SpellForce Platinum

Combining personalized Characters with RTS in a fun way is something this gamer hasn't seen before. The "Campaign" lacks imagination and creativity, and features some painful voice-acting - But like Ergheiz (1998), the main feature isn't what to play for. If you want to Skirmishing from Warcraft III with a sense of continuity between maps this is your game. With occasional "RPG" maps thrown in along with a Marketplace and Questplace map you feel that you're working towards something as you play though. Your character levels, you switch out heroes for stronger ones, your created unit base levels increase, and you find new troop and building plans along the way. It's the gameplay off-the-rails, without cut-scenes - And trust me, the cut scenes here will make you think the developers and programmers were invited to do voices. The unit voices are fine, the enemy voices are alright, it's just the Story Characters. My favourite points: -Switch to behind-your-char view to peer through the fog of war, admire scenery, walk through the town you built, or see the drama of your 90 strong army crash into the enemy. -The Music is strong, and evolves in subtlely throughout. -Build an army of one race, two races, or mix all three races on either light or dark. -Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Dark Elves, Orcs & Trolls are well balanced. -The graphics have aged well because they were made well. -Good variety of enemy types, from undead goblins to mountain giants. Things I disliked: -Story suffers from D&D Genericism (I know it's not a word) -Can't save in Skirmish Map, You keep items and Exp. by saving, but you'll be kicked back to map menu upon loading. -You can't "Lose" completely, your chances of winning can be destroyed utterly but YOU have to choose to give up, bit of a pride hurter, that.

I was surprised when this gem came out at first. I am not always sure what type of game would interest me as I typically like all types of games but prefer RPG's. This came has an excellent balance in bring both the RPG quest world and the RTS type gameplay together in a highly entertaining storyline. This is one of the few games (apart from Abe on this site) that has kept me entertained. This was an immediate buy for me as I don't have the two included expansions and hope to get more fun this time round. Just remember to touch that Stones... you'll see what I mean.

Yes the RTS part of the game (thats is majority of game time) has flaws - RTS section of campaign has no AI for own units and lacks command options (e.g. attack move is not present), building placement is... special to put it midly. Its difficult to target some units (skeletons in mountain terrain are basicaly invisible) and everything is slow. Not Settlers slow, but do not expect classic RTS pace. RPG has clumsy UI, and mostly consist of you walking across the map - good luck doing some shopping in Greyfell. Not speaking of reseting fog of war every time you return to a map (you will return to a map). Did I say walking? Story is B-rate fantasy throw-it-away paperback novel... Quest (both RTS and RPG) are repetitive after a while. Yet the game has its... spell may I say? It is lovely beatiful, luring you into ignoring all the flaws, returning to it after several angry uninstalls and while you know how the story ends basicaly from intro cinematic - you want to explore this. Visuals which aged actualy quite well are very nice, specialy considering age of the game, sountrack is good enough to listen to it. And it comes with editor (now it is even working!). Races are quite different, heroes are interesting to build up (when you swallow the gui and system). Do not expect Warcraft 3 (serisously, who can compare the RTS basics within this with the W3?) its actualy closer to first Dungeon Siege with lot of RTS Lite. But its good, I would say 74% good!

I'll start off by telling that there are numerous flaws in SpellForce which would be tolerable individually but the collective weight of which might be too much to put up with. To me the problems ruined a game that I genuinely tried to like. Without further ado, list time: 1) The camera often hovers so close to the ground that you it's difficult to see what's going on. This isn't a problem early on in the game as the battles tend to be small-scale, but gets annoying later on and especially on hilly terrain, where uphills pretty much decimate all visibility. Too often I found myself trying to move the camera so that it would perch on top of a hill. You can't adjust the tilt angle of the camera, which makes it all the worse. SpellForce is also an RTS (most of the time, anyway), so a proper camera would be vital. 2) The user interface is mediocre. Buying and selling struck me as particularly unintuitive; you can't see what gear your heroes are wearing and how it compares to what you want to replace it with. 3) The level-up system is poor, unintuitive and poorly explained. 4) There is a really curious gameplay mechanic that resets fog of war every time your avatar (main hero) dies, you load a game or move between maps. There is no way around this apart from using a cheat that removes fog of war altogether. Should you choose not to cheat, you'll quickly become compelled to complete maps in one go without your avatar dying. Once you've completed the map, you return to the main city to trade your loot for proper items, then discover the fog is back and you can't see where the merchants are. 5) The levels are linear in design, so there's very little room for creative approaches... unless you're willing to exploit a gameplay mechanic which dictates that enemies won't begin to build their base until you begin yours. This could be considered cheating, and it certainly isn't the way the game was meant to be played, but it might save you from hours of linear army-building. 6) The voice acting is atrocious. 7) The story is as pointless as it is uncreative. 8) The maps are really big, but the units are tiny. This wouldn't be such a problem if the stupid Lilluputs could get a bloody move on. Unfortunately they're never in a hurry, so making a round in the shops of Greyfell takes ages; you'd better have some literature nearby. There are teleport stones that help you move quickly around, but usually there is only one or two of these in each map so you still end up walking a lot. I tolerated this for a long time (level 23 or so), but eventually I couldn't live with them any longer. I never finished the Order of Dawn campaign, so I can't tell whether the expansions are any good. Happily, however, SpellForce 2 addresses almost all of these problems to some extent, so that's the one you should buy.

I purchased this game several years ago, and again today, for my daughter to experience this classic fantasy title and to play multiplayer against me. The unique premise behind the rune warriors is almost as interesting as the guiding story line. The gameplay is simple but effective, you can easily control large groups without being overwelmed with button mashing. Truely a classic.