SpellForce 3 wants to be two games at once, and for long stretches it manages the trick. Grimlore Games built a real-time strategy game and a role-playing game into the same box, set it in the high fantasy world of Eo, and shipped it for Microsoft Windows on 7 December 2017. THQ Nordic published it. It is the third full release in the SpellForce series and the ninth overall, and the first since SpellForce 2: Demons of the Past in 2014.
Trailer, via IGDBcom.
A prequel to The Order of Dawn
The plot runs as a prequel to SpellForce: The Order of Dawn, set 500 years earlier, and it shows the events that lead to the founding of The Circle — the mages whose actions set up the first game. You play Tahar, child of the rebel mage Isamo Tahar, and a corporal in the Wolf Guard.
The source material lays out the world plainly. Magic is central to life in Eo. Humans, elves, orcs and dwarves live side by side. Eight years before the campaign’s present, Isamo led the Mage Wars against the crown of Nortander. He was killed in an assault on Greykeep castle. A cult called the Purity of Light rose afterward, preaching that Aonir, the god of gods, will return once magic use is banished, and persecuting mages with the tolerance of the queen’s Lord Marshall Angar.
Tahar’s companions are the draw here, because the game knows what they become. The roster includes:
- Yria, an elven white mage
- Isgrimm, a dwarven archaeologist
- Rohen Tahir, a human mage and former follower of Isamo
- Uram, a demon summoner
- Ianna, an assassin
- Undergast, a mage who wields both light and dark magic
- Gor, an orcish shaman and chieftain
Building a base between conversations
The role-playing half is the familiar one. You create a character, pick a gender and appearance, and choose among three skill trees based on fighting style. Every player-made character also gets a fourth tree called Leadership, which holds the skills tied to the strategy side. Five attributes — strength, dexterity, intelligence, willpower and constitution — govern what gear you can equip and your health, focus, damage, block and critical strike chances. Weapons, armor and jewelry all shift those numbers.
The strategy half arrives on maps that require a base of operations. You put up specialized buildings, gather resources, and recruit units to break larger enemy groups or finish certain tasks. It is a real blend, not a mode switch, and the campaign supports it for one player or two.
Skirmish mode carries the long tail
Beyond the story campaign there is a skirmish mode, and it does not require you to finish the campaign first. You can fight on the game’s maps against the AI or other players, alone or online. In skirmish, players can split the duties of running a single race between them, which is the most interesting thing the multiplayer does.
Companions level alongside you. Every character earns experience from kills and completed quests whether or not they took part in the fight, so a bench full of unused companions does not fall behind.
That generosity is the game’s best decision. SpellForce 3 asks a lot of a player — build an army, gear a party, keep eight companions relevant — and it declines to punish you for the parts you neglect.
Where the seams show
The ambition is real and so is the strain. Two genres in one campaign means two sets of systems competing for the same hours, and the strategy maps are where the role-playing momentum stalls. The Purity of Light and the coma-bound queen give the story a genuine spine, and Tahar’s position as the child of the rebellion’s leader is a sharper hook than the series has had. The companions, drawn from figures the first game only named, do the rest.
SpellForce 3 is not a clean fusion. It is a good one, held together by a campaign that remembers the mages of The Circle were people before they were legends.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
