The Enkindler
Endgame Boss
Stature : 86
Greece
Playing : Plenty of games, and I can't count them.
 |  Subject: SpellForce: The Order of Dawn Review  Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:04 am | |
|  Developer(s): Phenomic
Publisher(s): JoWood Productions, Encore, Inc.
You can watch the intro here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEaISOVZj9s
Story:
The story takes place in the ravaged world of Eo eight years after the Invocation of the Convocation, a devastating ritual that that a group of thirteen arrogant but very powerful Mages calling themselves "The Circle" performed by reading a text left by the enemies of the Gods, the Fial Darg, in hopes of gaining full control over the Prime Elements, but in return the ritual caused the Prime Elements to go on berserk and shatter all the continents in a massive eruption, You are a Rune Warrior, a Human whom the Mages of the Circle used as a weapon to bring bloodshed and chaos over the lands, Rohen, one of last of the Circle Mages and the only Mage to realize the deception made by the Fial Darg to shatter the world summons you to stop another Circle Mage who seeks to travel back in Time and turn the Convocation War to his Favor with the Iron Creatures Known as the Blades.
The Story in this game is Deep, Rich and quite interesting if you are interested in Story-Telling.
Gameplay:
This game has a mix of RPG and RTS elements, like in any common RPG, you can customize your character with Weapons, Armor, Spells, e.t.c..
If you Zoom in to your character you can play in Third Person Prespective in this mode you can walk around with the arrows like in any RPG, this however can make it a bit difficult in controlling your troops.
Now for the RTS elements, you can control the camera like in any RTS game, your character will find "Monuments" across the maps that can only be used by Rune Warriors with these monuments you can summon workers so you can build camps and train troops depending on the type of Monument you control, for example Human Monuments will summon Human workers and Orc Monuments will summon Orc workers, The types of monuments are: Human Monument, Elf Monument, Dwarf Monument, Orc Monument, Troll Monument, Dark Elf Monument and Hero Monument.
Since the world is shattered during the Convocation, the maps appear as islands so you can travel through the ravaged world through special Magical Portals created by Rohen.
Challenge wise this game can be a little hard if you don't learn the combat mechanics of the game, if you rush your character all by himself/herself to fight hordes of enemies, then he/she'll be dead before you know it, this is where the RTS elements come into, you can train soldiers to fight the large numbers of enemies, provided that your workers have gathered the required resources and constructed the necessary buildings to do so, you can also upgrade the workers and soldiers by using runes and discover new building plans as you progress through the game.
VERY IMPORTANT: HEED and LISTEN to what the NPCs tell you, because some maps have more than one Portal, and you might get reckless and decide to go on a map with enemies you are not ready to face yet, the questbook will obviously play part in this as well.
Also: PLAY THE TUTORIAL!
Audio:
SpellForce has some of the most enchanting and beautiful soundtracks, they will easily catch your attention, also as you go through the map's areas you will notice that the BGM might change, some areas will have a calm BGM, some other will have a Creepy BGM.
The Soundtrack might be one of the best soundtracks ever, but the same thing cannot be said about the voice acting, this game has some of the worst voice acting ever, and if you don't believe me, you can get an idea of how bad the voice acting is by watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7uQzIgfSpk
Graphics:
Since this game was released back in 2003 it won't obviously have "current gen" graphics, but for a game of 2003, the graphics are awesome, the sky can also change colours in some maps, for example, volcanic maps will have red skies, snowy maps will have purple skies e.t.c.
The Verdict:
The Good:
Great Story
Amazing Sountrack
Great Level Design
Unique Mix of RTS and RPG elements
Six races for you to command
Good graphics for it's time
The Bad:
Enemies love to disable your teleporting stones, forcing you to go back and reactivate them and it can be a pain in the butt in large maps.
Abysmal voice acting to the point where you'll want to facepalm at yourself.
Unable to master all skills and magic.
The Ugly:
Very Underrated to the point where almost nobody knows of it's existence
Final Score: 8.5 | |
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