SpellForce 3: Fallen God
Grimlore Games / THQ Nordic
Before stumbling across Spellforce 3 randomly, I’d never heard of the Spellforce series before. Being a real-time strategy geek, this third offering really caught my eye—with its gorgeous graphics and interesting lore.
It has been almost 3 years since SpellForce 3 debuted back in December of 2017 and in all of that time, its developer Grimlore Games and their publisher, THQ Nordic, still doesn’t seem to be keen on marketing it, for some odd reason. It’s got everything an RTS-lover would love, at least those who appreciate old-school RTS games.
To frame things on a macro scale, RTS games have undergone a bizarre transformation over the last decade or so. Whereas most RTS titles used to feature many different factions, these days you’re lucky if you get 3 or 4. And the base building aspect that was such a prominent fixture of classic RTS games has gone away—apparently in a bid to please the kiddie MOBA masses and other casuals.
SpellForce 3 took things back to the days of yore. Its second standalone release, titled: SpellForce 3: Fallen God, features full-on base building and a variety of interesting races for you to play as within its RTS component. What’s even more intriguing about this series is that it combines both an RPG campaign (such as with the Baldur’s Gate series) along with its aforementioned RTS side. Amazingly, Grimlore manages to tackle both genres with equal skill.
SpellForce 3: Fallen God introduces trolls into the mix. They join the other five races that are already present in the game, including the humans, elves, orcs, dark elves, and dwarfs, and compliment the lineup quite nicely.
The trolls’ campaign is as interesting as it is fun to play. You play as a troll leader who is in charge of leading your tribe to salvation, after a life of being mercilessly hunted down. Your only way out of this wanted life is to bring back a fallen god, which is at the core of the RPG experience within the game. The troll’s culture gets explored, bringing a narrative richness to the RTS portion of the game.
And although the trolls are front and center in the RPG campaign portion of SpellForce 3: Fallen God, the RTS mechanics are even more diverse, letting you gather resources, build up bases, and construct/recruit units for your armies. Just as with the wizards, knights, and archers already in the game, troll units can be upgraded through battle in an RPG-game fashion.
As mentioned, SpellForce 3 is absolutely stunning to look at—even 3 years on. Seeing waterfalls cascade downward and colorful birds fly around in fully 3D environments is something that I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of. The diversity of buildings among the factions, as well as the varied environments, is also a sight to see.
The only thing I could hope for at this point with SpellForce 3 is that Grimlore could release some more factions. I’d love to see some of the ones from their older games, such as barbarians, undead, and the like. Until then, there is plenty of old-school RTS goodness here to keep me satisfied.
RATING: 8.7/10
SpellForce 3: Fallen God has some pretty good looking graphics that make its RTS/RPG gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:
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