Larian Studios Forums General Chat RPG Chat Spellforce Demo out

yeah. the game might be good, but it's too damn heavy to run decently on my PC's

besides, I'm a huge SW: KOTOR addict right now

I just bought the game (strange, while both GameSpot and GameFAQS say it isn't out yet), and when I'm done forum-lurking, I'm going to install it. I played the demo too, and it's made me curious...

Hm, DEATH, in the largest zoom range you can look over your ava's shoulder, this is nearly 1st person view? And in that view you can enjoy the graphics - all those details in environment or monsters or your folk you're building up. But as enemies keep rolling up as soon as you have activated a race monument it's not recommendable at that time.

There are missions though where you solve a map (it's called island) with your ava and "summoned" heroes (monument) - some used this "1st person view" then.
Kiya

[color:"yellow"]Stormrider[/color]: PLEASE install the latest patch 1.05 => 20 MB

http://www.spellforce.gamesweb.com/index.php3?show=screens
here, a lot of screen shots - there is a very good English fansite, but I forgot the name <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/puppyeyes.gif" alt="" />

Installing patch... Thanks for the advice, Kiya

I've just found out why gamespot says it hasn't been released yet: apparently it gets released a few months earlier in Europe. Nice!

http://www.planetspellforce.com/gallery/categories.php?cat_id=1

ah, here is Spellforce Companion, the English fansite - just take care where you click, ok? I gave the link to the screenshot area - but it has a huge spoiler part also.
Kiya

Thanks! That's cool!

*Gives Kiya a cookie*

With a thick choc layer?
Kiya <perking up>

*Gives Kiya a cookie with big fat chocolate chips* <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Right. I've played Spellforce for a while now, and with your permission, a review:


General

SpellForce is an interesting blend of Real-Time Strategy and Role-playing game. The RTS part consists of the regular RTS procedures: you train workers, those workers construct buildings, and with those buildings you can employ warriors and research upgrades. When you've assembled enough warriors, you head over to your opponent and stomp the snot out of him. A change however, is that you do not actually train warriors and workers at your buildings, but you summon them at monuments, using runes. The RTS part, however, is only half of the game. You start the game with a character you yourself configurated. During the course of the game, the character finds equipment, learns spells and gains levels. In other words, this is a role-playing game as well. After a while, the main character (or Rune-Warrior, as she is called) can even summon heroes and create a true Role-Playing party, with the kicker being that this party can be backed up by the warriors you have summoned at the rune monument. When you take into account the fact that you can select up to one hundred units at once, you can imagine the epic clashes that this creates.


Gameplay

The most important feature of a good game is of course that it has good gameplay. SpellForce offers gameplay in spades, but nothing truly revolutionary. Their self-proclaimed innovative Click 'n' Fight system is nice, saving you a few mouse clicks, but I am fairly convinced that most gamers will stick to the old Select Unit - Select Ability - Select Target stratagem. The CnF system is an innovation, yes, but it's not the great revolution it's cracked up to be.
The game has, in my opinion, one slight flaw: when you access your inventory, the game will not be paused, in fact, the game cannot be paused at all, except by accessing the main menu. A shame the makers didn't keep the requirements of the Role-player in mind: a role-player likes to pause the game, and issue orders and think the whole thing over. Especially due to the fact that the Formations aren't much help in this game.

However, the game does shine when you look at the town management. You build towns with resources that your workers harvest, that looks pretty generic, but your workers can also build specialized harvesting buildings and become Artisans, collecting more resources per trip. You can quickly see how many artisans are employed at a building by clicking on it. Another thing which I found interesting was the fact that the game respects logic more than most RTS games. Take a look at the Food system, for instance: your workers collect food (they fish or shoot deer or pick berries), and that food goes into your headquarters. When you have collected enough food to support a larger army, the headquarters can bump the maximum limit of workers and warriors up, so that in fact, the food in your storehouses, and not the number of farms, determines your maximum army size.

Graphics

SpellForce graphics are state-of-the-art. All characters are carefully textured and animated, and to make it even better, you can actually choose your viewpoint, zoom in, and even go into 3rd person perspective with a simple turn of the mouse wheel. The buildings are interesting to look upon (though they sometimes look a bit similar), and they can be freely rotated when put into place and so you can create a fully customized town, and even walk through it with the 3rd person perspective. The spell effects are also impeccable, lighting up the landscape and reflecting in the water (which is also stunning by the way, provided your graphics card supports pixel-shading)

Of course, all this takes a heavy toll on the old ticker. Don't expect to be able to play this game with anything less than a PIII with 1Ghz.


Sound

The music is certainly inspiring, with choirs and drums at war, and flutes and such at peace. The adrenaline gets flowing when you see thirty goblins swarming at your settlement with only workers to defend your town, and your army miles away.

The sound effects are adequate, if rather bland, but the quality of the voice talent falls far short of what can be, should be, expected from a modern game. For starters, all units from one race share the same voice set. That's not a disaster yet, but the voice acting is definitely subpar. It's like they dug up some fanboys and -girls and told them to "Read these lines. Go on, just read, don't act". That's a shame. It's no biggie, but it does irritate occasionally.


Conclusion

Buy this game! If you're a RPGer or RTSer, you definitely need this one for your collection, and it gives you a chance to explore the other genre as well. Despite the flaws I mentioned, this game is great. But be sure to check the system specs before you open up your wallet.

Thanks for this review, Stormrider <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" /> - wouldn't have dared to write one myself.

What I'd like to know => did you choose a warrior? And is this really easier to crush enemies? I concentrated on Dark Magic only and needed a swift ava for poison and run away tactic - another thing: did you clear out bases with your ava first or did you start at once in building up your home base?
Kiya <munching her cookie happily>

Well, yes I chose a warrior, with heavy combat skills and a basic ability in White Magic. If you look at the fact that a Recruit does about 7 damage to an enemy, and my avatar does about 50-60 when Berserked, well, the math gets ugly for the bad boys fast. However, since my avatar has little magic skills, she has trouble keeping her troops alive (I kinda roleplay and try to lose as few units as possible - with the Humans at least, I couldn't care less about those filthy Orcs). So basically it's a trade-off. I'm willing to bet using a magic-focused avatar is just as effective.

I didn't do hit-and-run tactics, more like a war of attrition: counter an enemy attack losing no units (hopefully), and advance. Repeat procedure as often as necessary, while keeping the other entrances to your base defended with a hero and a bunch of units. This makes it interesting because of the fact that you're often fighting on two or three fronts. And constantly training reinforcements at the same time.

I decided not to clear out bases with my avatar alone, because I love building bases <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />, also demolishing buildings takes forever when you're alone! I prefer to start a base, organize a defense, and counterattack when the time is right. Which it seldom is.

I have just found the Elven workers rune, so my troops are now mixed and matched from Humans and Elves. Man, this game rocks!

One little thing though, I don't know if this'll happen to you, but for some reason the game hardlocks after about three hours of play. When I play, I play on and off, but I still leave the game running. So after three hours, I'm screwed, especially when I forgot to quicksave. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/disagree.gif" alt="" /> So now I have to remember quitting the game every hour or so <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/suspicion.gif" alt="" />

Nope, my freezes are different - at one spot it froze 3x! After a hard fight, my orcs were attacking several buildings at once. I was really angry - they just don't obey! I had to use "c" all the time and then gather them again to only attack one building at the time. Another thing are quest plot bugs. I've already got 3 that won't leave my log. Hope, you're more lucky with version 1.05 as I was with 1.03. I'm nearly through now, only 2 maps left <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif" alt="" />

Healing, have you got the priest already? If you activate his healing icon permanently, he'll heal all the time automatically. Ah, you've got the elves, later on, they make really good towers! Icebringers <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" /> -> hm, you're in Leafshade now? That's were I caught one quest bug.
Kiya

So far about 6/7 freezes - but always at crucial pts (with version 1.3). 1.5 came out too late for me.

Hey there, I've read something about special multiplayer options on the english fansite but they didnt give any details, since you (Kiya and Stormrider) both have the game, maybe you would be kind enough to tell me more about the multiplayer options?

Thanks

I don't play multiplayer, I'm a singleplayer. From what I read on the Spellforce forum (link is included in one of my very first posts in this thread) - MP "sucks".
Kiya

Well that is disappointing, I usually never buy games that dont have good multiplayer. We got four computers on a LAN here and me and my brothers LOVE to play games together, especially cooperative games (D2, Dungeon Siege, Serious Sam, BG I&II, etc.) Been a while since we got any good RPGs that let you play the entire singleplayer campaign with your friends and my hopes went up when I read about the special multiplayer.

Anyway, thanks for the help Kiya

Yeah, I don't like MP either, sorry. I prefer to play witrh myself <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

Yeah, I'm playing the jolly Elves now. I'm at the Windfall Pass right now. I've built a whole Elven settlement, but when I activated the Human monument, I realized there were no stone fields in the area! So now all I can build is a silly woodcutter's hut, and my human workers are therefor eating out of their noses waiting for me to discover a quarry. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/disagree.gif" alt="" />

I don't like the Elves. The Windarchers with Ice Arrows rock, but as far as close combat is concerned, the Elves are... well... pathetic. So my avatar has to do all the fighting, because those silly warders are no good.

Anyway, there a "battle" between the Singleplayers and the Multiplayers and I guess it will last for some years now. I'm curious what will be there in the end - maybe both side to side ?

Hm, are you sure? I never had a map without all resources - but I think I made Windfall just with my ava
About the elves: I was in a very hard area - so I just built those icetowers, about 20 and then I waited for the bossmonsters - and sneaked up with elven workes, built 4 towers. they were soooooo stupid, the ice arrows from the towers hit them and they didn't respond, I just watched. I like to work with towers, my army doesn't get killed very soon.

And what about the elven Druids and Elders? They can heal very well, so my elven archers had nearly no losses.

Are you sure, you did all upgrades before summoning fighers?
Kiya

About ressources again: I try to uncover the map as far as possible before I activate a monument, so I know where the stuff is - and I kill the weaker camps without an activated monument, so I can build up in peace, I hate stress, am a defensive gamer.

I found a stone field eventually, though it took some fighting, and proceeded to conquer the map. Another tactic I like is to eliminate some spawning points, set up a defensive perimeter near my base - with those cool towers - and then go round the enemy's attackers using alternate paths cleared when I destroyed those spawning points. Then I destroy his base while his troops are away and being slaughtered by my defenses (Windarchers with Icestrike rock!) This is why this game is so good - you can use real tactics, and you have to avoid being seen, and if you are, you have to make sure the scouts don't get back to report about it.

I haven't found all the Elven building plans yet, so I can't summon Druids and Elder Druids yet, but I always research all the upgrades before training units. In fact, I sometimes go so far as to defend my base with my avatar alone, and not build any Rangers or Warders, but wait until I have Windarchers and Protectors.

I'm a defensive gamer too, but I try not to clear the map before I activated the monument. I prefer to build my base while fending off enemies. Then, when I have Windarchers, I position about 30 of them in a line, with some Protectors in front, and then I lure the enemy out with my avatar. It's cool to see how the opponents get turned into a pincushion before they can say 'Take cover'.

Explanation: I'm an adventure and RPG gamer mainly, so my strategic brain is underdeveloped. I found it very stressy to keep one eye on the mini map and check for the yellow sign (discovered by an agent), kill that guy before he telltales.

I just can't keep the correct building sequences in my head and when I've found/selected the correct building at last and want to look for a nice cosy place = yellow alarm comes. Ok, I kill, but then I lost track of either the building I wanted to create, or the place I wanted to set it up <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shame.gif" alt="" /> - or I forgot where the upgrading building was <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/suspicion.gif" alt="" />

I guess, you would have laughed your head off watching me, Stormrider <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> - I tried the patroling command, but... errhm, my patrols were as stupid as their commander <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/suspicion.gif" alt="" /> - they marched the line and let the enemy spy pass, grrr.

I cussed a lot in that game - but I still love it. So, therefore I tried to wipe out most camps with my ava and/or heroes if available - even if she needed ages to demolish a building. And as respawning only starts heavily after activating a race monument, I know which price I have to pay for my "tactic" => lesser leveling up. I'm nearly lvl 27(mage lvl 11) now, doubt I reach 28, sniff. Only at 28 I can go on the really powerful area spells. Ah, well, my deathblow spell (Todesschlag) makes 125 dam., already, that's good.

I like summoning though, skeletons, undead goblins and now a pretty good shadow as well. My favourite single attack is poisoning and running away - twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the enemy to die slowly. Some are immune to it, but I can curse them first.

Kiya <strategy apprentice>

PS: there was one area though where I really went into war because I was stone-red angry! I had 2 levelups there. Enemies kept rolling in and I tried out how far my death spells worked, let other mages (totems, orc fire mages) slaughter them and watched the troll towers killing them. I spent about 5-7 hrs in that fight until I had the guts to storm that area - just a tip => it was the Rift, WAH! Never again! I had solved the quest there long ago, but wanted to clear that map. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/memad.gif" alt="" />