Spellforce = Original concept for WC3?

[Warrik]

Just grabbed this game. Its a decent game....the comparisons to Dungeon Siege and WC3 are very justifiable....but I remember the early interviews concerning WC3. THis gmae seems to be everything that Blizzard said WC3 was slated to be.

Anyone have any info on wether or not this is in any way related to the scrapped version of WC3? Is Jowood a collection of ex-Blizzard employees or what? Anyone have any info?

[Oakman]

Jowood is a bargain bin euro producer I think. The game concept sounds solid, and graphics are nice, but I think Sacrifice was the better game.

[Jait]

Originally posted by Oakman
The game concept sounds solid, and graphics are nice, but I think Sacrifice was the better game.

Amen to that.

Doesn't mean you're wrong tho Warrik.

I still got fiddy dollahs bet on that EaB was actually based on the core of Privateer3/POnline which was scrapped during Alpha when Origin got gobbled by EA. Oh did I mention EaB was made by EA?

[Iannis]

E&B would've been a good single-player game, where you didn't have to wait 1 month to get a miniscule story update. It was apparent they had moved into the realm of "freaky intra-dimensional invaders" after the Kilrathi were defeated.

[caldibus]

Oh hell yea, sacrifice was THE game back then. To bad hardly anyone played it, IMO it is better than WC3.

Spellforce is good though, just picked it up.

See, the thing in sacrafice is that there were only 2 resources, mana and souls, which were all mainly attained by battle, so no borring building, but still a ton of stratagy.

[Froofy-D]

I'm playing through spellforce right now and it's pretty fun. It's a combination of the following:

- Progression of the story through many maps RTS style (similar to WC3 single player campaign). The maps are somewhat non-linear though, you can return to old maps, and some quests span several maps. Some maps are optional.

- The 'heros' in the game play similar to Dugeon Siege, and require very fast reflexes and heavy use of hot keys to run efficiently. As you gain levels you can have more heroes, up to 5.

So think WC3, with Dungeon Siege heros. Some maps you use your Armies, some maps you can use only your Heros, on most you can use both.

The skill trees/stat selection and equipment selection is pretty complex complex. Here's a pic of the main character screen:

[Froofy-D]

It has an overhead view, just like WC3 or any other RTS, but you can zoom way in when you use your heros, and you can 1st person view your main character. Here's a combat pic, not one of the prettiest maps, but highest detail textures and shadows on. Bottomline: worth playing till WOW comes out...

[Fools]

I took a very brief look at the demo...

Did they fix the sounds and the HEAVY demands on your computer?

When I last looked the sounds were from Alpha and they did not redo them (the voice overs were terrible). And on a 1.5GHz, half a gig memory, Geforce2 (ok not a great machine, but it runs most stuff) the game crawled and performance was very poor.

If they improved those points it would be interesting!

Fools.

[Warrik]

Im using a Barton 2500 with a Radeon 9600Pro (256DDR), with 1 gig of 266 DDR and have no perfomance problems at all with the settings maxed.

[Snarf-O]

JoWood has made some pretty fun games already, nothing really original, but still good fun. Im looking forward to their version of Transport Tycoon (transportgiant.com) myself

[Kreugen]

Game bored me to death. I think I made it through about six maps or so before I'd had enough. It lacks the one thing that blizzard RTS gets right and NOBODY else - units that are actually unique and can be micro'd to great effect. Spellforce: Build a town, build up a horde of units, right click on the enemy. It was incredibly trivial and monotonus.

The worst part though was the quest system, which sent you back and forth across the empty maps with S-L-O-W ass loading times. The quest desciptions of course do not bother to mention which map the npc was located at.

As I said on Men on RTS, Hated It.

Although to be fair, I think the only RTS I have ever enjoyed enough to even finish were all made by blizzard. All of the others suffered from the exact same flaw of "safely build up a horde of units, then right click on the bad guy" zzzZZZzz

[Nanaki Ikanan]

Spellforce is the only game I've stopped playing because of the terrible voice-acting. Who knows? It could have been fun, but with voices that bad...unplayable.

[Nar]

Game bored me to death. I think I made it through about six maps or so before I'd had enough. It lacks the one thing that blizzard RTS gets right and NOBODY else - units that are actually unique and can be micro'd to great effect. Spellforce: Build a town, build up a horde of units, right click on the enemy. It was incredibly trivial and monotonus.

I have to agree there...there is no strategy to the units you build, you just pile them out, pile out builders until you can make no more, then right click anything moving.

[Parum]

Though the game is amazing, there is one glaring error in it.

The maps are just plain repetitive after a while. I got through 19 or so I think (maybe a few less), and by the end I figured that the total variation of the game was the number of bad guys they threw at you. Instead of one enemy town with one generator, by the end there were seven enemy towns with two generators each.

Don't get me wrong, it was challenging and fun still, but so repetitive that I just had to give it up. Plus, if you don't spend the "recommended" amount of time on each map, i.e. if you go far too fast, then your hero will not be high enough level to take more than three or four hits due to armor and other stats lacking.