This will be biased. Heavily biased.
I have been playing SpellForce 1 since I was a child and enjoyed it way more than I should. Cool rune system, shit load of possible skills to learn, spellbook you can organize and fill yourself and neat race gimmicks were and still are there.
The second installment was not met as warm. Everything was extremely simplified, characters weren't engaging or likeable and overall I didn't have any colourful emotions. (Actually, playing it again couple years ago made me realize it was not that bad but then Demons of the Past came and I couldn't handle how retarded it was.)
Then I joined SpellForce 3 beta testing and saw that once again it would feel like SpellForce 2 but with additional jerking-off to sector mechanics. Disappointed I shelved this game for years. Now, after playing reforced version I can say that I just needed time to become open-minded to change.
The game continues the trend of SpellForce 2 to become more RPG-dialogue-characters-based compared to the first one. The game now has actual story, the characters are loveable and I have absolutely no issues with how things are written. I also did not expect the music to catch my interest but it did. Alas design-wise the game is pretty bleak. Characters and units often fade with background making battle scenes a brown-grey mass of animated texture. This of course unit dependent but still, if *I noticed it then it must be pretty obvious issue.
Now lets talk about gameplay itself. I love jerking-off to my sectors. Initially I thought it was a bad idea designed only for the game to be different from other RTS. I was wrong. Sectors bring a lot of strategy thinking into the field along with worker management. You have a menu of three races from which you choose to take out one on a date in a map. Sadly, you never will take two of them at the same time like in SpellForce 1. Yeah, all three races feels different to play, but I still compare them to six from the first game and they never come close. The unit's pathfinding sometimes just doesn't work making you wonder where did your ballistae disappear to when you are storming enemy capital only to find them driving donuts in a puddle on another end of the map.
Regarding characters part. The skill tree is just dumbed down to 3-4 skills for a branch of which you will use one. Maybe two if you feel like spicing up your life. Spellbook is still not present at a capacity where you want to open it. And because of unified skill wheel I have no idea what character is using what skill. And often I realized that I actually don't care.
Overall this game is as close as it could be to SpellForce 1 considering today's trends. It's definitely better than second installment in every single aspect and surely surpasses the original in writing and characters department and I even felt that childlike joy when playing it, even if it's far from nostalgic SpellForce 1 I had built inside my head. After completing it I found myself wanting more. Loved it, hope to see more.
Oh yeah, regarding multiplayer. It's actually fun. Especially if you play against couple of friends and nobody knows all those competitive strats making a match drag on for two hours and there are no more resources left on a map and you just throw first grade units at each other.
Ok, plot, yeah. So, looks like there is a mage-rebellion going over because neckbeard wizards think they are superior to ordinary mortals. And your dad is the leader of this rebellion. But you didn't like his methods so you rebelled against his rebellion and instead of ass-whopping he did the next reasonable thing for a parent to do in this situation. He decided to execute you. Luckily, you were saved by some itty-bitty-gritty warmonger. Eight years past. You are serving in army, together with aforementioned warmonger. You were sent to a village nearby to investigate possible plague outbreak. While you were there you realized the plague is magical and is not contagious. But general told you to stick your opinion up your arsenal and carry on with the order to purge the village. You are too righteous to do it so you disobey. Logically, for that you are getting sentenced to death by all the way through colonoscopy and now chilling with spiders and lunatics in a cell. Then leader of a new religion is coming towards you telling you are the child from a prophecy and he needs your help in locating the source of the plague. You don't really have a choice, so during the next ten minutes you proceed to massacre old comrades in prison break attempt. You then tasked to gather possible allies in your quest, which acts as a tutorial for three races gameplay. Then you investigate your dad's old laboratory and find your mom who sings the song on telepathic level which blows the minds of those who were not gifted a spark of magic. Alas your reunion was cut short as the cult leader who you're working for teleports behind your mom and sucks her spirit into the amulet. Your mom was a specimen from long extinct nation by the way, obviously super intelligent and powered. She survived the great reset by the power of oversleeping. While slicing the pope in half, you politely ask Lacaine (that's the name of the cult leader) to return the mom back. He does not agree and blows up the lab. You wake up five weeks later and find that everything is gone to shit. Well, at least the plague is gone, innit? Now you need to gather another rebellion against Lacaine and his Purity of Light lunatics to protect the world from devastation and unite all people within your nation. While you do that you find out that the rune which you were using all that time to resurrect has some weird properties like ability to control minds. And that's bad, if you don't get it. Also people die if their rune is destroyed. That's sad :C. Anyway, you storm Greyfell, the capital, where Lacaine is planning to open the portal to nether and summon old gods and in final fight you kill him, freeing you mom in the process. Alas, the portal is open and chthonian entity is trying to get through it. The only way to close it is to destroy the amulet with your mom inside. You do it with teary eyes and everything ends. In the aftermath, the queen decides to establish "The Circle" of mages to represent wizardry of all lands. And you together with your companions are the core of it. Then you go get drunk with elf-girl and everything is good that day. The End.*
Update 1.
So I finished soul harvest. Everything up there still applies here. Dvarwes are too complex for my silky smooth brain and I couldn't be bothered to manage all their stances in battle. No issues with dark elves, because people riding on dinosaurs and throwing spears that make enemies bleed makes my head produce happy chemicals. The only way it could be better if these people were half naked women.
The story though is pretty bleak this time around. I didn't vibe much with characters or ideas told but eh, like with half naked women we can't have everything, right?
Update 2.
So I finished fallen god. Yep, that's what this game was always about. The best campaign out of three. Trolls themselves are pretty easy to pick up and play, their huge figures absolutely break pathfinding and the only way to train advanced units is to literally build conveyor belts where your green dudes walk from one station to another getting club for smacking, then a sock with rock for throwing and finally a tree to obliterate enemy buildings. Simpleminded fun, just how I like it.
This time around the story is pretty heavy and does not tell us about a world-ending threat which we must stop. This time it's more personal. This time it's survival. And this time it's about what will you sacrifice for this survival.
So after completing entirety of SpellForce 3 I applaud Grimlore Games and ask them to make more. Please. We need it. I fell in love with this game again because of you. Don't you dare run away for twenty years again.
I have been playing SpellForce 1 since I was a child and enjoyed it way more than I should. Cool rune system, shit load of possible skills to learn, spellbook you can organize and fill yourself and neat race gimmicks were and still are there.
The second installment was not met as warm. Everything was extremely simplified, characters weren't engaging or likeable and overall I didn't have any colourful emotions. (Actually, playing it again couple years ago made me realize it was not that bad but then Demons of the Past came and I couldn't handle how retarded it was.)
Then I joined SpellForce 3 beta testing and saw that once again it would feel like SpellForce 2 but with additional jerking-off to sector mechanics. Disappointed I shelved this game for years. Now, after playing reforced version I can say that I just needed time to become open-minded to change.
The game continues the trend of SpellForce 2 to become more RPG-dialogue-characters-based compared to the first one. The game now has actual story, the characters are loveable and I have absolutely no issues with how things are written. I also did not expect the music to catch my interest but it did. Alas design-wise the game is pretty bleak. Characters and units often fade with background making battle scenes a brown-grey mass of animated texture. This of course unit dependent but still, if *I noticed it then it must be pretty obvious issue.
Now lets talk about gameplay itself. I love jerking-off to my sectors. Initially I thought it was a bad idea designed only for the game to be different from other RTS. I was wrong. Sectors bring a lot of strategy thinking into the field along with worker management. You have a menu of three races from which you choose to take out one on a date in a map. Sadly, you never will take two of them at the same time like in SpellForce 1. Yeah, all three races feels different to play, but I still compare them to six from the first game and they never come close. The unit's pathfinding sometimes just doesn't work making you wonder where did your ballistae disappear to when you are storming enemy capital only to find them driving donuts in a puddle on another end of the map.
Regarding characters part. The skill tree is just dumbed down to 3-4 skills for a branch of which you will use one. Maybe two if you feel like spicing up your life. Spellbook is still not present at a capacity where you want to open it. And because of unified skill wheel I have no idea what character is using what skill. And often I realized that I actually don't care.
Overall this game is as close as it could be to SpellForce 1 considering today's trends. It's definitely better than second installment in every single aspect and surely surpasses the original in writing and characters department and I even felt that childlike joy when playing it, even if it's far from nostalgic SpellForce 1 I had built inside my head. After completing it I found myself wanting more. Loved it, hope to see more.
Oh yeah, regarding multiplayer. It's actually fun. Especially if you play against couple of friends and nobody knows all those competitive strats making a match drag on for two hours and there are no more resources left on a map and you just throw first grade units at each other.
Ok, plot, yeah. So, looks like there is a mage-rebellion going over because neckbeard wizards think they are superior to ordinary mortals. And your dad is the leader of this rebellion. But you didn't like his methods so you rebelled against his rebellion and instead of ass-whopping he did the next reasonable thing for a parent to do in this situation. He decided to execute you. Luckily, you were saved by some itty-bitty-gritty warmonger. Eight years past. You are serving in army, together with aforementioned warmonger. You were sent to a village nearby to investigate possible plague outbreak. While you were there you realized the plague is magical and is not contagious. But general told you to stick your opinion up your arsenal and carry on with the order to purge the village. You are too righteous to do it so you disobey. Logically, for that you are getting sentenced to death by all the way through colonoscopy and now chilling with spiders and lunatics in a cell. Then leader of a new religion is coming towards you telling you are the child from a prophecy and he needs your help in locating the source of the plague. You don't really have a choice, so during the next ten minutes you proceed to massacre old comrades in prison break attempt. You then tasked to gather possible allies in your quest, which acts as a tutorial for three races gameplay. Then you investigate your dad's old laboratory and find your mom who sings the song on telepathic level which blows the minds of those who were not gifted a spark of magic. Alas your reunion was cut short as the cult leader who you're working for teleports behind your mom and sucks her spirit into the amulet. Your mom was a specimen from long extinct nation by the way, obviously super intelligent and powered. She survived the great reset by the power of oversleeping. While slicing the pope in half, you politely ask Lacaine (that's the name of the cult leader) to return the mom back. He does not agree and blows up the lab. You wake up five weeks later and find that everything is gone to shit. Well, at least the plague is gone, innit? Now you need to gather another rebellion against Lacaine and his Purity of Light lunatics to protect the world from devastation and unite all people within your nation. While you do that you find out that the rune which you were using all that time to resurrect has some weird properties like ability to control minds. And that's bad, if you don't get it. Also people die if their rune is destroyed. That's sad :C. Anyway, you storm Greyfell, the capital, where Lacaine is planning to open the portal to nether and summon old gods and in final fight you kill him, freeing you mom in the process. Alas, the portal is open and chthonian entity is trying to get through it. The only way to close it is to destroy the amulet with your mom inside. You do it with teary eyes and everything ends. In the aftermath, the queen decides to establish "The Circle" of mages to represent wizardry of all lands. And you together with your companions are the core of it. Then you go get drunk with elf-girl and everything is good that day. The End.*
Update 1.
So I finished soul harvest. Everything up there still applies here. Dvarwes are too complex for my silky smooth brain and I couldn't be bothered to manage all their stances in battle. No issues with dark elves, because people riding on dinosaurs and throwing spears that make enemies bleed makes my head produce happy chemicals. The only way it could be better if these people were half naked women.
The story though is pretty bleak this time around. I didn't vibe much with characters or ideas told but eh, like with half naked women we can't have everything, right?
Update 2.
So I finished fallen god. Yep, that's what this game was always about. The best campaign out of three. Trolls themselves are pretty easy to pick up and play, their huge figures absolutely break pathfinding and the only way to train advanced units is to literally build conveyor belts where your green dudes walk from one station to another getting club for smacking, then a sock with rock for throwing and finally a tree to obliterate enemy buildings. Simpleminded fun, just how I like it.
This time around the story is pretty heavy and does not tell us about a world-ending threat which we must stop. This time it's more personal. This time it's survival. And this time it's about what will you sacrifice for this survival.
So after completing entirety of SpellForce 3 I applaud Grimlore Games and ask them to make more. Please. We need it. I fell in love with this game again because of you. Don't you dare run away for twenty years again.