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SpellForce: Conquest of Eo

Since our guys have this game on their wishlist, I decided to post about it here.

I really enjoyed the game. Whether you'll like it – I don't know. I'll try to break down the nuances so you can form your own opinion.

First of all, it's immediately obvious this isn't an indie title but a solid budget project. Beautiful artwork, nice spell animations on the global map, music somewhat reminiscent of Heroes, and most importantly – very literary texts. Though, you do have to reach for a dictionary.

The atmosphere is excellent. It's created by quests, artwork, and music. The game overall feels like a collection of little stories you happily immerse yourself in. Each iteration is literally 3-5 pages/paragraphs long, they don't descend into rambling, and in my opinion that's optimal. Sometimes you're offered to place bets on dwarven combat mole races. Sometimes poor demons are driven from their homes by dwarves conducting archaeological excavations. Sometimes a romantic knight, enchanted by the charms of a powerful sorceress, challenges you to a duel because you're on good terms with her.

The taverns also have atmosphere, even when the stories are quite mundane. Either someone sings (with lyrics written in verse), or tells swashbuckling tales, or brags about their dog, or when asked to simply describe what scared him in the abandoned mine, he strokes his beard and begins to recount in detail: "There's something scratching the stones, growling, I heard screams," and so on.

An important and very pleasant moment that reminded me of old-school games from my childhood – optional, rarely encountered dialogue options in quests tied to specific characters or conditions. For example, in the demon region, my squad led by a hero entered a tavern, and the hero was a demonologist. I was pleasantly surprised that a separate option appeared. Moreover, this is a rare event – you get only one hero for the entire game (and there are eight heroes total in vanilla), and what were the chances that I'd be playing exactly that hero, that I'd reach that region, and that I'd step into the tavern with him specifically? (There's one tavern per region, with no possibility of revisiting.) That's a small chance. Yet it was written in, and that's what sets apart a game made with love, with well-developed lore and cohesively interwoven stories.

In addition to the texts, there are beautifully drawn pictures and good music.

Now for the difficult part. This is effectively an open-world game in which you can easily drown.

In vanilla, there's one big mission with a fixed global map, on which the terrain, area borders, and city locations are pre-marked. The placement of other locations, including quest ones, is randomized within the bound area. The hero pool is randomized (but can be configured), and each hero has their own personal quest – that's one of the important and engaging features of the game. Besides heroes, there are also apprentices – in combat they're essentially the same, just without a personal quest. The apprentices are also hand-drawn and detailed, about 20 of them. De facto, in a single playthrough you can manage to play three apprentices. You can take five total, but the first is given without choice, and the fifth unlocks in the deep late game. Apprentice locations are random; you can find them in special magic academies scattered across the map.

Overall, the game only briefly explains the mechanics and sends the player off to explore a vast world. It's very diverse, no ready-made solutions are handed to you on a silver platter – you have to explore, find powerful items, and figure out the intricacies yourself.

It feels like an old-school game. In our age of poor attention spans, it can be hard to play. It's like playing a Heroes 3 campaign for the first time in the early 2000s. Nothing makes sense, you don't know that at level 4 there's a town portal, that building chains is the norm. You run around the map with a single hero for 10 months, find some imba artifact, and you're overflowing with joy.

That's roughly what Spellforce is like.

You enter the game for the first time and have no idea that movement speed on the global map is extremely important. And that the first speed glyphs can be crafted almost immediately – you just need to know the recipe. You can check recipes right away too, except there are 116 of them, and you can't be bothered to check all ingredient combinations. On the other hand, you don't have to obsess over movement speed – you can make do with two moves of 10 tiles each, but one move of 20 is somehow more pleasant.

And that one of the key mechanics – enslavement – you also don't know about. And the recipe for cursed shackles is in the starting recipe pool, one of 116. And that you should have bought some suitable ingredient for that recipe from the alchemist you ran past – you don't figure that out either.

The economy in the game matters. Getting units isn't a problem, but they require gold or mana every turn, and literally one or two full armies can drive your income into the negative. That's where either "followers" or "slaves" come in, since you pay nothing for either. You can make any unit a follower (or slave), but again you either need to know the recipe, or have a specific magic drop and then learn it.

Building relations with cities is great. At the highest level, you'll be given a blueprint as a token of gratitude. Only it's better to know that one city has a mega-useful blueprint that adds an extra unit slot to all armies, plus +2 range to all ranged units in all squads, and armor to everyone as well. Or you can not know that, level up relations with another city, and get two pumpkins and two red mushrooms per week.

Also, after many hours of play, I came to the conclusion that it's important to set priorities and get things early in the game. Any landmark is better captured as early as possible. For example, the ghost ship gives +10% chance of soul drops in every fight, and that's very useful for early-game farming. But it's hard to take – you'll likely need to buff your army with spells, slot in some glyphs, even if not the strongest ones but at least suitable ones from what you have, accept losses, etc. But you get an important point early on. Because by the time your main army can take it without buffs and losses, you no longer need it. And, by the way, if you know, you can abuse the griffin, which soloes any ghosts without losses.

I'm describing all this not because I'm complaining about the balance. It's perfectly fine – this is a huge world, a huge game with a ton of mechanics. It's a single-player game, and it's wonderful that no matter where the player goes, they'll inevitably stumble upon some strong flashy ability, imba mechanic, or powerful boost.

Juicy fireball from the sky that AoEs a bunch of enemies – yes! Fire or acid breath that burns through in a line – yes! Mind control, and out of the box on regular Tier-2 units – yes! Enchant your unit so it resurrects after battle or even during battle – possible! Buff your unit so it attacks without retaliation, gets one extra attack, teleports behind enemy lines, and even stuns – possible!

Tired of running around the map? Teleport to base, teleport within your zone of control, teleport to absolutely any point on the global map without restrictions – all of this exists, you just need to find the spells.

I liked how they balanced skills that work under certain conditions. Often in games they're only slightly stronger than unconditional skills, so they're not worth taking. Here, a regular upgrade gives +1 damage (e.g., to the unit's primary damage type), and a situational upgrade gives +6 damage (e.g., only against undead). That's a lot, and it's an opportunity to build an army tailored against specific enemies.

So it turns out the game world contains a great variety of powerful and interesting things, but since you don't know where to best get resources, how to get rolling, how to increase movement speed, the game feels sluggish, especially at the start. You wander around without haste, poke into unfamiliar locations – and get your ass handed to you. That's how I played a year ago, got stuck at some point and quit. Now I came back with an understanding of the basics, started over, and finished it. Now it's a different experience. After I figured out the damage calculation mechanics and which skills are strong and which are weak, and which units can potentially unlock them. Overall, who to take into the army and who to level. Once I understood which locations I'd face with which enemies. When I memorized the skill icons, and it turned out that in battle one click on an enemy is enough to see what it can do and what immunities it has. That's when I started enjoying the game.

In short, if everything I've written doesn't scare you – go for it, I recommend it, it's a great game!