Spellforce 2 Shadow Wars 2

Spellforce 2 : Shadow Wars (PC/FullIso/ENG)
Game Platforme(s) : PC | Language : English | Release Date : May 5, 2006
Publisher : Aspyr | Developer : EA Phenomic | Genre : Adventures/Computer Role-Playing
Size : 2 Gb

2004's SpellForce: The Order of the Dawn was a potent blend of real-time strategy and role-playing that was hampered a bit by some lackluster pathfinding and control issues. Now, the series returns with SpellForce 2: Shadow Wars, and developer Phenomic has certainly learned from experience. SpellForce 2 shows strong signs of improvement while keeping the unique mix of gameplay relatively intact, and the result is a real-time strategy game that feels more like an action role-playing game. Or is that an action role-playing game that feels more like a real-time strategy game? It's hard to define SpellForce 2, but it's certainly a nice change of pace from the real-time strategy rut.
In Shadow Wars, the dark elves are on the offensive, and it's up to you, as a member of an outcast human/dragon race, to rally the various "good" nations to meet the threat. But since no one trusts you, you must pursue a ton of quests to gain their trust, as well as deal with various evildoers and monsters along the way. In fact, there's so much of this questing going on that it won't be too long before you realize that for a real-time strategy game, SpellForce 2 seems a lot like Diablo and other role-playing games. The variety of quests is also impressive, since they don't feel like the generic FedEx-style quests (go to point X and bring back item Y). Actually, most of them are, but you'll experience so many different challenges that it never quite feels like the same thing over and over again.

Like any good role-playing game, SpellForce 2 inspires a strong sense of satisfaction as you see your hero level up and get new weapons and armor, as well as unlock new powers and abilities. SpellForce 2 features a new skill system that lets you distribute points across two skill trees, one based on magic and the other on combat, and you can put points into each skill up to a max of three times, so you have some leeway as to what kind of character to create. You can be part magic user and part warrior, or dump all your points into either skill tree. Moreover, you can specialize even further by focusing on being able to use heavy weapons or armor, or perhaps lighter arms. Speaking of which, there's a huge variety of stuff in the game, and thankfully, there seems to be no effective limit on your inventory, so you can be a pack rat and carry everything along with you. The only thing is that, in the frenetic combat that makes up most of the game, you're dealing with such huge numbers (your character will easily have thousands of hit points), that it doesn't seem to make much of a difference if you use a weapon that does 130 points of damage or another one that does 160. Weapons and armor seem to be there mostly for cosmetic purposes, since it's hard to tell the difference between weapons that fall into the same level class.

When you're not hacking and slashing your way across the map, you will have the opportunity on occasion to do some real-time strategy management. Thankfully, the complex economy from the original SpellForce feels like it's been streamlined, so it's just a matter of setting some workers to gather the three main resources, put up a handful of buildings, and start churning out various military units to beef up your heroes. Command and control of all these different units is easy thanks to the slick interface. While you can use regular real-time strategy conventions to create unit groups, SpellForce 2 goes a bit further by letting you easily designate targets for various groups or telling a hero to unload a particular spell or skill on a specific target with just a couple of mouse clicks.