So... I've been playing this game for over 20 hours now and I must say:
I don't think I have ever seen better writing in an RTS game, and only in those RPGs that are known for their awesome writing.
Seriously, I could kiss whoever wrote Isgrimm. A gay dwarf would be so ridiculously easy to push into stereotypes and make that all of his being or mess it up with propaganda shit, but that character has such a nicely thought out background, motivations and character traits.
He simply is a well thought-out character.
And most characters are believable like that. Didn't meet a single character (of the main ones, that is) that seemed unfitting or artificial to me.
The game is worth playing for the characters, story and the world alone.
And that is good, because the RTS and RPG parts... errhhh... well... they do their job is probably the best thing you could say.
Both parts have really interesting ideas, but fall short in many ways.
The RPG part works better, it's your basic RPG with spellslinging, really. What I dig is that Alt-menu. You press alt and get a menu with all available abilities that would work on whatever the cursor currently touches. And while you are in that menu, time slows down. This is so much better than navigating through long menus or having 30+ slots in 3+ bars around the screen.
But the RTS part?
I love the sectors system. While you can see your overall resources, each sector basically has its own resources and carts are automatically sent between sectors to bring resources to where they are needed - those carts can also be attacked, so make sure you clear out neutrals on the map.
This leads to you really having to plan ahead where to build your barracks, iron mines & smelters, quarries, food buildings, defenses, etc.
All buildings require workers and each sector can only field a limited amount of them.
And you don't need to micro them around, you just assign them to buildings and that's it. As it should be.
But why the hell is much of the vital information so obfuscated?
For example, you can build hunting huts for food, but that will eventually run out. When it does, there is a small notification in the corner for some seconds. But because this is an RTS where you also control a party of heroes, you are usually busy with other things and dealing with replacing that building isn't high priority. So when you do have some time, there is no way to see which buildings needs to be replaced, has no workers assigned or requires some other form of attention. You have to scan the entire map manually for buildings that require attention... ugh.
You also can't see at a glance how fast your wood/stone/food/iron production is at the moment.
Etc.
The races are more or less copy-pastes of each other with some slight differences. In an RTS with so few races available and without any care for multiplayer, this is as ridiculous as it is shameful.
The only somewhat different unit is each race's highest tier unit, but usually you have won or lost by that point already.
There are also not many different ways to play a race. It's not like you can focus on specific units as the game is heavily rock-paper-scissors.
The pathfinding also messes up sometimes.
And you have to set your units into defensive mode or otherwise they WILL eventually end up running one by one into the enemy stronghold. But defensive mode is really totally passive for melee units, they only fight back if directly attacked.
What is missing is a mode between aggressive and defensive, one that only follows enemy units so far.
And then there is of course the fact that you never fight against other AI enemies, but just this weird half AI/half scripted wave-after-wave thing.
What drove them to repeat the biggest mistake that was criticized in all previous Spellforce games is beyond me.
So, do what I did: get it at a sale.
The writing, story, characters, world and graphics are too good to miss, the rest not good enough to justify the price.
,after all he is the biggest crime boss in Bulgaria,maybe even on the Balkans. We,Bulgarians are pretty nihilistic and aware bunch,we know that all the politicians around the world are the same kind of thieving scum. And honestly we don't have much problem with the thieving part,the problems that they don't build shit and just steal.
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I am replaying the game. Now the quests are not even broken,apparently there were artefact quests,never triggered in my first game. Still stops at 57% tho.
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