stop mattering after a while and the 3 active abilities limit stops you quite early from becoming a demigod or exploring new abilities
Still had a good time for 70 hours
Disclaimer: I received Reforced for free as I already owned SF3, this is awesome, thank you.
First off RPG - Good story, good writing, good voice acting, all of this can keep me playing despite the parts of the game I have problems with. The visuals are also excellent and the music is good as well. None of the charaters are complete idots, their actions have reasons and make sense from their point of view, there are no comically evil villians in sight and I love it.
Now the RTS part - It is passable at best, lots of frustrating elements that really bring the entire game down. There is a good variety of units and structures to build and each faction feels unique.
To start off my biggest gripe, the Artificial Stupidity is very apparant, enemy aggression is ludicrious and you will be attacked by massive hordes almost immediately, good luck trying to scout or attack between the massive enemy waves. This may just be my personal preference for smaller unit tacics, but death balls are no fun for me.
Enemy pathfinding is also really bad, they will sprint through 3 occupied territories in order to attck a different outpost stopping for nothing. Once they get to their intended target the will realise they don't have the strength to destroy it, turn around and run all the way back.
There is no unit formations (that thing that was in Age of Empires 2), your units just run in a massive clump, medics in particular seem to really want to die as they run into the center of the enemy.
Some things just don't make sense to me, I can build a forge in early missions to upgrade my units, but I can't actually build any of the upgrades so what is the point of letting me build it?
Overall: It is a verry good RPG but is let down by some frustrating elements of the RTS system. If it were not for those SF3 would get a 4.5 from me at least.
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