Coming to PlayStation and Xbox consoles on June 7th, Spellforce III Reforced is a chance to play a classic 2017 RTS/RPG hybrid in a new and improved form. Reworked controls for gamepads, an enhanced campaign and improved co-op features are just the headlines in Grimlore Games’ definitive version of the game, so let’s dive into the details.
A unique RTS-RPG hybrid
Spellforce III combines the deep character development and rich storytelling of classic isometric RPGs with RTS elements like base-building and huge battles with dozens of units onscreen.
You’re tooling up your party, getting into their special abilities and dividing up the loot from battle to suit every character’s strengths. The newly enhanced campaign is totally story-driven and voice-acted throughout, drawing you into a world beset by plague and warring factions.
But you’re also in charge of carefully laying out your base of operations in a level, expanding your territory by capturing new sectors of the map and harvesting resources from them to unlock higher level buildings and increase your population limit.
It’s an unusual blend of storytelling and strategy that lets you amass your own huge army and send it into epic battles, and never without a strong narrative grounding.
Controls designed for a gamepad
Spellforce III Reforced has built a control system perfectly suited for new-gen console gamepads, keeping the strategic action flowing without getting you lost in menus. Crucially, it’s also really simple.
Moving the left stick around controls the camera, and moving the right stick up or down zooms in or out. Selecting units and issuing orders are both handled on the face buttons, and you can simply hold the select button to draw out an expanding circle to highlight more units.
Meanwhile, all the important specific commands live in the radial menus, which are contextual to where your cursor’s placed and give you the power to do everything from constructing buildings to leading armies into the fray.
It’s all customisable, so if you’d prefer to swap around the selection and issue order buttons, for example, you only need to dip into the commands menu and make that mapping change.
Character development
The RPG elements go just as deep as Spellforce III Reforced’s RTS components, and you get a strong sense of it in the game’s character development. As you progress through the epic 30+ hour campaign, you take real ownership of each member in your party, levelling them up through class-based upgrade trees with massive variety in build types.
Having a full party at your disposal gives you the chance to experiment with different combinations of builds, like a mage with AoE spells for crowd control flanked by a healer, a tank, and a DPS build. Or four tanks, just soaking up the pain and swatting through hordes of enemies. Or a combo of archers and mages, using status effects like stuns to pacify enemies then take them out at range using archery.
These aren’t decisions to lose sleep over, though - you can always use a restart potion to build a character up again from scratch in a different direction.
In addition to having control over your party’s stats and abilities, you’re also sculpting their appearance, picking between a huge amount of visual customisation options to make them feel yours.
A deep narrative to explore alone or in co-op
Spellforce 3: Reforced takes place in a traditional fantasy world where humans, elves and orcs vy for dominion, and where a mysterious plague known as the Bloodburn is killing non-mages. Corporal Tahar and his party must choose their allegiances carefully, clear their names in the face of murderous accusations, and uncover the magical root cause of the Bloodburn.
The world of Eo where this all takes place is stuffed full of interesting characters to chat to, where even incidental conversations fill in the details of the world and the lives of its inhabitants.
Savour the narrative details at your own pace, or take on the whole game in co-op with your mates occupying each party slot.
Spellforce III Reforced is available on PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and Steam from June 7th.