Spellforce : WTF?

[Jaysun]

Anyone know anything about this game? I see that GoGamer has it as part of their 48 Hour Madness sale. They are calling it an RTS/RPG, which sounds really weird to me. Has anyone played it? The screenshots look pretty good, but this game seems to be so far under the radar right now.

[Gaming-Module]

I'm working on downloading this and the Silent Storm demo right now. I want to see what these games are all about.

[Pace]

I played the demo, and thought it was awful. I went through the tutorial, and was annoyed right off the bat with the presentation of it, where the narrator teaches you to do things in a very slow, non-interruptable way. It's like, "Okay. I get it. Click to move... sure." So then I tried to exit the tutorial, and the game crashed, so I started it up, and started playing, and of course found myself completely lost, and wondering why I cared. It turns out, I didn't, so I shut it down.

The primary selling point, as communicated to me by several folks, appears to be that it is graphically pleasing in the "slows down your beefy machine" way. I didn't find this to be the case. Perhaps I didn't give it the chance it deserved, but if I can't get through the first 5 minutes of gaming, it goes to bargain bin status right away.

[Silverlight]

Spellforce is about as much of an RPG as Diablo.

A typical day in Spellforce:

1. Wince at the awful voice acting from the guy who gives you your quest.
2. Walk around at a snail's pace looking for the monument.
3. Do the traditional build-a-base-and-some-guards routine from all RTSes.
4. Laugh at the pitifully disorganized group of six monsters that your men just mowed down.
5. Wonder why you picked an attack mage when spellcasting is such a royal pain in the ass.
6. Build an army of forty or fifty units. This takes no effort whatsoever; just patience. Send them rampaging at the enemy base and watch it get totally destroyed with no additional effort.
7. Find another RTS and play that instead.

[Gaming-Module]

Pee-Yoo! This one's a stinker!

Well what have we got here? Totally mediocre art style done up in underwhelming graphics. Sound that is thoroughly anemic, but only made worse by voice acting that sounds like the developers invited their totally inexperienced, uninterested family members to do it. A shit interface. Mediocre RTS gameplay where you win by simply having the most doods and sending them off to stand in line with the enemy to exchange blows until someone's dead.

It's almost like Sacrifice without any of what made Sacrifice semi decent.

[Gorath]

The only point some of you meantioned I would agree to is the crappy voice acting.

The technical aspects are very good IMHO. Sound f/x are adequate, music is superb and obviously inspired by the LotR movies. Graphics are spectacular, especially in 3rd person mode. An exception is full zoom-out mode. The almost vertical perspective destroys the 3D effect, it make the world look flat.

Gameplay is a mix of RTS combat, base building and RPG. About one 3rd of your time is spent on each.
Standard RTS controls are only 2nd choice. SpellForce´s new system works very well. It sort of reverses the usual controls. You build groups (PC, hero(es), select parts of your army). Then TAB scrolls through enemy units from strong to weak. Under each group´s icon you see a list of all possible actions towards the selected enemy. One more mouseclick and the attack starts.

It´s a mix of WC3 and Dungon Siege, but with a relatively slow pace. Influence on your army is rather limited. Build groups, let each walk to a location with or without attackong enemies, tell them to hold ground or not and then tell them what to attack. Deep strategic options are not available.

The most fun part is exploration in 3rd person mode while your party follows you automatically. Then you see how lively the world is, see all the animations in the buildings you created. When you face more than a few enemies you have to zoom out to maintain control.

The biggest problems are looong walks (you´re watching the screen while the flawless pathfinding does the rest), unsorted inventory and an easy difficulty level. All of this has been addressed in the patch yesterday. I didn´t install it yet, so I can´t comment on how successful their effort was.

I´m more than 100 hours into the campaign and I still like it. :)

[Doug Erickson]

The demo is awful -- it's the torturous and pedantic tutorial level. The main campaign is actually fun, though; it's more like the Orc campaign from The Frozen Throne, with a few base-building RTS moments thrown in.

I think it's actually a fairly clever game, although I admit I prefer the RPG bits where you aren't managing a base and are instead adventuring with your hero retinue. I like the music, but the VA work does indeed flay the ol' eardrums.

Like Gorath said, it's a blast to roam the map from over-the shoulder third person and see your armies and the fairly exotic terrain up close and personal. If you use the TAB key, spellcasting is really quite effective.

[John Reynolds]

It's almost like Sacrifice without any of what made Sacrifice semi decent.

The Entity shall be notified of your blasphemy.

[Gaming-Module]

It's almost like Sacrifice without any of what made Sacrifice semi decent.

The Entity shall be notified of your blasphemy.

I really wanted to love that game. It was gorgeous in its presentation. It had the guy who did Kain's voice in Blood Omen. It had a vague Earth Worm Jim connection.

But the camera and controls did not mesh well with the way the gameplay was designed. These factors combined into a frustrating mix.

[balut]

It's no Flying Heroes, that's for sure.
:wink:

[Doug Erickson]

BTW, has anyone noticed that your avatar almost never attacks in melee -- that you really hafta micro the heck out of 'em in an epic battle? Kinda annoying, that, especially when your avatar is a high-level killing machine.

EDIT: took out "heroes", since I'd observed them actually attacking; it's just my avatar character that sits there.

[Simpilot]

Actually, Spellforce is a tale of two cities...or games. DO NOT GET THE IMPORT VERSION!!!! The copy protection is horrible. You have to type in a code, but they printed it so small that it is impossible to tell the difference between zero and the letter o, the letters a and r, etc. Not even a magnifying glass would help.

Not so on the US release and the game is quite fun. The tutorial takes forever yes, but once past it it has many excellent qualities.

[TomChick]

SpellForce's charm doesn't really bubble up until you're a few maps in. My intitial reaction was also 'WTF?'. I even booted up a multiplayer game on two computers to get a feel for the RTS system. At which point, my 'WTF?' impression went up a few font sizes. If I hadn't been reviewing it, I probably wouldn't have uninstalled it and played a bit of Warcraft 3 instead.

But if you let it build like any RPG worth its salt, it definitely gets better. I haven't tried the patch yet, but it does seem to address two of the most widespread criticisms by streamlining travel time and inventory management. Good for Phenomic!

As for your avatar not attacking, Doug, are you keeping the camera down at the over-the-shoulder level? If so, I think SpellForce is wanting you to play it swing-by-swing. But when I'm zoomed out a bit, my guy does just fine in melee without my help.

As for the heroes, I completely agree. You really have to babysit the sumbitches to get any use out of 'em.

-Tom

[Doug Erickson]

No, I'm playing it top-down, WC3-style. My avatar won't attack when I do a ctrl-right click (move to attack) -- I actually hafta select my avatar from the group, and right-click on an enemy. The heroes and the rest of the squad move and attack just fine.

I totally agree with your assessment, though -- after the agonizing tutorial and the annoying item management, I was going to take it back to the store, but I gave it another shot. 4 hours and three maps later, I was hooked, and the 1.10 patch gave the inventory its much needed "sort" button. So far, my only major complaint besides the so-so VA work and the occasionally spotty AI is how easy it is as an RTS, but I think the HoMM and RPG elements compensate for that nicely. Oddly, my heroes perform pretty well -- at least they acquire new targets automatically, unlike my hero -- and the clever little "clickfight" interface makes the hero battle micromanagement very, well, Dungeon Siege-like.

Good stuff. I expect Spellforce 2 to be really great.

[Doug Erickson]

Actually, Spellforce is a tale of two cities...or games. DO NOT GET THE IMPORT VERSION!!!!

Actually, the first batch of US copies has this issue, too -- I had to randomly replace "O" with "0" until I got it to install.

[TomChick]

the so-so VA work

You're too generous. :) I would be hard-pressed to think of a game with worse voice acting.

As for the level of difficulty, one thing that starts to happen is the maps get harder the longer you let the enemy develop. There were a few points where I didn't realize this and got backed into a corner and had to reload a previous save. But once you realize you can sort of scout the map out before activating your first monument -- and therefore the enemy -- it does feel too easy at times.

-Tom

[Doug Erickson]

Actaully, there's a cheaper and easier tactic then reloading -- just use the bindstones with the 1.10 patch and 'port to a different island, and then back. All your structures/units will be gone, but so will every enemy spawn point you'd defeated and the respawn rate will be reset. Now you're basically where you fist started when you began that area, but all the enemy positions you've cleared are likewise gone, giving you quite a bit of freedom to amass a massive army.

As for the VA work, have you forgotten the early CD-ROM era, man? The 3DO? All those early localized games on the Playstation? While the VA work in Spellforce is pretty dull and unprofessional, it doesn't stack up in sheer ear-flaying micwork like, say, Nival's Evil Islands or the classic House of the Dead 2. Spellforce at least has a few competent voices in the mix, although I won't try to suggest that the majority aren't terrible.

[Sam Jones]

You're too generous. :) I would be hard-pressed to think of a game with worse voice acting.

I've just started X2, and the intro contains the line "That guy's crazy on steroids!", which is easily the worst written and voiced line in gaming history.

[Incendiary Lemon]

Prepare for worse

[Peter Olafson]

BTW, has anyone noticed that your avatar almost never attacks in melee -- that you really hafta micro the heck out of 'em in an epic battle? Kinda annoying, that, especially when your avatar is a high-level killing machine.

The solution is to switch into third-person mode, a la the recent Joan of Arc, and use your avatar as a roaming firefighter. Mine was an archer and I found he was very effective in this role. :)

Peter

[Warning]

I would be hard-pressed to think of a game with worse voice acting.

That's easy. The original Resident Evil for Playstation wins hands down. That level of suckage has gone unmatched for years.

[Robert Sharp]

Guys, I am having a hard time deciding whether or not to buy this game based on what you are saying. Some of you seem to hate it and some seem to love it, and a few are inbetween. Could someone give me a list of perks and flaws?

[Gaming-Module]

This is a Jowood title. With the exception of Gothic and Arx Fatalis, I wait for the price to drop on their titles. You can usually find their releases for $19.90 on gogamer without too long a wait.

[Doug Erickson]

Robert:

Pros:
-- Good interface with plenty of redundant control mechanisms; doesn't require hotkeying as bad as some RTSes
-- HoMM style map crawling seamlessly mixed with RTS gameplay
-- Pretty graphics; cool third-person mode for exploring your bases
-- Loads of equipment for your avatar and heroes; wide variety of units and tactical scenarios for SP campaign RTS play
-- Good soundtrack
-- Avatar development is deep, and the many paths you can develop your leader along are interesting and effective
-- pathfinding AI is good
-- the single-player campaign is MONSTROUS -- we're talking 100 hour huge

Cons:
-- Terrible voicework
-- Enemies respawn geometrically over time; this can be somewhat mitigated by sending your avatar/heroes out and aggressively taking out as many spawn ponts as possible, but if a war of attrition develops, or if resources are badly placed on the map (see: the "Shiel" level), you may need to reset the map
-- At max settings on a P4-3.0 w/ 9800 Pro, the game can chop up in big battles
-- Tutorial is the most deathly boring activity I've ever engaged in, and I've watched my share of Merchant/Ivory films
-- Translation is spotty, and the plot is typical generic fantasy crap
-- combat AI is spotty; unit matchups are suspect and formations aren't effective
-- multiplayer RTS play is dull and thoroughly trumped by Warcraft 3, Kohan, and WBC2

Overall, I think it's a very solid game -- definitely a 3.5 star offering, maybe a 4 (out of 5).

[Robert Sharp]

Thanks Doug. that gives me a good idea of whether or not I would like it. More of your pros than cons matter to me, so I guess overall this is a game I should get.