SpellForce 3: Fallen God also does something I’ve almost never seen before in an RPG: it humanizes Trolls. It increases the pace of each mission, and forces you to defend a wide swath of territory rather than a single bottleneck. If you want to gather resources, recruit soldiers and construct buildings and anything faster than a snail’s pace, you absolutely must take your heroes out exploring, fighting off foes and conquering territory as you go. In SpellForce 3, by contrast, your main base can support only so many workers. This gives you a lot of freedom, but can also encourage more timid players (like me) to turtle up and hide away in a single corner of the map for most of the game. In most RTS games, you can recruit resource-gatherers, construct buildings and establish bases anywhere you can find space. In terms of gameplay, I adore how SpellForce 3 handles base-building and expansion. However, it does have a few creative ideas - and those ideas are what have kept me glued to the Fallen God expansion. It’s very much a “good” game rather than a “great” one, and I don’t think it’s going to change anyone’s mind about either the RPG or RTS genres. While I thoroughly enjoy the SpellForce series, I don’t want to oversell it. With smooth, streamlined gameplay, and a few innovative ideas that better RTS games could actually benefit from including, it’s the best execution of the RPG/RTS hybrid concept that I've seen so far. While SpellForce 3 is still a little janky in spots, it’s as good as the series has ever been. SpellForce 2 and 3, along with their expansions, built on this foundation, introducing better RPG mechanics, better-balanced races and significantly better pacing. The RTS missions raised the stakes each time you embarked on one, giving the game a deceptively large, epic feel. It was genuinely satisfying to build up your character over time, customizing stats, learning new abilities and even making dialogue choices to affect the narrative. SpellForce 3: Fallen God also does something I’ve almost never seen before in an RPG: it humanizes Trolls.īut the germ of a good game was there. Party members had no personalities your character level could make battles either trivial or impossible the buildup phase felt intolerably slow there sometimes weren’t enough resources to complete missions if your first big attack went south. The first game, SpellForce: The Order of Dawn, and its two expansions were pretty rough. They all feel sufficiently distinct and interesting to play. The SpellForce series offers six different playable races: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Trolls and Dark Elves. Then, you’ll have to establish a base, forage for resources, research new technologies and build up an army, just like in StarCraft or Age of Empires. But occasionally, you’ll come across a challenge that’s too big for your party to handle alone. The basic premise of any SpellForce game is that you create an avatar, customize your stats and skills, find new equipment, and manage a whole party of adventurers, just like any good RPG. I adore how SpellForce 3 handles base-building and expansion. While grand strategy/RPGs are somewhat more common, SpellForce is the only long-running RPG/RTS series that I’m aware of - and even after 19 years, it’s pretty niche. For whatever reason, few developers have ever attempted a true RPG/RTS hybrid. However, aside from Warcraft III, the pickings proved to be pretty slim. Both RPGs and RTS games require a kind of “hurry up and wait” mentality, with bursts of frenetic activity occasionally interrupting periods of methodical consideration. You develop your own strategies, and find the right units and/or equipment to complement them. You start off with almost nothing, and have to manage your resources wisely to slowly build yourself up. After all, RPGs and RTS games, in theory, appeal to a similar kind of gamer. I assumed there would be a wide range of choices.
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