SpellForce 3, despite not being very deep, makes an excellent fusion of RPG and RTS, becoming one of the best PC games of the year.

As an RPG, SF3 is a solid game with an interesting over-arching story, believable characters, a lot of lore and deep systems. As an RTS, it is a unique if at times frustrating tactical game focused on a clever use of limited number of resources and building a working infrastructure. While each one of its parts might not hold out against a “pure” game of respective genre, the mix makes the game something uniquely fulfilling.

I’m a pretty big fan of RTS and certainly a big fan of RPG’s, I love being able to dig into a character and forge them the way I would like. Spellforce 3 does a good job of mashing those two genres together and the result is a pretty decent campaign that should have you entertained for quite some time. A little bit of this and a little bit of that, in just the right doses and you get a great game that stands above the sum of it’s parts.

SpellForce 3 is a good strategy RPG. It isn’t very deep, but it’s addictive and a lot of fun.

If you're willing to think of the prefab fantasy setting as comfortingly familiar, Spellforce 3 is a pretty fun. The voice acting is terrific, and the plot easy to understand without requiring weeks of learning why THESE giant wolves are different to other games' giant wolves. Whether this familiarity is a brave counterpoint to the endless setting creep of gaming is really a matter of personal taste. And if you're looking for a fantasy RPG/RTS hybrid, this is a promising contender. However, by trying to do two things at once, it fails to be really remarkable at either.

While both the RPG and RTS elements presented here stay true to form, the overall game is more than the sum of its parts because of how it makes such disparate concepts serve the goal of creating a militaristic role-playing epic.

Unfortunately, Spellforce doesn’t qualify to be neither titular nor spiritual successor of the series. It’s made by different people, on a different budget, and let’s be fair – the times are different too. [Issue#226, p.52]