This is a very dark and gritty RPG, and the story is rather unconventional in that it doesn't use many popular tropes. The story and dialogue is usually very well written, but can at times seem a bit disjointed between the characters, but that is a very minor thing. The combat is rather engaging, although I didn't find the spells as amazing looking as the devs claimed. With that out of the way. Let's talk about the bad stuff. Easily the worst thing about this game is the crap auto save system, which doesn't properly save sections, so you have to redo content if you unexpecdly die, and you have to repeat unskippable cutscenes again and again. Which is annoying, cause some of the boss fights are very overtuned and rather unfair. Another annoying issue was that there were some abilities that cause my screen to flicker a lot, which at times cause me to lose fights. I tried to fix the issue, but I didn't find a quick solution, so I just ignored it. Overall I rather enjoyed this game, and I can recommend picking this up on a sale. It will net you a good 15-20 hours. If you enjoy a great story and can forgive some glaring issues like me.
Took me 37 hours to complete the game and most side content, except a few legendary treasures. What is different from Risen 2? - Vastly improved combat that is fair to towards the player. - Shorter but better story that is more consistent. - Better characters with companion banter! - Improved systems, including training at NPCs. - Vastly improved animations. - Better character stat building. What does this game succeed at? - Story, characters and dialogue. - Player agency in the story, character building and quests. - World and lore. Feel of adventure. - World building and zone design. - Exploration and proper rewards that feels meaningful. - Amazing soundtrack. What does it not succeed at? - Very annoying bug when free aiming with magic / ranged, that cases the game to crash.
The Good: - Better class and gameplay system. - More options for difficulty. - Political storylines. - Good amount of choices in quests. The bad: - Crashing to desktop a few times. - Main story line is weak and boring. - Complete voice acting was a mistake. WIthout it, I think the game could have a richer dialogue. - Companions aren't as near as good as the companions in the first game. - Overland sea map is boring. It would be better if the deadfire were larger island or closer to continents. Prefer the PoE1 map/travel map. - I killed the pirate faction leaders (all of them), yet they showed up in the end credits as being alive (specific characters).
When I got Spellforce 3 I didn't expect so deep mechanics, and least of all I didn't expect such a strong SP story. The RTS mechanics are fantastic with resoruces that has to be transported to the buildings building the units. The worker units management is really cool as well, which is based on your main buidling, and then you assign workers from it, to have less carriers, or more on the other resource buildings or misc buildings. The story in the SP is amazing. It's pretty well written, and the voice acting is superb. I honestly didn't expect some of these twists, and it's nice to change it up with the RPG side and RTS in the missions. I gave the gave the game a 4/5 cause there are some bugs. Notably there are some visual bugs with workers / NPC getting stuck, but besides that I haven't seen much. Also, the loading screens can be a bit long, and come a bit too often sometimes.
I’ve been playing this game for about 20 hours now and feel like I have a good grasp of how the game is like. I will be starting with the negative in the game and then move on to the positive in the game. Please read my entire review for the justification for my rating. The Negative: 1. The quest marker seem to be only «half-functioning», so it sometimes had me running around like a headless chicken. I think that it should either be 100% quest marker or not at all. There was a lack of clues at times as well, which contributed to me running around as a headless chicken. Sometimes the quest marker shows a location that is not in the current stage of the quest. 2. As someone who have never played a TBS RPG in my life I felt like the combat had a way too steep learning curvive, with minimal information on how to properly play. I love it that devs make hard games, and I dislike hand-holding, but I think there is a fine line between hand holding and not hand holding. The Positive: 1. The combat is versatile, clever and interesting. 2. I love the party banter system. It’s one of my favourite things with Baldur’s Gate 2. 3. The setting is interesting and I enjoy the dark, light and the humour. I mostly play grim or dark RPG so this is a strange but welcome change. 4. I find myself enjoying the merchant banter, which is weird, cause in most games I can’t wait for them to shut up. 5. The writing is excellent. The reason I landed on 3 out of 5 stars is because what I found negative in the game had a much bigger impact on my enjoyment of the game than what the positive did. Whenever I was out of combat, and didn't have a quest marker that was weird I found myself having a lot of fun, but the moment I was met with the oddly functioning quest marker and steep learning curve for the combat I felt I had to quit the game and have a break.
- Controls are super awkward and clunky - Character design is really weird. Wrong proportions (for example, too thin arms towards the wrists) - Voice is average to bad - Really bad English. It's called a portal, not a teleport There are much better RPG out there. Play something else that doesn't have so many flaws.
