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| Kill it with fire! |
Unfortunately, you can’t use an enchanted rolled up newspaper to kill these spiders |
For the uninitiated, SpellForce: The Order of Dawn was one of those titles that came out of nowhere and offered something different; in this case, it was a perfect meshing of RPG and real time strategy gameplay. The game was popular enough to spawn two expansion packs, The Breath of Winter and Shadow of the Phoenix, which added new stories and play modes, along with a plethora of new items and spells. SpellForce 2: Shadow Wars followed in 2006, addressing issues such as linearity and the complexity of the economy that held the original title back, while adding new items and spells and improving the game’s visuals. The final SpellForce release to date, Dragon Storm, expanded upon SpellForce 2 by offering a new campaign and a new faction, alongside the usual trimmings.
You’ll get all of the above for just over half the cost of the average new release. But that’s it. Don’t expect a deluxe celebration of all things SpellForce like you’d get from a Blizzard BattleChest. All you’ll see inside the SpellForce Universe box is a SpellForce Platinum DVD, SpellForce 2 Gold DVD and a SpellForce 2 Gold manual. It seems a bit cheap and tacky when you think about it – they could have at least provided a paper manual for the original game.
SpellForce and its brethren take place in the land of Eo. Rather than theme park ride starring a young Michael Jackson, this Eo is home to the usual cast of medieval fantasy creatures; dwarves that love to mine, magical elves and humans that hack things to bits. What sets Eo apart from the usual Tolkienesque fantasy world are the Rune Warriors, all powerful warriors bound by magic to a special stone. The Rune Warriors were created by the Circle, the rulers of Eo, to create peace and tranquillity by killing everything that got in the way.
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| Whatever happened to good old-fashioned diplomacy? |
Things are a little bit more regimented in SpellForce 2 |
Once their task was done, the Circle transferred the combined power of the Rune Warriors to one of their members. Of course, things went awry, and the world was fractured into thousands of little islands. One of the last members of the Circle managed to create portals binding the fragments of Eo together. You take the role of one of the remaining Rune Warriors (who unfortunately has a case of video game hero amnesia) and spend the first game and two subsequent expansions fixing everything that’s wrong with the world.
Each game starts out by giving players the opportunity to create their Rune Warrior and decide their gender, appearance and abilities. If you’re not the customisable type, there are a couple of readymade characters to take into battle. From there, you wander around the world, doing quests, collecting loot and fighting all sorts of nasties along the way. Interspersed in your RPG questing are several areas where you’ll set up camp and go into real time strategy mode, where your Rune Warrior will essentially act as a hero unit, while you command legions of other troops to victory.
SpellForce’s RPG side is no Diablo II, and the RTS side is no WarCraft III, but together, they do quite well. It has a clever way of handling each game’s concepts; for example, the research for the RTS side of the game is handled through finding specific bits of loot in the RPG side. It’s not all rosy, though, as SpellForce’s effectiveness in both the RPG and RTS sides is hampered by a clunky interface, which often makes it difficult to determine which characters on-screen are yours. The maps are also very linear, with each area featuring only one pre-determined, and often long-winded path. Neither of the add-on packs fix these shortcomings, simply offering more of the same enjoyable, yet slightly flawed gameplay.
SpellForce 2 picks up with the threat of an invasion of Eo from an alliance forged between the Dark Elves and the mysterious Shadows. The devilish duo are threatening to smash anyone and everyone who comes in their way, so it’s up to the Avatar to journey across the world, reforging old alliances for the ultimate battle between good and evil. For you, that means doing a boatload of quests to please different people to in order to get them to join your cause.
The second game has all sorts of improvements over the original – better graphics, a new skill system, non-linear worlds and improved path-finding. SpellForce 2 does favour the RPG aspect of the game a little more than its predecessor, which becomes annoying when you discover that the game doesn’t do a great job of recognising the increased statistics of new items. Fortunately, a great variety of quests, and excellent RTS integration will have you forgetting about the shortcomings quickly. The new skill tree is much more flexible, and offers a wider variety of abilities to teach to your warrior. The Dragon Storm add-on pack deals with the Avatar’s quest to restore the energies to the various portals connecting the worlds of Eo. Dragon Storm adds a new battlemage-style skill tree, new enemies, weapons, spells and, of course, dragons.
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| Those blasted spiders are still here, though |
But there’s nothing a griffin can’t handle, right? |
SPELLFORCE: UNIVERSE VERDICT
It’s hard not to recommend SpellForce Universe to RPG and strategy fans looking for something to kill a bit of time before the next big thing comes out. For a bit over half the price of a new release, you get about 200 hours worth of very enjoyable RTS/RPG goodness. It’s an essential purchase for budget conscious gamers, or anyone wondering what all the fuss was about.
TOP GAME MOMENT
Fighting against SpellForce 2’s final boss; I’ve not seen a boss in an RPG that can take such a pounding for quite some time.
