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crpgnut
Captain of the Guard
Joined: 22 May 2002
Posts: 197
Location: St. Louis |
| Spellforce: Is it for crpgers? A review after 30 hours |
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This is cross-posted from the crpg newsgroup.
I decided to purchase this game before it was available in the USA, so I bought it off Ebay. I've been playing the game for a couple of weeks now, off and on,
and still haven't decided if it's my cup or tea or not. Let me preface this post with the fact that I rarely play anything other than crpgs. The only strategy games that I've ever played were the Heroes of Might and Magic games.
Spellforce seems to be a simplistic RTS game with a twist. The general of all the armies in the game is a character created by you. Your avatar is something called a Rune Warrior. This is an immortal soldier whose soul is bound into a rune. Death is an inconvenience, nothing more. This avatar is straight from a fantasy crpg. You have typical stats: Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, etc., that
each start at 25 points. You have 30 points to distribute to these to decide what type of avatar you want. If a White Mage, ie healer, you'll choose Wisdom and
Charisma just like you would for a D&D cleric. If a Heavy Combat specialist, you'll choose Strength and Stamina. You are not forced into class choices if
you want to specialize in one school, you can, or you can try your luck as a
Jack of all trades. Sounds like a crpg now doesn't it?
The problem for crpgers is that the hero is often an afterthought on several maps. Each map contains several areas where you can explore with just your hero and maybe a few other heroes. Your avatar can summon other heroes
who have stats that cannot be changed by you. All experience earned by them
goes to your character. This is kinda fun but you will need to build an army on
most of the maps in the game. This is the non-fun part for me. Building a settlement and an army can take a couple of hours real-time on every map. There is no automation of the army building. You have to summon workers,
find materials, build buildings, summon army units, form parties and then
march them to enemy camps. It's nearly the exact same steps for every single map. The only difference is that the type of units change every 3 or 4 maps. You'll start with human units, then elven, dwarven, orcish, dark elven, and finally trollish units. Each one has different looking buildings but it's the same
boring steps to create each.
The game is real-time and this can be problematic too. Let's say you're building a camp in one part of the map and exploring with your heroes in another part.
If you run into battle with your heroes at the same time your camp gets attacked
you have to constantly switch viewpoints to keep everyone alive. This can be quite hectic! If you stay on one party too long the other might get wiped out. AI in the game is very weak. Soldiers will not protect non-combat units without specific commands to do so. Sometimes you want to hide your base but your allied units will follow enemy creatures to their base and you'll get discovered before you're ready. Hero units have no AI of their own. They won't cast a single spell or initiate combat without instructions. If you set them to hold position and guard an area, they never strike the first blow. They wait until your units are whacked before fighting back. Sometimes they won't engage even if other units are being attacked. Scripts would have helped this game immensely.
If you command your heroes to automatically heal wounded units if you have
x amount of mana, that would be great. Remember Baldur's Gate had this.
A fighter hero could automatically attack the strongest or weakest member
of the enemy, using any special attacks as needed. None of this made it into the game, for whatever reason.
Combat reminds me of Divine Divinity. You click on a monster and keep attacking til one of you is dead. It isn't unusual to have 50 monsters on a screen
at a time. It gives the feeling of melee. Your hero can be surrounded by weaker enemies and come out unscathed. That part is very fun. Item drops are common and mostly random. There are merchants to trade with, but 90% of what you use, you find. Graphics are top-notch. Most of the programming was focused on graphics and it shows. Buildings and maps are beautifully drawn. Creatures look good and there are several nice touches. A wolf will occasionally stop what it's doing to scratch at a flea, etc. The quests are all
extremely straight forward. No thinking to get in the way at all.
Each time you raise a skill you have to raise the school that teaches that skill too. In effect you get one useful point per level:
Let's say I'm a fire mage. The school for fire is Elemental Magic. I get two
points to spend. One point to raise Elemental Magic and the other to raise my fire magic. A 20th level character could be at best a level 10 fire mage. That's if he spent every single point on developing fire magic. It's a good idea to put at least a few points into a combat school so that you can attack when you're out of mana.
As you can tell, I both hate and love various aspects of the game. I like the avatar and running around with a small party of heroes. I like the graphics.
The sound and music are fine. Item collecting and dressing your avatar in
all your well-earned booty is great fun. You can dress your hero characters up too. Most items will not work for all characters. Each has one or more requirements before allowing you to equip it. You might need to be of a certain level or have a certain level of ability in a skill. This is cool. My main problem with the game is its RTS components. I dislike collecting wood, stone, etc
on almost every map. I hate building up camps every time. Gaining levels takes a long time and you only get to increase your skills 2 points for each level.
Conclusion: I guess the bottom line is that I'm still playing the game. I don't
think I'll finish it. Eventually I'll get bored of making 15 building camps with
80 unit armies. That part of the game will wear out my enthusiasm for the
good crpg parts. I do feel that I've gotten my money's worth out of the game.
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'nut |
Fri Jan 16, 2004 8:36 pm |
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Kragor
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 25 Mar 2003
Posts: 44
Location: Headed for Valhalla |
This is exactly how I feel about the game as well. I hate the feeling of "starting from scratch" every new map. Ruins my moment of glory over and over again. But then, I'll probably play it some more, for it is a rather good game, even if RTS's is not my favorite. |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 9:45 am |
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Gorath
Mostly Harmless
Joined: 03 Sep 2001
Posts: 6327
Location: NRW, Germany |
Play in 3rd person mode as much as possible. This increases the immersion.
_________________
Webmaster GothicDot |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 6:26 pm |
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GhanBuriGhan
Noble Knight
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 208
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first I´d like to thank crpgnut for sharing his thoughts of the game.
I guess I am about the same amount of time into the game as crpgnut, and I take a slightly more positive view of it.
From a RPG viewpoint there are indeed a number of shortcomings. For one there are no interiors in this game - that means you will not be able to enter any dungeons or even the houses and shops in the various towns. All of the gam plays out in the (beautifully rendered) landscape. There is a number of side-quests and a decent story to keep up motivation in the game, but the quests are nothing out of the ordinary (so far) and mostly involve the usual item-hunts and kill-the-monster tasks. However most are nicely integrated into the settings of the various maps. The graphics, while generally beautiful show some weaknesses close-up, e.g. NPC models sometimes dont hold there weapons right, which instead seem glued to their outstretched hands, the NPC´s dont have lip-synch and in the cities there is sometimes clipping with torches on buildings etc and some poor models, e.g. of the little fountains /drains coming out of buildings. The games graphic is amazing with regard to the landscapes (vwery far view), especially when using higher details and the "real" shadows.
As a strategy game (which I play occasionally, although not as much as RPG´s) SF holds up decently, but it offers nowhere near the tactical optios of e.g. the Total War series. The city building part of the game plays a lot like the old Age of empires and age of kings series. The AI has some good sides (pathfinding, scout AI/script of the enemy) but the enemy AI is not very varied, and mages have an unpleasant habit of charging into melee when not closely monitored.
The maps allow and sometimes require different stratgies, and I find them a nice challenge without ever becoming difficult. For mes as someone who is not a strategy pro, this is quite pleasant, but for others the challenge might be too small. Also the type and skills of the Avatar can change the balance greatly, making the game a lot harder or easier.
Where the game really shines is (as Gorath suggested) when you acutally lead your army into battle using the 3rd person perspective. I was sold on that from the beginning, becasue its something I have always been mising in RPGs so far. Why do I have to save the world by myself or with no more than 6 companions - Isnt that what armies are for? Leading an attack and ordering your troops into battle, seeing them charge and (in my case) helping them out with beutifully rendered spells from the rear is an entirely new and exciting experience for me. I also wish that the army building and base building would be more RPG like, e.g. embedded in quest instead of merely an act of activating a monument. But for what it is, I enjoy the game very much.
On my machine it was also a very stable game (the official forums indicate that this is not the case for everyone, however) and I can enjoy the graphics with (for me) reasonable, but not very high framrartes on my AMD 1800+ / GF 4 tI 4400 (I am guessing going down to 10-15 sometimes in heavy battles).
I recommend at least trying the demo to everyone who has dreamed of leading armies when playing his RPG´s. |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 7:03 pm |
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crpgnut
Captain of the Guard
Joined: 22 May 2002
Posts: 197
Location: St. Louis |
GhanBuriGhan, I must admit I'm still playing. Rather than progress farther, I've decided to try variations of avatars and see what I really like. I've decided that I like light combat arts vs. heavy, for I find dual-wielding to be very advantageous. I don't care about graphics much, so seeing my army at work will be a novelty, but it won't wow me for long. I haven't dropped into 3rd person during a battle in all the time I've been playing. I prefer zoomed out to max while exploring and zoomed in a bit for combat. I generally wade to the front lines, because a lvl 4 rune warrior is more powerful than the strongest unit of the light. I must try throwing some spells from behind the lines, that should be fun.
_________________
'nut |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 8:55 pm |
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Zakhal
Captain of the Guard
Joined: 13 Oct 2002
Posts: 188
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I played this game through, loved every minute of it. My char was necro with a touch of death. In the end it pretty much just sucked the life out of the enemies. (aura of vampyrism or somthing)
The quests are plenty and fun. |
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Sat Jan 24, 2004 4:17 pm |
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Ican
Captain of the Guard
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
Posts: 185
Location: UK |
This game has its flaws ( what one doesn't ? ) but it has a touch of spark about it. I find the atmosphere to be captivating.... dark and brooding. Although I've yet to complete the game, I feel there will be some replayability value. The way you set up your avatar definitely influences the style of play. At the moment I'm an Elementalist ...... I look forward to trying out an archer or a warrior. Or even a Necromancer  |
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Sat Jan 24, 2004 7:48 pm |
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SittingBull
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 06 Sep 2003
Posts: 29
Location: HCMC- Vietnam |
I play a lot of RPG games. but I thinks. realy,
spellporce us thebest games.
_________________
Love all
Trust a few
Do wrong to none |
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Sun Jan 25, 2004 10:12 am |
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