GB Feature: SpellForce 2: Faith in Destiny Review

After long bouts of uncertainty and zero communication during its development, as well as JoWooD's insolvency and its acquisition by Nordic Games, we weren't sure we'd ever get our hands on SpellForce 2: Faith in Destiny. But now that it's finally reached store shelves, we wanted to take it through the paces in order to offer up a full review of the standalone expansion pack:
Faith in Destiny comes with five factions: the Realm (humans, dwarves and elves), the Pact (dark elves, assassins and gargoyles), the Clans (orcs, trolls and berserkers), the Shaikan (shaikan, blades and drakelings), and the Nameless (a mix of weird demon-alien creatures). The first four of these factions were available previously. The Nameless is new.

The factions in the game all work about the same. Starting with a headquarters, you hire peons to gather resources (silver, stone and lenya), and then you use the resources to build and upgrade structures and recruit an army. Each faction has a building that acts as a defensive tower, another that allows you to increase the unit cap (up to 80), and three others for recruiting military units. Once you've learned how to play one faction, you've basically learned how to play them all.