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
Endless possibilities to develop your hero. Different abilities for different species. Strategy aspect very good.

The Bad
Needs a patch to work after hero reaches level 12. However, the patch solves a few other major issues as well, which makes the game even better.

The Bottom Line
Become a hero of any of the usual RPG professions, mix and match abilities and fight against the evil forces within the Order. Through many action-packed scenarios you have the possibility to build up a character of immense power, whether they be a wizard, cleric or fighter. There are six races of creatures you may control and a huge catalogue of spells to use. In order to defeat the evil lords you will have to build an army, and in order to build an army you need to build towns. There are also quite a few side-quests for you to complete, both related and not related to the main storyline. Features tens of hours of playing.

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.