SpellForce – The Order of Dawn was an interesting mix of a real-time strategy title and a role-playing game, with the compelling emphasis being the role-playing elements, leaving the strategy as little more than window dressing. To be sure, I clocked in several hours as a commander, pumping out soldiers, raising towers, and mining resources. The problem wasn’t in its mixture within the game; it was the fact that it felt like a WarCraft II knock-off from 1997, with the notable distinction of being exceedingly difficult and often very pastel.

Two years and several expansion packs later, the series is back in a full-fledged sequel, SpellForce 2 – Shadow Wars. The latest title picks up with the dark elves embroiled in a civil war that is being stoked by the Shadows. Nightsong, daughter of the last holdout General, Craig Un'Shallach, escapes to warn the Shaikans and the armies of the Light. You play the role of a Shaikan, a people who are disgraced and shunned due to the treachery of the race’s founder Malacay, a malicious man who took the blood of a dragon as his own. With the blood of the dragon, you can resurrect the dead, bringing them back to life again within a certain time limit if they are slain in battle. You seek to put an end to your people’s troubled past by setting things right with former allies, while protecting the mother dragon Ur and denying the voice of your lineage’s bloodlust. You set out with Nightsong, and as your homeland is in the Shadow and Dark Elves’ sights, you race to forge the alliance that is desperately needed.

The original SpellForce was one of those games that you enjoy playing but for which you also create a list of what needs to be tweaked for the sequel to deliver on the series’ potential. The foundation for Shadow Wars was solid, with the role-playing and real-time strategy mixture fitting together quite well. The role-playing elements worked extremely well, the maps were large enough and contained enough side quests that it felt like a single-player adventure and then like a party-based title whenever more heroes joined your mission. The numerous costume pieces, weapons, spells and combat techniques really gave the game some legs. The only thing that was needed was for your character to have a little more personality. Unfortunately, the strategy portion didn’t fare nearly as well, though it gelled with the role-playing elements about as well as hybrid titles of the past. It quickly devolved into manning as many defenses as possible and pumping out units to act as expensive bodyguards for your heroes. Shadows Wars stays the course by offering you a large game with quests, loot, and armies to command, but does very little to rectify the shortcomings of its predecessor.

Two years has brought a little more personality, slightly less difficulty, and little else in the way of innovation and improvement. Full voice-overs give the characters more personality, as do the various conversation options, but the responses really don’t lend themselves to letting you play the game as a good or bad character, nor does what you say have any impact on others’ behavior towards you. One side effect of your character having a voice is that you are no longer the character, as in the original, but simply the pilot for the avatar. That will be a minor point for most people, but it pulled me out the game a little.  The main character was certainly given more personality, but I was hoping for a more open Balder’s Gate style of interaction instead of the more focused approach. Characters also have unique physical appearances thanks to purchasable and dropped armor and weapons; granted, the major differences come in the form of stats and not appearance, since there are only a handful of designs for items in each category (sword, armor, hat, etc.), but they do a good job of spicing things up a bit.

The difficulty remains elevated as well. It’s only slightly less in that the real challenge comes later on in Shadow Wars than it did in The Order of Dawn, but it’s still definitely there. When it hits, it hits hard. Since the strategy portion is an inelegant affair, the problems arise whenever your town is rushed by waves of enemies, leaving you to build up defenses and prepare for the counterattack. In most strategy games, there is more to it than that, but not here. There are only a handful of unit types – footsoldiers, archers, mages, cavalry – with very few that are actually unique such as the Elves’ healer, so fighting is basically cranking out the toughest units possible and sending them to rush. If you have enough resources stored up, you can summon a massive titan unit that serves as an impressive piece of eye candy and a tool to dispense some sweet revenge. The more frustrating moments come when the levels are so unforgiving that they need to be played in a puzzle-like style, doing certain things at certain times, with almost no room for error. It’s just too barebones for what it wants to be, however fitting it might be for the general player’s purposes.

The maps are also as large and maze-like as ever. The only change is that, instead of picking up side quests from random people about the gameworld, you’ll get them from people in confined areas, either in sections within a town or from a few people in a caravan. In the original, there would be random people or things needing assistance. Having these random bits spread out made the large maps seem more feasible, like a more natural world, but the trade-off was that there was even more running around than usual. The large maps in Shadow Wars are confusing, and take a very long time to traverse, carrying the fine “hoofin’ it” tradition over from its predecessor. There are stones set up along the way that are used for teleportation, but the names aren’t permanently shown – once reached, they activate and have their name mentioned, but in order to travel to one, you’re left to click on an island in the world map and then selecting the stone you think best describes where you want to go – it may not be as a big of a problem as it sounds, but is cumbersome nonetheless. Even with the teleportation stones and the ability to summon the other heroes to your main character, the game still manages to make you run way too much. While you can get a bunch of quests in one area, and often finish them in one area (hell, sometimes I was finishing quests that seemed to just start or I had no clear recollection that I was involved in), saving you some time, the downside is that the large maps now feel superficial and unnecessarily bloated.

The strongest portion is undoubtedly the role-playing segment. One moment, the game is like Warlords: Battlecry, and the next, it feels like Icewind Dale, albeit slightly simplified. That being said, the overall experience is a good one. You slowly add party members by saving them through your blood, thereby linking them to you, often in very let’s-just-toss-him-in-here ways. As you level up, so do the other heroes, though they are always a few levels behind. Character advancement involves melee and magic, with those broken down further (re: light arms or heavy arms, etc.), with each level giving one point to allocate, and every 3 points in a certain skill allows access to the next skill set. Since the game is so stingy with the points, it takes a while to become the sort of dominating character that most go for, but thanks to the other heroes automatically focusing on whatever they are more suited to, you can see what abilities you might want, or hold off on and use through the other characters. The player has a set amount of spells and moves they can allocate to their spell bar, which, like the other heroes, can be set to be automatically allocated with each level increase, but since the other heroes only have 3 slots I found the manual way necessary to make ensure that we had the proper mix of offensive and defensive capabilities.

Throughout the journey, I ran across a number of glitches. One particularly jolting one was when the sound would switch music tracks for a second, causing a rise in volume and a screeching noise when it switched back to the original, correct track. I also had a certain hero (Bor, I’m looking at you) that had to constantly be told when to attack, despite the fact that he serves as the group’s fighter and whose sole reason was to get in the fight and mix it up; otherwise he would just stand around while his allies were being tossed around by orcs, shadows, elves, and whatever else he didn’t feel like fighting. The fog of war routinely failed to dissipate when I entered a new area as well, always lagging one or more seconds behind.  A lag in fog of war may not sound like a big deal, but when your army and heroes can die pretty quickly and those few seconds can result in having to reload a previous save. Also, since the action can get very hectic, I found it almost impossible to do enemy-specific attacks, due to a mass of enemies and allies running in and around each other, which would’ve made the ability to issue orders during pause a huge plus.

Overall: 7/10

Really, not much has changed since The Order of Dawn. The graphics are better, there are voice-overs, and the music is about the same, which isn’t a bad thing. On the other hand, the real-time strategy portions are still rudimentary, there’s still a lot of running around, the difficulty still can get ridiculous, and the role-playing element is the strongest portion. Much like the original, it’s a competent title that provides a lengthy, enjoyable experience. They didn’t mess anything up, but all the same it’s a shame that it’s not better; they had a great head start.