SpellForce 3 - RTS/RPG with good writing - now with Soul Harvest standalone expansion

Well, technically Warlords Battlecry was a "genre mixer" and people have been telling me it was better than SF1, but I haven't played it myself. While Warcraft 3 was mostly an RTS, heroes in it made more sense than in SF1. Maybe I screwed myself over by going Black Magic instead of something more useful like the Elemental tree, since Black Magic has pretty powerful single-target spells, but no AoE at all, making it pretty useless in large encounters. The skeleton summons are also pretty bad, they do too little damage. I liked the zombies in SF3 more, but I hope you can get more of them, in the demo map they are more like a cooldown spell with zombies attached, very sterilized.

 

They are now patching patches.

It's a real shame they fucked up this game so badly, because it's wonderful (when it works). One QA playthrough would have been enough to find 80% of all these game-ending bugs...

 

Probably got rushed a lot to meet the deadline and ship before christmas.

 

Doesn’t the publisher usually handle QA/determine the QA budget? Can we get a r-r-review?

 

You are all acting like this is some big surprise and nobody expected any bugs. There were game-breaking bugs in the demo, lolol. Pretty much all games, maybe outside of AAA titles, but I haven't played those in like 5 years so I wouldn't know, ship in a beta phase nowadays and we have to wait at least 2 weeks for patches to fix it. Hell, I'm still waiting for them to patch D:OS2 and that game came out 2 months ago.

 

Many AAA games end up being the buggiest ones these days.

Anyway I started from the beginning because I wasn't too happy with my skill selection and now I focused on Black Magic like I did in the Beta and it's so much better than the Elemental spells imo. The only really good spell in the elemental tree was Earthquake but that's something I can take with a companion. I also chose to help the Orcs first this time and boy they are pretty based. I really like Gor so far. His skill set and stats are pretty good too.

Edit: Did anyone ever find the key to free the prisoners in the beginning? Or is it a bug that you can't free them?

 

I always expect bugs, but these bugs man. Do something out of order and you can't continue. One quest even acknowledge you doing the thing out of order, but even so, the trigger does not work properly... and so the campaign gets stuck until you restart the mission.

 

Is the Black Magic tree identical to the one from the demo? Or do you have more options? I also don't like how you only get 3 active abilities, in SF1 you can have as many as you can cram in the UI, maybe more.

 

It seems to be the same as before but a bit nerfed, which is fine I guess. It was stupidly powerful before, now it's still powerful and more effective than Elemental Magic (imo) but not to the same obscene levels that it used to be. Specifically Seed of Darkness is the one that was nerfed. It used to make all the enemies explode but now they toned down the AoE. That makes Corpse Explosion more useful now so I'm OK with it.

You can bind 4 different sets of skills and cycle through them on the fly. The default key for it was [ ' ] iirc. It's a bit cumbersome and you can't cycle through it during pause and combat is kinda fast paced and lethal so that would've been nice, but it does help somewhat.

 

Yes, the key is around the map, not far from where you start. Freeing the prisoners was much better than in other games of the sort tbh. No spoiling, but for once freed people don't just vanish into thin air after giving you XP.

Really torn on this one. I feel like I like it and they put a lot of care and attention into the game, but on the other hand I feel like I spend a lot of time fighting the UI and twiddling with the camera. Only 3 skills on the hotbar per hero at any one time is a pretty odd decision, and yes I know you can have different tabs. Surely making any of them usable from the contextual alt click wouldn't have been gamebreaking? I'm enjoying it, but I'm not quite sure why! Nothing about it is exactly 'great' so far, the RPG bit is too easy (I'm on Hard as I don't play many RTS's but thought normal would probably be too easy) and the RTS seems lacking some QoL stuff like hotkeys for buildings and camera position, but like the first couple of Spellforce games, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

 

They managed to capture the essence of Spellforce, I see. You are pretty much describing all of them, lol. SF1 really picks up at the Shiel map (extremely aggressive enemies and limited resources) and I kinda like it now, not sure why, though.

 

If you are talking about the goblins in the cave with the golem you can continue without the trigger. You can put the meat and the mushroom on the altar.

 

I did that, but the quest giver got stuck. Kept repeating about killing the rebels.

 

SF1 is the weakest for me and SF3 is the best.But i like them more because they are more of a rpg than a strategy. Also the ork mission did keep me on my toes,it would be fun to try it out on higher difficulty.
I am still waiting for a more final version to finish the game. They are at patch 1.09 for now. Just today they made like 4 patches.

Yeah but you can just ignore him,the same thing happened to me to. I just killed the ork/goblin,took the hammer/mace and killed the golem. It is not a game breaking bug but it is annoying.

 

I am enjoying this quite a bit, but, the gameworld is so damn overcrowded. There is just too much stuff on it, makes it hard to see where you can and can't go.

Doesn't help that the minimap is useless to me too.

 

I started playing with the 1.05 patch and it's pretty fun so far - I didn't realize there was a 'kill all' hotkey and I just assumed the game was bugging out, turns out I was hitting delete while trying to rotate the camera, haha.

I've unbound that key in a hurry.

Anyway I'm struggling a bit with the interface but it's nothing some practice won't improve. I'm only in the second map so far but having fun. Playing Geralt in an RTS is amusing.

 

Never played any of these and looking at the videos it looks sweet. What's the KKK?

 

Possibly over 9000.

 

Yeah the keymaping is not the most practical,i changed the rotating camera to the + and - on the numpad. Also the default rotating speed is very slow,had to bump it up.

 

I use the alternative control scheme, just doesn't have the keys for hero abilities, but so far I have just used the alt thing.

 

Finished the mission to recruit the Orcs. Jeez that one was pretty brutal. The Elven mission was complete babby mode and picking flowers in the meadow in comparison, though I guess it's very apt. Loved the mission, a lot. You had to go all around the map subjugating the different Orcish clans while defending what you conquer (and unlocking new Orc units this way!) before mounting an assault at the main bad Orcguys fortress. The Orcs are so good. I highly, HIGHLY recommend bringing along a White Mage who can rez and heal / cast regen aura since the Orcs are very sturdy units but seem to have absolute crap HP regen, and rezzing orc units that hit for 30 damage and have 300~ HP is a bit more valuable than doing the same for some puny Human and Elven units.

Anyway, I have unlocked a few new companions, an I must take issue with the games skill tress, specifically the Hero's. The 3 skill trees you pick in the beginning are pretty bad in that most of them don't have any real synergy with each other. Most of them feel like they overlap with each other more than anything. This is understandable since they are all intended as skill trees that form the base of your character, however, you have 3 of them. Now that I have Gor as a companion, I can easily see that he'll be the best Fire Mage in the game simply because the Orcish Shaman skill tree has a Fire Totem that acts as a kind of equivalent for the Blizzard spell, except the AoE is far greater. It's really powerful and great for wiping out large groups of weaker units and dealing a nice amount of damage to stronger ones. The fire perk in the elemental skill tree that reduces the cost and cooldowns of fire spells also works on this Fire Totem spell, so there is an element of synergy between the trees.

I also got a fighter, I forgot his name, but you got him from the Orc mission during a side quest. He has a skill tree for the basic Defensive and Offensive skills, and he has a skill tree called Occultism. Occultism is really strong. Each point in the passive gives you a 5% chance to do pure damage, which bypasses all resistances. There's also a melee attack that always does pure damage, a passive perk that increases HP by 100 and focus by 10 and another passive that makes him regen HP and FP each time he attacks. There are also some abilities that deal in weakening and dealing massive damage to enemies under conditionals (like killing them while they are under a curse). Again, thanks to this bonus skill tree that is unique to this character, it creates useful synergy between the skill trees. The +20% bonus HP passive looks a lot nicer thanks to the extra 100 HP he gets from Occultism, and the damage you get from Brutality becomes even more effective when you start dishing out pure damage with a 25% chance. He's going to end up being a complete powerhouse who makes things explode, but thanks to the massive amount of HP, massive damage he does AND passive life leech, he's going to be sweeping the floors with everyone.

The main character doesn't really have much going on for him. I hope there will be opportunities to unlock new unique trees for him later down the game. Otherwise the Leadership tree will be his most defining aspect, but he or she will lag behind everyone else due to their more unique abilities. Not to say that Leadership isn't good, because it is. Particularly the skills that repair buildings and increase worker effectiveness are quite valuable, but they aren't necessarily as interesting as, say, the ability to summon a "very powerful Demon" (this is the ultimate ability for the fighter I found).

 

Buy or not buy, guys tell me!

 

There is a famous quote "If you like it,buy it!" . It comes from a place that is only accessible if you have Yacht,wink wink nudge nudge. So if you have the money and you do like the game then buy it.

 

well how the fuck do I know if I like it. The videos look nice, lol.

 

Up to patch 1.09 already.