Finished the main campaign of Spellforce Platinum.
There are some games that enter on that list of: "Man, this idea is so good, pity the execution is so bad." , you go keeping playing in the hopes of eventually get good and reward the time spent and in case of Spellforce, the last chapter (the game has three) is where the game really starts, the problem is that 2/3 of the game feel like a tutorial that doesnt end on how simplistic the gameplay is until you reaching the end where finaly the game starts getting harder and you have access to more powerful spells.
The problem isnt exactly that the mechanics are shit (some are), nope, you have access to 12 spell schools and 6 fighter schools and 6 main attributes, you gain a really stingy amount of skill points and attributes per level, meaning you really need to concentrate to get a decent build , there are alot of interesting and powerful spells on the game too. There is actually material here to make a decent RPG out of it, as Spellforce is also a RTS, the RTS part isnt also that bad, it is alot more simplistic than the RPG side but still, you have access to 6 races, each with some racial quirks. All this huge content supposedly would make for a really nice game but it doesnt because like Pillows of Eternity, you can talk about mechanics all day, if the actual content is shit, no amount of mechanical depth will save your game.
And the content here is weak, imagine you took a map, you duplicated it twice the size it should have while your units walk in turtle speed on this huge map full of nothing beyond some chests with random loot with grossly underleveled useless spell scrolls and items, some little enemy outposts/trash mobs for you to curbstomp with your OP heros and the rare fetch quest. You know, as Sid Meier said, a game is just a set of interesting decisions, however, if there is no decisions to be made, what is the point?
Most fights and missions on the game can be finished without breaking a sweat by just group selecting your dudes and right click enemies, if they are melee, activate the ability that gives them 300% damage for 10 seconds, there you are, that is the level of complexity in decision making involved. And about the 12 spell schools? Isnt casting spells fun? Well, it would be, if for 2/3 of the game wasnt better for you to just pretend magic didnt exist and go 100% warrior on how superfluous the starting spells are. The starting spells, mostly are single target spells, many with cooldowns and long animations to be cast and that can be interrupted and resisted when you are playing a RTS with dozens of units on the screen, I see how some of those spells might had been useful for the rare soul that played multiplayer when this game was released but on single player, most starting spells are damn superfluous.
Also, you cant buy most spells scrolls (necessary to learn spells) and even the few spells that you can actually buy, their high level versions have such ludicrous pricing that you can spend the whole money you earned on the game to buy a single scroll that isnt even that high level. I'm talking about spell level, what is this? Well, lets say you want to make some kickass necromancer and have an army of undead summons, lets say you bought summon skeleton level 4 and you can summon your skeletons, however, because the spell scrolls that drop are random and higher level ones extremely rare, soon enough, because of level scaling, the enemy units would have level 11 while your skeletons are still level 4 because you didnt find a scroll with higher spell level to learn a higher level version of the spell, if that makes spells look useless for most of the game, you are exactly right. Do you think I will play the game all over again to see how an undead army would be if your spells are only really useful when you are level 20 IF you were lucky to find a high level scroll that you need? Nope.
Also, one last point, if you dont have a class based system, try to balance your game so jack of all trades are viable, because classless systems basically dangle all that huge number of skills the player could have right away, if you dont support jaclk of all trades kind of characters, meaning, you gain zero benefit from a generalist character (like on this game), you just pulled a bait and switch, offered alot of options to the player and just condemned him to a trap build and the only solution is a restart, at this point you were better with a class system. The reason you gain zero benefit from a generalist character here is on how level progression works, quickly, most skills with low investment will become obsolete because enemy hp keep growing while the spell damage and the hp of your summons dont.
TLDR: Lessons to learn here:
Think about how how the enemy level progression relates with the player skills, dont just do a lazy linear level progression for the enemies, call a day then dont give attention on how that might impact player builds.
Dont make your maps too big if there is nothing on them.
Dont make a system on a vacuum without thinking how the moment to moment decision making of the player would be.
Give enough material for the player from the get go for him to think about if you have any hopes for him to replay your game, no fucking way I will deal with the pain of hours upon hours of babies first ARPG this game is just to see how the other spell schools are on the end game.
The pacing of the game is important, if 2/3 of your game play like a barren field of decisions where you dont need to make a decision, it is bad, doesnt matter how good on paper it is.
Be careful with scale, some of those spells are only useful for single target and that is okay if you are dealing with a party of 6 but if you are dealing with dozens of units, the scale of the spell and the scale of the oposition are completely mismatched what makes that spell useless, that is even more important because fireball, that is a single target spell is the only offensive spell the fire school has for 2/3 of the game and it is a useless spell because of that.
