I’d have to begin by admitting I’m not terribly proficient at RTS titles, with a slight disclaimer: be they troops, vehicular units, or mythical entities summoned from beyond the dawn of time, the little buggers never seem apply my brilliant Sun-Tzu-esque strategies as I envision them. Chalk it up to my opinion of how war should work differing with those of developers who eat and breathe games of Risk, and you might understand why I don’t complain overly much. However, I do have a penchant for armies of minions doing my bidding and I do enjoy RPG elements in a game, which is why I was quite interested in the release of Phenomic’s SpellForce, an RPG/RTS hybrid. To a large extent my interest was rewarded, with a compelling, rich world, full of history of details, heroes and villains. To a lesser extent I have to admit that to fit both RTS and RPG elements in a single game, Phenomic had to lose elements of both gameplay styles. Whether or not the tradeoff was worth the end result is a question only the individual can answer.

The story begins with the player cast in the role of a liberated Rune Slave, warriors cursed with immortality whose souls are contained in rune stones, which force them to serve whosoever holds these stones. With this liberation your character is given free will, along with the ability to acquire and command other rune slaves from monuments, which come in two flavors: worker and hero monuments. This somewhat ironic slave-induced slavery is unfortunately never addressed or commented upon in the game, which might have made for an interesting ongoing moral dilemma. Regardless, with this ability you can command basic workers to build bases, produce armies, research upgrades, and raze all the natural resources in sight. These armies will be the key to clearing the path to your ever-present next goal, as the game world of SpellForce is in that ever-present state of Crucial Moments that seem to infest any game where the protagonist swings a sword.

The RTS side of the game is a fairly common one, with some new twists: units and buildings are discovered not through research, but rather through the acquisition of blueprints, which are available as looted goods, rewards for successful missions, or purchases with any number of merchants scattered across the world. In this manner, a frugal player who regularly checks in with the local mercantile can acquire certain blueprints earlier in the game, leading for more efficient resource management, advanced units, or higher level minions. The level of one’s units is determined by the level of their basic worker rune stone: a level one worker stone will produce level one warriors, and so forth. By acquiring higher level stones, a formerly insurmountable battle can often become surprisingly simplistic. However, the player’s ability to insert rune stones into his or her rune board, which controls what races and heroes the player can call upon, is determined by the level of one’s avatar. This is where the RPG element of the game becomes something of a lynchpin.

The player character is essentially the only constant in the game, as various heroes, worker races, and allies fall by the wayside. This character can be customized to a great extent over the progression of levels, becoming a mighty warrior, a powerful magician, or any imaginable combination between the two extremes. With each level, the player is given the ability to increase their base attribute statistics, which can further be enhanced with enchanted gear; these statistics determine not only one’s proficiency in battle but also what skills they can acquire. The player is also given skill points, which can be used to enhance current traits, or to purchase new ones. However, it is worth reciting the old adage that the jack of all trades is the master of none, and this is no less true in SpellForce. A player who has not focused on a specific play-type early in the game may find they are unable to defeat certain enemies in later in the game, where the difficulty begins to ramp up significantly. The play-types in question would be the aforementioned warriors or magicians, but within these general classes there are further definitions, such as heavy armament versus light, and within that blunt, bladed, and piercing weaponry. In the same respect the player can choose to focus on white, black, elemental or mentalist magic, with each field further divvied up beyond that point. This can be somewhat overwhelming at times and unfortunately cannot be corrected later in the game, short of using some kind of character editor.

While the primary character is the only rune slave who stays constant throughout the game, one can also acquire hero runes, pre-created characters whom can be a powerful aid in battle, particularly on missions where one does not have access to a worker monument. These heroes can fall into any class and as such, the player may want to hold onto any gear they come across, even if they have no personal use for their character type. It is somewhat embarrassing after all, to receive a high level elementalist after you’ve just sold off your entire stock of spell scrolls in order to buy armor and blades for your mid-level warriors. As mentioned above certain levels do not have monuments which allow you to summon workers, which leaves the player to rely on rune slave heroes and NPC allies, which are few and far between. These parts of the game are typically more story-driven, but can still easily include some rather intense and occasionally overwhelming battles during the lengthy course of the game.

The graphics engine, while not overtly impressive in the close-up, third person perspective, is quite robust and performs nicely on mid to high level systems, with anywhere from forty to eighty units waging war and displaying effects with negligible slowdown. The battlefields portrayed range from lush forests to craggy mountains, blasted wastelands to murky swamplands. Fire, smoke, and spell effects are all quite pleasing to the eye, with a diverse cast of enemies and allies. Adversely, while the soundtrack is generally suitable and pleasing the voice acting ranges from painful to mostly tolerable, with a few above average performances standing out in a mass of truly cringe-worthy deliveries. This is further exacerbated by the tendency of characters to constantly shout out rallying battle cries, warning imminent downfall, their thoughts on the geopolitical situation, and what they had for breakfast that morning.

Returning to the RTS side of things, one of the elements players may find compelling is the ability to control and create armies comprised of six different base races: humans, elves, dwarves, all on the sight of light, with orcs, trolls, and dark elves on the side of dark. While one may have only one side or the other present on the playing field at any given time, as they don’t tend to cohabitate nicely, all three races may be present as long as the player has access to their worker monument. Although the race scheme is somewhat reminiscent of the Warcraft franchise, a few noticeable changes are fairly obvious. Foremost, the trolls are akin to the traditional European myth of enormous, lumbering, stone-skinned giants, whereas the dark elf workers bear more of a resemblance to cave fish or gray aliens than anything traditionally pointy-eared and angst-ridden.

While the RTS elements are somewhat dumbed down from typical fare, and the RPG elements are thinly stretched at times, SpellForce is making the future of hybrid genre games look very positive indeed, living proof that this is a viable outlet of game design which is slowly coming into its own. The end result, while not being a timeless, flawless classic, is a title that decidedly deserves the attention of enthusiasts of either genre, and may well be an important early milestone in the field of hybrid games of this type. As a final note the expansion for this title is already in the works, so for players who enjoy the game, they will hopefully have much more to look forward to in the coming months.