Spellforce 3 - First Reviews

The Strategy RPG Spellforce 3 will be released tomorrow - the first reviews are out:

Hardcore Gamer - Score: 4/5

Game Space - Score: 8/10



More information.

A snippet from the Game Space review that worries me A LOT cus I haven't touched an RTS in over 15 years..

While playing in the “RPG mode” you feel like you are competent and can take on almost anything the game throws at you. However, the moment you start in the “RTS mode”, you feel like you are already behind and the first part of your construction would be catching up to the enemy that seems to not have such problems. To expand, you need resources. To have more resources, you need to expand. All of that while continuously under attack by the Zerg-AI and without an opportunity to replenish your own forces.

This may be a NO BUY for me..
(I think I'll buy ELEX instead)

Originally Posted by DarkELVES
A snippet from the Game Space review that worries me A LOT cus I haven't touched an RTS in over 15 years..

While playing in the “RPG mode” you feel like you are competent and can take on almost anything the game throws at you. However, the moment you start in the “RTS mode”, you feel like you are already behind and the first part of your construction would be catching up to the enemy that seems to not have such problems. To expand, you need resources. To have more resources, you need to expand. All of that while continuously under attack by the Zerg-AI and without an opportunity to replenish your own forces.

This may be a NO BUY for me..
(I think I'll buy ELEX instead)

Oh, for f#*$'s sake!!! They did the same as before. Endless swarms of enemies (from a cheating AI) and you frantically trying to stay alive. I always loved the RPG parts but soon started to hate the RTS parts.
Looks like a NO BUY to me also…

If you havent bought ELEX yet, do so.

Also, give Spellforce some time to patch the rough edges out. Spellforce 2 did have the same thing, but they levelled it off some.

You can also set difficulty to easier. I know people hate that option because they want to feel like a god by selecting "uber freaking hard" mode.

I don't play games with RTS elements, but I always start on easy difficulty and then move it up if I'm winning too easily. I don't need a game to punch my man card for me.

Originally Posted by Darkheart
Oh, for f#*$'s sake!!! They did the same as before. Endless swarms of enemies (from a cheating AI) and you frantically trying to stay alive. I always loved the RPG parts but soon started to hate the RTS parts.
Looks like a NO BUY to me also…

This is what I recall from the series. For me, this could have been largely solved with the ability to issue orders while paused, but I don't believe they ever did that.

Originally Posted by Wisdom
You can also set difficulty to easier. I know people hate that option because they want to feel like a god by selecting "uber freaking hard" mode.

How gloriously assumptive of you. How about developers have a primary difficulty which accurately represents what they've balanced the game around to which all other difficulties represent an awareness that you're not playing 'normally'.

Have you any idea how annoying it is to start a game and then not have any idea what regular difficulty is, which, baring in mind most games start off easy anyway, can result in god knows how many hours lost to playing the wrong difficulty. Can they not just say what is the intended difficulty?

I don't know if you played with other children when you were a kid, or with adults, but everyone I knew used to hate it if you "let them win". There's an inherent emptiness in achieving a fake victory which is naturally within the human soul from birth, the desire to win 'properly'.

What you're expressing is am off-shoot of the confusion created from a decade of difficulty obfuscation across the entire gaming spectrum, you're making up self-imagined excuses as a result of poor design. Shifting the blame of unfocused game development from the creators of it to the consumers of it.

Really underhand stuff, dontcha know.

I'll be giving it a go this weekend. Sunday probably. Looking forward to it, as I really enjoy the whole RPG + RTS mix.

I'm still not sure if this one uses SF1 or SF2 as an RTS template though. There's a huge difference. SF2 is more of a traditional RTS with enemy bases and such, while SF1 used a weird "spawn point" thing where you were better off clearing most of the map with the heroes before building a base, because once you built a base the enemy would start swarming you faster and faster until the map became virtually impossible. It was okay-ish for the original game, but horrible in the expansions.

Originally Posted by Capt. Huggy Face
This is what I recall from the series. For me, this could have been largely solved with the ability to issue orders while paused, but I don't believe they ever did that.

It sounds to me like there's a RTwP system in place now, so that'll be interesting to see.

While my rts skills have gone down after I stopped playing competitively I still had enough left to beat the ai without issue during the timed demo.
However the endless zerg rush of an ai was not fun and the army control was rather bad making the experience even more of a pain.
I hope these are things that will be fixed because I loved the previous games but as is I'll wait for quite a price cut.

Originally Posted by lackblogger
Have you any idea how annoying it is to start a game and then not have any idea what regular difficulty is, which, baring in mind most games start off easy anyway, can result in god knows how many hours lost to playing the wrong difficulty. Can they not just say what is the intended difficulty?

Products allow to change difficulty settings during a game. It might be the case for this product.

I don't know if you played with other children when you were a kid, or with adults, but everyone I knew used to hate it if you "let them win". There's an inherent emptiness in achieving a fake victory which is naturally within the human soul from birth, the desire to win 'properly'.

Unsustainable. It is not possible to tailor a difficulty level for every perception of difficulty.

Players have the skills or they do not have. When they do not, they are either willing to acquire them or they are not. When they are not willing, they must accept products are not made for them.

Doubtful this product is anything difficult. More likely, players do not have the required skillsets to play it.

After reading this I'd deem the game broken anyway.

At least at release.

Originally Posted by Maylander
It sounds to me like there's a RTwP system in place now, so that'll be interesting to see.

Huh… I thought I read on steam that was not the case? If so, I might take a closer look. Like some other Watchers, I just can't abide RTS in my advancing age.

Originally Posted by Sir_Brennus
After reading this I'd deem the game broken anyway.

At least at release.

Yikes! That sounds very bad…

Well i'm mixed - they like the game enough they want to wait to see if the bugs are fixed before giving a rating. That aspect seems to read the game is great 'cept for the bugs.

Originally Posted by Darkheart
Yikes! That sounds very bad…

I have been waiting a decade for another Spellforce game, not just a sequel using the same engine. I will be buying this at some point, but still need to get through Elex and Divinity Original Sin.

I would welcome anyone who actually owns the game to confirm, but it appears from what I've read from the beta, there isn't a full-fledged active pause, only a slow-down/pause while issuing one specific order on how to attack a specific enemy.

This thread, if you scroll through the usual pause/real-time argument, describes a bit how that worked in the beta.

Originally Posted by Darkheart
Yikes! That sounds very bad…

I don't think so. They basically say it's a great game which needs a couple of patches. The review version is a week old. So give them another week and check how much things have improved.

Originally Posted by Gorath
I don't think so. They basically say it's a great game which needs a couple of patches. The review version is a week old. So give them another week and check how much things have improved.

They also said the version they had before was way less buggy then the version they had 3 days before release…

Originally Posted by SSIGuy
Huh… I thought I read on steam that was not the case? If so, I might take a closer look. Like some other Watchers, I just can't abide RTS in my advancing age.

I actually don't think there is one, as it would seem strange in any kind of RTS, but it just read as if it was. I guess they're mainly referring to point of view when comparing it to older RPGs, which seems a bit strange, as this is just a standard RTS point of view.

Edit: I found a description in one of the reviews that are out:
"While there is a slow-down/pause function built into the special abilities contextual menu, the fact that you need to hold ALT while hovering over an enemy makes the pause rather useless – unable to issue any orders but special attacks, the whole thing comes off more as a way to buy time to use an ability than a tactical pause meant to coordinate your attacks."

Watched a few streams. Usually, streamers play on the hardest difficulty settings. Can not be confirmed for all of watched streams.

Hard to find anything to relate to the article. The requirements are very low, it does not demand real time strategical thinking and motor skills are little involved (one streamer played it mouse only with one of his knees bent to himself)

The fight pace is slow and it is mostly hero oriented: focusing on heroes while letting troops on auto attack does the trick.

To top it all, only saw one streamer losing one battle, the others stream rolled.