Spellforce 2 - Demo Impressions
Tom
First Impression on Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars
An RTS/RPG?
Well you read right, the designers of this game have really thought what many people have not thought of doing. Aspyr have created another blend of traditional Baldurs Gate style third person adventuring and Command and Conquer style tank rushing. Although in this game there are no tanks and no Baldurs.
They succeeded with this blend in the prequel Spellforce: Order of the Dawn mainly because nobody had done it before and so seamlessly. A danger for this type of game would be that either the RPG or RTS elements could have felt bolted on. Order of the Dawn provided a good quality fantasy story from some passionate developers and game designers.
Shadow Wars
The game offers a new story loosely connected to the previous games. The premise is quite familiar; you are an avatar who is gifted with the bloodline of dragons. You have to stop the rise of an unknown shadow army that is threatening the peaceful, pretty, butterfly filled lands of your own kind.
Playtest
After testing the demo for over an hour, the overall thought was that the gfx are a great improvement, but don't look as pretty as the press screenshots were. In an attempt to make them as pretty, the settings were raised to maximum and the game looked nicer but chugged. This was on a P4 with Geforce 6800GT. You are going to need a nuclear PC to run this game at full whack.
The gameplay was very familiar; combat is still point and click RTS style, the RPG elements shine through learning spells and new combat techniques. This is done by level progression which allows the avatar to also use more weapons and armour.
The JoWood press sheet states:
" Single-player campaign with 50+ hours of game-play in a consistent game world with a continuous, gripping storyline and a wealth of sub-quests: Explore mountains, glades, forests, caves .. "
This game is big and long, as was the prequel and 50+ hours of gameplay will attract almost anyone. But hopefully the final release will involve some plot twists and dynamics that were present in the prequel. At the moment the demo has not shown much improvement over story and single player gameplay. AI in the previous game was not particularly very good, so hopefully this game will improve on this especially for replayability factors.
Coop?
The JoWood press sheet states:
" Different multi-player modes in over 30 stunning multi-player maps for Player vs. Player and Player vs. AI/Monsters, including exciting online interaction with intelligent and adaptive enemy AI. "
Coop multiplayer options are usually limited to single player maps adapted for multiplayer game modes. This is common in a lot of games at the moment. Order of the Dawn offered this and was played by the coop years; it was felt that the game had little appeal in this mode. Hopefully Aspyr have been enlightened of this fault in multiplayer design, and will make the necessary arrangements. One can only hope.
Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars will be released in the EU on Apr 21, 2006
