Spellforce 3

[XavierMace]

Not sure if there's any other fans of the series on here but I played the beta while it was active and the game went live yesterday. So far, I've been quite impressed. It's a gorgeous RTS, the dialog/voice acting is definitely superior to the previous games in the series (IMO). I haven't run into any major bugs/technical issues yet although frame rates aren't what I'd like in some places.

For those not familiar with the series, Spellforce is an attempt to blend RTS's with RPG. While by no means perfect, I've found the series to be the most enjoyable attempt at it since Warlords Battlecry. Spellforce 1 was better than Spellforce 2 but so far I'm really happy with 3. They've got a good campaign/story mode that you don't normally see in this type of game outside of Blizzard releases.

 

[Rifter]

Not sure if there's any other fans of the series on here but I played the beta while it was active and the game went live yesterday. So far, I've been quite impressed. It's a gorgeous RTS, the dialog/voice acting is definitely superior to the previous games in the series (IMO). I haven't run into any major bugs/technical issues yet although frame rates aren't what I'd like in some places.

For those not familiar with the series, Spellforce is an attempt to blend RTS's with RPG. While by no means perfect, I've found the series to be the most enjoyable attempt at it since Warlords Battlecry. Spellforce 1 was better than Spellforce 2 but so far I'm really happy with 3. They've got a good campaign/story mode that you don't normally see in this type of game outside of Blizzard releases.

Nive, i played the first one to completion, the second was not as good i didnt finish it.

 

[XavierMace]

It's been a while since I've played 2, but I want to say hero building is closer to the way it was in 1 rather than 2. Weapon selection is only limited by base attributes rather than needing points into that specific type of weapon. Weapons scale based on the preferred attribute (IE bows and light blade scale on DEX, large blades scale on STR). Only annoyance I've had so far is the camera is a bit glitchy in the first major city if you are zoomed out because the buildings are too tall. Nothing too terrible though. It's a great looking map.

 

[Elcs]

My biggest bugbear with Spellforce was the RTS element.

I much prefer the Dawn of War 2 Vanilla/Chaos Rising hero-based RPG gameplay, as opposed to the Hero-based stuff with RTS base building and unit spam tacked alongside it. Even the DoW2 Retribution model of Heroes with a low number of specialist units would be more my bag.

Is Spellforce 3 much the same as 1 and 2 with the dedicated levels/areas where Heroes are forgone and unit spam/base building takes over?

 

[XavierMace]

They adopted a sector/control point system ala DoW/CoH which curbs your base building and heroes are required to capture sectors. So, so far, there really hasn't been much unit spamming (10hrs in). Even then, I wouldn't say heroes are ever forgone. They're a pretty critical part of combat even when you have an army.

That said, I did just hit a progress stopping bug during the campaign. But so far it looks like they've been getting fixes pushed out pretty quick.