Preview

This game has not been released yet...but here is a preview of what is to come soon!

SpellForce 2 is a hybrid game combining traditional real-time strategy with a decent role-playing system to augment combat and allow players to form greater attachments to their characters. The story has changed pretty considerably since the original SpellForce was released moving the focus away from rune warriors and onto the Shaikan, a magical race of beings that have mixed their blood with powerful dragons. Thus, they can be revived whenever they fall in battle which allows SpellForce 2 to continue the tradition of heroes that are really, really hard to kill during the course of the game.

Players will begin the game by setting up their main character hero who will have basically no skills or battle experience at the beginning of the adventure. Through the tutorial and the rest of the game, that character, along with other heroes who join the cause, will gain experience and levels through the completion of quests. This RPG system is a large portion of the game and allows players to really get in and customize each of the characters in ability and looks. The skill tree has been streamlined down to two basic sets of skills: magic and combat skills. Characters can only pick one new skill for each level and cap out at level 30 so players will need to carefully consider their choices as there are somewhere around 100 skills in all.

The developers have devoted themselves to creating a strong mix between two modes of play. In many of the levels, especially those surrounding towns, players will need to take their party of heroes, perhaps with some accompanying soldiers, and do a little dungeon crawling before heading out into full on warfare. Any quests or objectives given along the way will be placed into a handy dandy quest log so that nothing is forgotten.

Players will once again have the choice to play the game in standard isometric RTS view or zoom down into a 3rd person perspective to get a more personal view. Some tweaking with the process is needed, but it's nice to allow players the choice of point and click or controlling the hero through the WASD set-up used in most action games. Though all of the game can be played in either view, the 3rd person view is more of a gimmick than helpful during RTS gameplay.

While some missions will focus on the RPG side of things, others, include having players immediately build up armies to pave a path of destruction across the landscape. The RTS side of the game is much closer to traditional fare that we've become very familiar with over the years. Resources must be gathered, soldiers must be recruited, and battles must be fought. Instead of the specific resources required by each of the factions in SpellForce there are three resources that all need: stone, silver, and lenya. Securing new resources becomes and early and important task as usual.

There are a number of small changes and improvements to make the RTS system better than it was in the first game. For instance, peons can be created with specific jobs in mind. Click on the stone peon and when it pops out it will immediately go to harvest stone. That doesn't mean that it can't be used for other tasks, but at least you can pop out a bunch of workers without having to wait around and assign them tasks. More importantly however is the elimination of the need for building plans or unit runes. Everything is very traditional to make it easy for veterans to pick up and play.

One small and interesting addition is the ability to give allied camps orders like a field general. Their troops won't take specific controls, but allied commanders can be told to send their forces in different directions to press attacks. It's a small thing, but one that may provide even more diversion.

One of the more exciting and impressive aspects of the development is the multiplayer. While anyone will be able to jump in and play some deathmatch type games, there will also be a co-op multiplayer mode added on top of the single player campaign. Up to three players will be able to fight through entirely new scenarios together with a completely different story. This should add some terrific replayability to a genre that already manages to stand up to hours and hours of play as it is.

The last and most obvious change to the series is the new engine. While the art style is still very typical fantasy, the technical aspects are pretty impressive. Unit textures are very detailed as are the models themselves and only look better thanks to the lovely day/night lighting model in the game. Seeing the shadows fall across everything is always a treat in the busy environment an RTS provides. Special effects are also fairly impressive creating a very pleasing visual presentation all around.

SpellForce 2: Shadow Wars looks pretty good and a lot like a prettier AoE III with a splash of WoW and some nifty controls that make me think this will be a game worth buying. I'll certainly need to wait and see the final product before passing judgment but there are a lot of good changes that have been made since the original SpellForce was released.