DETAILED REVIEW

As you people may know by now, I love my strategy games. Real-time or turn-based, they always invoke some sort of a rush in me. Add a mix of RPG elements to the fray and the feeling intensifies. Handling those systems in a manageable way is no easy task, and has a lot of scope for being a tad too much. Does this standalone expansion to 2017’s RTS-RPG hybrid SpellForce 3 live up to my expectation of the genre-melt? Let’s find out.

Story and Narrative

The game starts with a bog standard character creator, where you pick your look and pick a first name (the last name is fixed, as there is full voice acting). You also select the starting class, which basically means you get to pick two ability pools (i.e. class paths) from which you can unlock perks throughout the gameplay. After the character creator, you’re dropped in a dream sequence trying to piece through something that happened during the Purity Wars from the base game. Essentially, this expansion is basically a sequel to SpellForce 3.

The dream sequence ends in the midst of a Dwarf ambush on the human party, and you’re in the company of an ambassador to the queen, who wishes to meet you. From here, the story is told through quite frankly amazing voice acting and emotive characters, even though they’re really tiny on your screen (since it is an isometric RTS after all).

You go to the queen’s chambers and are given a mission to figure out what exactly is happening among the Dwarves. You travel to various locations from the World map and piece together the goings on. In the meanwhile, you also get optional side quests, that never seems like the pointless fetch quests of yore. Each side-quest feels fresh and unique, and are rewarding enough on their own, even without the monetary rewards you get at the end of them. However, there’s no overarching, connecting narrative to the sidequests, like in the Witcher 3. If that’s important to you, you’re going to be disappointed.

The game’s narrative is smooth and lets the player feel like he/she is actually making a difference in the game world. Even with a party at their disposal, the player can individually connect with the goings on in the central character’s life. The party members are also handled very well. Even common mercenaries are voiced, and they have a deep dialogue based on location and accompanying characters. All in all, a really well-done story, and a marked improvement over SpellForce 3. There aren’t really many branching paths in the story, however, and the cause for replayability is only if you want to test out the various possible skill tree combinations

Gameplay and Mechanics

The game is mainly played in an isometric perspective, where you control your units in the traditional RTS sense. But, it’s a lot more intricate than that, and you’ll soon see how.

When you’re playing your game, you are in control of “heroes” which are your RPG characters with their own inventory pool and equippable weapon/trinket slots. These slots are filled through finding loot in the world or buying them from merchants. The gripe here is the loot sometimes seems off. The levels required for the weapons you’ll find early game are absurdly high, and you’ll most definitely find better weapons with lower requirements within a few minutes of playing the game. Loot, therefore, became a bit pointless. There’s also a small chance that boxes will give you building materials like wood/stone, but the amount is so low that quite frankly, it also become pretty pointless.

Traversing across the map is made simpler with the help of Godstones, two of which you can link via portals. Dwarves also have access to the tunnels for quick travel between different outposts. Speaking of which, this game doesn’t have traditional ways of recruiting workers as in other RTS games. You capture “outposts” and upgrade them, which acts as a hub for the zone, where your workers live till you give them a build order. Ore collection is automated, however, and just the building is sufficient to start gathering resources in the zone.

These resources are used to build the usual buildings (barracks, farms, etc) and recruiting the units from there. From here on out, the game plays like a traditional RTS for these units.

However, for the characters, the game is slightly different. In the middle of the game, you can use the spells that the various characters have from the hotbar at the top of the screen. This is a point of contention for me, as, between 4 different heroes, the same bar is shared. Yes, it has 2 rows, but they need to be changed with a button press. This reduces efficiency and makes chain-casting a lot of spells mildly annoying.

The class system, however, is a major plus. The perks are unique and offer a nice variety across playthroughs. As an example, I picked the shapeshifter skill tree, which grants the character the ability to change into various animals (such as cougars or bears) indefinitely, which massively increases HP and attack damage, at the cost of not being able to cast other spells as in human form.

The other highlight is the addition of the new Dwarves and Dark elf races. These come with their own set of unique buildings and units, which increase the variety that the game offers. There’s also a map maker and outstanding mod support. I’m eagerly waiting to see what awesome content the community comes up with.

There’s a single player mode (which I tested), and a co-op and multiplayer mode included in the game. The multiplayer is basically similar in concept to Company of Heroes. Since I was unable to find a co-op partner, word of mouth became the basis for its evaluation. From what I’ve heard, the co-op player essentially takes a back seat. See if that’s a good enough experience for you before getting the game to play with your friends.

Visuals, Performance, and Sound

The game looks beautiful. From flowing water to leaves on trees, they’re all handled very well. The character models look sharp even when zoomed in, and you can see the weapon that the soldier is wielding. Building models are sharp as well, and it’s easy to distinguish what building it is without clicking on it.

The HUD is pretty clean, and you get all the information you might possibly need right on the screen. The buildings even show you how much of a resource they have, and it goes negative to show the need for resources for a particular part.

Coming to the performance, the game stayed at a solid 60fps at 1080p on Ultra settings on my R5 1600/GTX 1060 throughout my playtime, and dipped maybe once while scrolling across the map. There were a few visual glitches at times, such as a flickering loading screen, or units glitching through buildings a couple of times, but this was automatically remedied after a few seconds, and so, nothing was detracting from the main game.

[toggles behavior=”toggle”]

[toggle title=”Minimum requirements”]OS: Windows 7, 8, Windows 10 (64 bit)

Processor: Intel Core i5 3570, AMD FX-6350

Memory: 6 GB RAM

Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB, AMD Radeon 7850 2GB

DirectX: Version 11

Storage: 15 GB available space

Sound Card: DirectX compatible Sound card[/toggle]

[toggle title=”Recommended Requirements”]OS: Windows 7, 8, Windows 10 (64 bit)

Processor: Intel Core i7-4790, AMD FX-8350

Memory: 8 GB RAM

Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 970 4GB, AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB

DirectX: Version 11

Storage: 15 GB available space

Sound Card: DirectX compatible Sound card[/toggle]

[toggle title=”Review Specs”]OS: 64-bit Windows 10

Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 1600

Memory: 16 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 1060

DirectX: Version 11[/toggle]

[/toggles]

The sound design is a treat on your ears. The menu music is beautiful, and so is the in-game soundtrack. It just makes you want to close your eyes and sway your head without a care in the world. The weapon/spell effects are sharp and crisp as well, and give weight to the goings on in the game. As I’ve mentioned, the voice acting complements all of this and rounds the sound design into one AMAZING package.

VERDICT

SpellForce 3: Soul Harvest is a fitting sequel to SpellForce 3, and is a marked improvement over the previous game. The perfect balance between real-time strategy like Age of Empires while managing the equipment of your characters like Divinity Original Sin makes this game a joy to play through. I highly recommend getting it. The full price is ₹980, which is a very good price for the content offered in the base game. There’s also mod support to extend the game into the direction you wish. Get the game. Highly Recommended!