SpellForce 2: Demons of the Past
I’m just going to start by saying that until I got a hold of SpellForce 2: Demons of the Past, I had never even heard of the SpellForce series. Story wise, starting at the end probably isn’t the best tactic since I really don’t understand what has happened to whose soul and whether that should make a difference to my character or not. However, I’m a fan of RPGs and RTS games, so this sounded right up my alley regardless.
Nordic Games has been putting out the SpellForce series for a while now (the original game was released here in North America back in 2004) and quite frankly, it’s way too much back catalog for me to delve into at this point. This is the fourth chapter of the SpellForce 2 saga (SpellForce had three) and is meant to wrap up the story so that Nordic can move on to SpellForce 3. Demons of the Past is, however, a stand alone game that does not require the purchase of any previous title in order to play it unlike the majority of expansion content you’re probably familiar with.
It blends the elements that I love about RPGs and RTS games into a singular experience. I still get to play the hero leading a party into the thick of battle while also commanding a vast army of nameless troops that I will pile upon the swords of my enemies until they are drown in a sea of my dead. Honestly, I’m probably not the best strategist, but it gets me by.
Let’s talk RPG stuff here. You create a character that starts with a powerful weapon (from the previous game? How would I know?) and a set of basic armor. You gain xp to level, which then allows you to progress along three talent trees and gain new powers as you see fit. Armor and weapons found in your travels have stats, but more importantly can change the appearance of your avatar. You’re all with me on the aesthetics over function thing, right? The story revolves around you being the hero and everyone you meet knowing it. Which is great, because I’d hate to still be proving myself by the fourth chapter of the second part of the series.
On the RTS side, you will eventually be given command of base building as you might expect. It’s actually pretty standard if you’re familiar with the genre. You gather a few types of resources, feed them into your war machine, and have little dudes run around building things that you then upgrade until you’re producing dragons the size of a continent to gleefully smash your undead foes with. RTS games are kind of a specific thing, and this game does that thing in an easy to grasp and fun to execute way with its own flavor of fantasy.
Part of the way these two elements combine is a pretty basic group level up system. When your avatar levels up, so do your companion heroes and all of the troops. You only get to do the talent thing with your avatar, but the heroes can be equipped with weapons and armor, so levels are kind of important for them. The downside of this is that it’s still pretty much laid out for you at the beginning how much level progression you can actually get done. There aren’t random battles or anything, so it does feel a lot like level progression on rails. All of your other guys will constantly be about a level lower than your avatar because you’re the biggest badass in the realm.
The biggest concern that I’ve experienced so far is that the setup seems fairly unbalanced. By the time you’re given command of a dozen troops, you’ll be given an optional mission to go slay some undead scouts. You guys are around level 5 or 6 and it turns out that your troops that you have no way of replacing are being sent against some level 10 enemies. It’s a tough fight and I lost a few guys. Then I get the optional mission to go do the same to the south. I roll on up to find a field filled with bored ass skeletons that are level 10 to 11 just milling around waiting to bash my party into the ground and wear my spleen as a hat. Skeletons are messed up. So I skip that clusterfuck on a stick and go try to finish the story mission. The next part of the story is me with this same group of dudes (the 8 that are left) being given control of a base and needing to save the villager to the south. I start building only to be zerged in minutes by the undead hordes of every generation buried in the area EVER. And then repeat failed attempts to repel them, loading the saved game, and then trying again over and over for a few hours. This was on normal difficulty. In fairness, it gets better after that when you gain more agency over your base and troop levels.
What I’m saying is that this game can be unapologetically tough. You have to be willing to work for every victory or just be way more savvy than me when killing marauding demons and skeletal knights. The graphics are in line with the previous games and thus look a little dated. However, graphics have little to do with the challenges and rewards for games that require thought and strategy. SpellForce 2: Demons of the Past does exactly what it sets out to do: make a demanding and rewarding RPG and RTS hybrid. If those two genres are your jam, this is certainly worth a shot. You can pick it up pretty easily over on Steam.
