SpellForce Review
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The game's presentation is hit and miss. The starting movie is absolutely thrilling, showing two simultaneous battles during a magical ritual that ends with the world being split apart. However, from there, things start to slide. Much like JoWood's WWII offering last month, Silent Storm, the extensive voiceovers in SpellForce sound like they were voiced by people dragged off the street. The voices have accents, sure, but the delivery of their lines leaves much to be desired.
The multiplayer aspect of SpellForce has its own host of problems. On the good side, there are eleven maps to choose from that are more or less symmetrical. Hosts have the option of having the maps populated by hostile monsters in order to halt player advances towards their enemies. On the bad side, there have been at least three patches to the game in the short time since its release. The game doesn't have an autopatch ability, nor does it notify you that another patch is available. Even if you find a game you'd like to join, there's no guarantee the host will have the same patch. But perhaps the most obvious problem is the fact that the multiplayer takes away some of the game's good points (PC customization, the RPG angle) and becomes just another RTS, and a slow one at that. Your player-character can't be "trained" in the single-player mode and be taken online; you must pick a character out of a pre-generated list.
