SpellForce 3

 PC
User Score
7.5

Generally favorable reviews- based on 187 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 126 out of 187
  2. Mixed: 32 out of 187
  3. Negative: 29 out of 187
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  1. Haveaseatson
    Dec 18, 2017
    3
    This game will lure you in with it's pretty graphics and generally great sound track, if you stick along for the ride you will however eventually be beaten in to submission through the absolutely unforgiveable amount of game breaking bugs, bland game play, and awful balancing.

    The RTS and RPG components are both weak, shallow, husks of what they claim to be, for example, almost every    This game will lure you in with it's pretty graphics and generally great sound track, if you stick along for the ride you will however eventually be beaten in to submission through the absolutely unforgiveable amount of game breaking bugs, bland game play, and awful balancing.

    The RTS and RPG components are both weak, shallow, husks of what they claim to be, for example, almost every time you are given a base and attempt to settle in for a round of RTS fun you will quickly realize that the quickest and easiest path to victory is to simply select your 4 heroes and run to the enemy base and kill everything and their town, you can do this because of the terrible balancing, heroes can demolish entire armies with easy while trainable units are very weak, are expensive, and die easily, and are basically just a giant chore to build and command.

    The RPG side of things are equally as bad, at first you will have fun collecting loot and building your heroes up but eventually you will find that almost all items are the same and you are just running around doing pointless busy work with no pay off, the skill trees are simple and short and skills are boring.

    The way the story is presented is boring and I found myself just mashing the space bar to skip the endless yawn-fest dialogue bombardment.

    The game is a massive disappointment and you can easily see that It could have been a masterpiece if the mechanics were fleshed out with a bit more thought, and the game was actually play tested prior to release to get rid of all the bugs.    … Expand
  2. Lordgrey
    Dec 12, 2017
    3
    Its too bugged, too simplified, too casual, camera is ugly, just a few heroes spells and have no any individuality in game races. Any way you still can play it and have some fun, but it didnt worth 50$, it more compare to 15-20$ indie project
  3. razordaman
    Jan 1, 2020
    1
    The game is awful. You can barely control you characters and everything seems to be going at light speed. This isn't a good RTS or RPG games. The graphics look good but the rest is garbage
  4. jonnyvix
    May 29, 2021
    0
    The game is as good as poorly explained in all its mechanics. You often end up clueless just because you mis-clicked a 16x16 pixel rock somewhere. If you're willing to put the time, there's a gem somewhere buried in the dirt. If not, well, it's on gamepass.
  5. guinevere2
    Dec 9, 2017
    2
    Beautiful on the outside, ugly inside. This game has terrible controls, Imagine playing Pillars of Eternity or Baldur's Gate but controlling not 6 but 60 units with no possibility of pause at all to issue commands. Total chaos and zerg are the only strategy here, no chance for any tactical approach whatsoever. On top of that the beautiful graphic is totally misplaced - very often treesBeautiful on the outside, ugly inside. This game has terrible controls, Imagine playing Pillars of Eternity or Baldur's Gate but controlling not 6 but 60 units with no possibility of pause at all to issue commands. Total chaos and zerg are the only strategy here, no chance for any tactical approach whatsoever. On top of that the beautiful graphic is totally misplaced - very often trees and building simply obscure the units and heroes, and the details of the units and environment are not visible outside close zoom anyway. Also heroes are premade and one cannot customize them the way it was possible in previous games. Disappointment of the year for me, just next to DOW III.… Expand
  6. Yosa
    Dec 14, 2017
    2
    The developers spent there time devoted to scenery and little beyond that, there is a story an RTS element and an RPG aspect but all are fleshed out in a bland and tedious(sometimes asinine) manner.

    Story- is your general dialog driven slog with no interesting angles to explore, no relevant dialog options and no tie ins to dialog checks for different outcomes that you may see in other    The developers spent there time devoted to scenery and little beyond that, there is a story an RTS element and an RPG aspect but all are fleshed out in a bland and tedious(sometimes asinine) manner.

    Story- is your general dialog driven slog with no interesting angles to explore, no relevant dialog options and no tie ins to dialog checks for different outcomes that you may see in other games, it is linear and poorly done; the characters are lifeless and npcs are only thereto drive the next piece of dialog forward rather than provide any depth to the game.

    RTS- This is just ridiculous in every way.
    - AI does its normal infinite resources spam units at your base style rush that it acquires at a remarkably fast pace, tying you to your defense points rather being able to focus on base and expansion.
    -Base Building, HQ starts in a predefined spot giving you little choice of where it is best to set up, the build areas are blocked at every angle by a mess of map assets, roads and other unusable terrain making choice of placement impossible. There is a limited worker system in place instead of letting you build a work force, artificially forcing you to juggle which resources to focus on; your supplies are not centralized and when an outpost is lacking it prompts worker carts to start supply runs pulling from one outpost and moving around the chain of linked outpost, its tedious and time consuming and does not balance at all with the AI ability to forgo all that and just spam rush your base. Defense towers are not very defensible and again are manned by your workers making them limited, if you can place them properly at all.

    RPG- I really despise the way character building is done in this game, it is very limited and seems like a half baked job. There are skill sets, stats and gear as is with many RPG types.
    You will have little choice in the skill sets you acquire on you main, other heroes come predefined,
    of those skills many seem redundant or useless , most are combat oriented and will provide no lateral game play, timers on timed skills are pitifully thought out; instead of a tool bar and hotkeys, each hero will get only 3 slots to put skills onto for use, this includes persistent aura skills(but not passive skills), the whole skill system misses the mark and is a let down.
    Stats are required to equip better gear and are responsible for enhancing the damage of different stat based weapons,except intelligence, all intelligence does is enhance certain spells. Stats cap at 10(not including gear). Con increases life, Will increases focus, that's about it.
    Gear is absurdly bland, you will find countless stashes and acquire dozens of weapons and armor in the first few maps only to see they are much the same things. Because most of your weapon damage is tied to stats it makes much of what you find irrelevant, it will also for the most part make shops irrelevant. As for rare gear and items, they provide better bonuses but are largely as irrelevant.

    Bugs- There are many campaign and game breaking bugs among the slew of minor ones.one the annoyed me but didn't wreck the game to that point. I had done a quest sequence out of order, after I had beaten the map, I went to another area to perform a quest that was gotten during the map, upon returning to the previous map, the world map was locked because the present map was in RTS mode; locking the world map in RTS mode is a bad mechanic as it is.
    The game breaker for me was returning to the refuge camp and been given a quest to free the villagers, which were located inside the enemy town, the town had locked gates at all entrances which I could not attack because they were flagged as friendly and there is no force attack option, quest incompleteable, game over.
    There are a myriad of other game breaking bugs and quest problems on the forums to add to my experience that seem like they should have passed testing, if there was proper beta testing and not that early access bug reporting that so many companies do now.

    This game has some bad game mechanics and equally bad design choices, I found myself using my hero party to beat the maps before I trigger the RTS parts because I hated the AI and base placement limitations, there is no real gear progression, the character progression is limited and the skill and stat systems are shallow. In all I consider the story and game play a slog and am largely disappointed, could have done with out the breakable quests as well.    … Expand
  7. Askkosh
    Dec 7, 2017
    3
    Spellforce III : the Spell-weak game.
    This game is a Spellforce lookalike. Do you consider naming Spellforce a game when a hero can only use 3 spells ? When each school of magic is about a couple of spells ?
    RTS and RPG: a little bit of each, enough to write RTS/RPg on their advertising. Where are are the Spellforce I skill trees ? Where are the Spellforce II resources ? It's like    Spellforce III : the Spell-weak game.
    This game is a Spellforce lookalike. Do you consider naming Spellforce a game when a hero can only use 3 spells ? When each school of magic is about a couple of spells ?
    RTS and RPG: a little bit of each, enough to write RTS/RPg on their advertising. Where are are the Spellforce I skill trees ? Where are the Spellforce II resources ?
    It's like putting the worst of two games to make another one. A clever idea : put the BEST in the next...
    Waiting for Spellforce IV.    … Expand
  8. CesarV
    Dec 2, 2020
    0
    A huge disappointment compared to spellforce 1 and 2.

    It's a shame they couldn't simply copy the old games, and chose instead to make a broken version of dawn of war.

    Why can't these devs have their own ideas and chose instead to steal ideas from others? Even the trolls expansion is a blatant copy from battle realms.
  9. AthanasiosT
    Apr 8, 2020
    3
    If you haven't played Spellforce I or II, it's an ok game. If you have previous Spellforce experience, stay away from it. Where to begin? The graphics are good, but the units are often hidden by trees or grass. The treasure chests are too small. The camera awkward to control. The angle of view too steep. The AI is sometimes stupid (I have seen soldiers standing, while a building next toIf you haven't played Spellforce I or II, it's an ok game. If you have previous Spellforce experience, stay away from it. Where to begin? The graphics are good, but the units are often hidden by trees or grass. The treasure chests are too small. The camera awkward to control. The angle of view too steep. The AI is sometimes stupid (I have seen soldiers standing, while a building next to them was under attack). It requires too much micromanagement. The RPG element is downgraded (too short ability trees). Building placement is problematic (I've been trying to turn and place a barracks in a field for far too long). Occasional bug threw me out of game. Too long loading time. Etc,etc. Really disappointed by it… Expand
  10. Zuntullah
    May 5, 2022
    0
    This is one of the worst RTS games I have ever played, and I am nearly 40 years old.

    It is plain frustrating getting rushed from 3 different directions every 2 minutes non-stop, while you are trying to expand your base. Defense buildings don't work, your normal units are very squish and die right away. Somehow enemy main building regenerates faster than a troll, so taking it down    This is one of the worst RTS games I have ever played, and I am nearly 40 years old.

    It is plain frustrating getting rushed from 3 different directions every 2 minutes non-stop, while you are trying to expand your base.

    Defense buildings don't work, your normal units are very squish and die right away. Somehow enemy main building regenerates faster than a troll, so taking it down also takes quite a bit of time.

    These is no saving this game, hopefully the dev studio does not come up with any other RTS games in future, because they definitely suck at it.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

70
#70 Most Discussed PC Game of 2017
44
#44 Most Shared PC Game of 2017

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
73

Mixed or average reviews - based on 37 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 16 out of 37
  2. Mixed: 21 out of 37
  3. Negative: 0 out of 37
  1. GameStar
    May 27, 2018
    77
    Successful mix of RTS and RPG on the path of recovery - but still not completely without bugs.
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  2. GameGrin
    May 7, 2018
    75
    Spellforce 3 is an ambitious game that manages to blend fun RTS segments with traditional isometric dungeon exploration in a neat RPG package.
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  3. GameOver.gr
    Mar 17, 2018
    75
    Spellforce 3 mixes two beloved genres, RPGs and RTSs, and even though it does not excel in either gameplay branch it succeeds in delivering a solid, fresh and unique experience. Through a solid story and world building it gives the opportunity for our hero to actually take part in battles in contrast with traditional RPGs, where he is only a spectator.
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