that's my current spellforce 2 party. my main is a BLACK MAGICK WOMAN, along with HEAVILY ARMORED MAN, DUAL-WIELD MAN, HEALER LADY, and that bint in the back i haven't really specialized with -- she does elemental magic and crossbows.
what is this "spellforce 2" you ask as you click between evilbore and cheeseburger porn tabs, rubbing your tumescent cock in a bored but methodical fashion. it is this: a pc game that weds dungeon siege/baldurs gate style party combat with broader rts play. it is fun. it has a number of issues, which i will enumerate, but it is fun.
what it does right:
it has a very good ui for this sort of game. click on an enemy, and your main party drops down all targeted spells available to the group. unclick a target, and all untargeted spells become available. click on a hero, and only heal/buff/unbuff is available. since every character has a hotkey, it is very very very very easy to keep everyone healed and protected. there's also a redundant party/group box in the lower left which is useful for monitoring large stacks of units for healing/buffing.
the maps themselves are well-designed, and have lots of well-timed upgrades mixed with random loot scattered throughout them. as you quest, you are regularly upgrading with incrementally better kit, and occasionally, just occasionally, you get a FUCK AWESOME random drop.
the skill system is really flexible without being too large or overwhelming. initially, you can choose melee versus magic for any character, and then those trees subdivide, and subdivide again, and then triple divide. my main is focusing on the black magic subtree, which has specialized damage and buff options. A HINT: turn off auto-skill selection and auto-spellbook selection for your NPC recruits -- the PC makes safe and generic choices, which are no fun. you want that archer/mental magic combo!
the graphics and art direction are really, really good. the game itself is a bit of a resource beast, but it alt-tabs really well with the latest patch. you can easily have 100-on-100 (or more) army clashes, with your heroes firing off magic and summons right and left with almost no slowdown. this game also has some of the BEST pathfinding i've seen in a game of this type. the rts components are fairly shallow, but they only accentuate the game rather than define it. the production values are ace, especially with a good dx9 card.
i've dabbled with the expansion, and the map design seems even better -- more homm-style map crawling and less QUICKLY FIND ALL THE SPAWN POINTS OR ELSE. which brings me to...
now, the BAD
a select few of the map scenarios feature really stupid events with respawning enemies that require trial-and-error reloads to know where the spawn points are and to hit them fast enough ere you be flooded. this sucks. it is stupid. i had to do that fucking crypt map like five times before i figured out just the right build order to have the right size of army just in time to hold off the flood and then send my heroes around in precisely the right order to nuke all the spawn points. FUCK THIS SHIT. that was three hours of my life CORNHOLED. fuck YOU PHENOMIC. fire the fucker that designed that map.
the story is insipid lord of the rings crap. ironically, this engine is perfect for an lotr-type experience, since it swaps between party adventure and epic army clashes so seamlessly. seriously, though, this tolkein potpourri shit in scenario design needs to STOP NOW. dwarves and elves and dragons and undead and orcs and trolls and demons and OH MY FUCK YOU PLEASE STOP YOU GOT THEM ALL IN THERE YOU DID NOW STOP AND BE ORIGINAL PLEASE GOD AUGH
the cheesecake at the title screen. without the expansion, you get chainmail mchotpants. with the expansion -- the unambitiously titled dragon storm -- you get negligee mcswordnboobs. when even *i* roll my eyes at this shit, you've just gotten silly.
the camera is all fucked up in cutscenes. that's okay, because the creepy lip-syncing will make your skin crawl. sometimes, it will zoom up into the skybox or focus on the grass. the characters say really stupid shit, too, and the VA work will make you cringe. i advise you to turn off voices.
overall, i give it a b-/10. on the play magazine scale, it is a 9.8. it's a good meaty pc game that'll tide you over until the a-listers like hellgate: london, the company of heroes expansion and the next total war game show up.
thank me later, dune coons! (the expansion is only available as a download purchase right now, but spellforce 2 gold with the original and the expansion is supposed to hit in COCKTOBER, and only for $29.99!)
