SpellForce: The Order of Dawn

The Good
The graphics are pretty good, and so is the artwork.

Good idea to mix strategy and RPG.

The Bad
Where to start... Perhaps I should say that I didn't like the game at all, and that no other RPG gamer will like it either. They have taken the most boring elements of an RTS and added some RPG elements plus a lame story. I have a serious problem with RTS games, mainly because I have to build these stupid "workers" and hand out jobs to them. That's just pointless micromanagement, not gaming. So, while you just want the story to progress and your hero (or "avatar" as this game calls him/her) to level up, you have to produce these stupid workers and spend hours on building woodcutters huts.... sigh. And while in the middle of micromanagement, a band of goblins attack your "city", kill your workers, and you're back to square one. Great fun.

The RPG bit is very basic, some items here and there and some conversations with boring characters you meet. The interface doesn't make it easier. The icons used makes it impossible to understand what function they have.

There's also the cliché scantily-clad-female-with-weird-looking-armour art when you load a game (which takes about 1½ minute). Not even semi-naked girls can save this turkey though.

The Bottom Line
Don't play. Once you have familiarized yourself with the weird interface you're probably bored of the game. For those who think this RTS/RPG thing is something new, I suggest you check out "Rage of Mages" which is a much better game than this.

The Good
I played the game several times all the way through to the end first as a warrior and later as a Necromancer. I found playing as spell caster a bit more difficult in the beginning than playing as a warrior but both was fun.

You play as a former servant of one of the mages that were responsible for the fractured world the game takes place in. Because of this most npc don’t like you at first. As an immortal rune warrior your death is meaningless as you are bound to a stone and will respawn if killed in battle at the last activated bind stone (stones around the map that can be switched on and used for fast travel). This is a good thing as the progress you have made is not lost so you don’t have to destroy an enemy encampment all over again when you are killed or are overwhelmed by the AI and are forced to leave the map. You only lose a bit of exp but its best to stay alive of coarse:). It’s always a good thing to try and thin the herd and raise some poorly defended spawning points before building a base.

Along the way you will find hero and worker runes of six races to aid you in battle witch can be trained at their respective monument. Each monument that you activate costs rune power that will affect the rate in which you can built your workers, warriors and heroes. To build these runes you need to place their stones in your rune board. As you level up you find and can use runes higher level. So if you forget to insert the highest level of stone you can use your units might be too weak for the AI units on the map. Usually not a problem to be a little behind but when killing a boss of a high level it makes a real difference. I found the game at first difficult probably because I played it as pure RTS and the AI wastes no time after you have activated a monument of one of the races in producing units to eventually overwhelm you and force you to abandon the map. But first killing of some enemies and reduce the number of spawning points in RPG mode (alone or with up to five fully equipable heroes) makes the game much easier to play. A defensive line of five or more towers will also make short work of the attackers.

Another thing I liked was that all the maps are connected by magical portals and when crossed can be revisited. Often needed for one of the many side quests. I found the story in the massive singe player campaign quite entertaining with an original plot twist at the end and nice graphics and audio tracks.

The Bad
The units and buildings of the various races are quite similar and could have been a bit more race specific. When it first came out it was a bit buggy and sometimes crashed but with all the patches it plays fine. Some of the voice acting could be better.

The Bottom Line
Overall a very nice and entertaining game with a good story. And a much better RTS/RPG hybrid than its successor. So if you like this game play the two expansions instead before trying part 2.

The Good
First off, the greatest thing in the game are the voiceovers. When you go through the prologue and hear Caele's voice... wow! Few games have as interesting voiceovers.

The story is interesting as you play the role of basically a freed slave (you are a summoned rune warrior). The story takes you on a journey in the aftermath of a great war that destroyed the world eight years earlier.

The character creation choices are interesting, though you are stuck to starting as a human. Why are they interesting? You can choose a fairly diverse character to begin the game with... for instance, you can't just choose to be an Elemental Mage... you must choose a sub category (Ice, Fire, Earth). And the nice part, is that as you progress in the game, you can add on all other classes if you want, or just keep improving a single class.

Another nice thing in the game is that you can get runes that allow you to create other races (basically, you can have your town with multiple races in it... thereby having multiple types of buildings in your town rather than only the buildings of a single race). This is something that may be unique to this game. Other games that had multiple races in the same town usually had the computer control one of them.

The Bad
The game gives you a very zoomable interface that takes you from isometric to 3rd-person... the problem is that the 3rd-person view makes it virtually impossible to do anything, so you are really stuck in isometric except in the plot videos.

It is fairly easy to miss a corpse that has an item (or items) as the graphics for it aren't very noticeable... and since few corpses have items, you aren't usually paying too much attention to corpses. So you can miss some good items if you're not careful.

The Bottom Line
If you like RTS and RPG games, this is a great game for you to try. The game is mostly RTS, so if you don't like that genre, you may want to pass up on this game. For everyone else, it's worth playing.