Rating: 
Summary: Two thumbs up!
Review:
A mix of Warcraft, Diablo, and Never Winter Nights.
Hard to believe they were able to put these types of games together, but they did just that and very succesfully. If you enjoyed playing such games then you will love Spellforce. It has the settlement building with troop summoning/upgrading and resourse requirment features as in WC, the Diablo type of hero leveling, abilities, portals, towns, merchants and items, as well as a very NWN story feel and interaction with choices in quests and subquests.
Very little negative can I say about the game, however the voices of characters met along the way sound like theyre reading their lines. Its such poor "voice-acting" that its difficult to get into the story.
Another thing I didnt like was when I went back to previous completed map areas via portal, I had to sit through the movie clips of the level all over again with no way to bypass.
Besides that its great and will keep you busy for days.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice idea, but REALLY confusing interface
Review: Admittedly, I just installed it about two hours ago, but my first impressions are:
1) Long time to install. It took about a half an hour to completely install on my laptop (and it's a fairly new laptop, and has plenty of HD space, ram, etc.).
2) Really counter-intuitive interface. I've played many RPG and RTS games, and this one's interface is just kicking my butt.
3) The tutorial takes FOREVER. It's making me a little worried about moving into the real game; I don't want to get into it, and find out that it's just an impossibly complex game. I bought this to relax with, and I suspect that it's going to take a degree in Computer Science to get into it.
I'm hoping that these are just initial minor bobbles on the road to fun. From the other reviews, that might be the case. I concur with the bad voice acting, and some of the minor details (such as referring to the Menu button as Options during the tutorial) are just that, minor details.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Hybrid of Strategy and Roleplaying!
Review: As a fan of both Real Time Strategy (RTS) and Role Playing Games (RPG's), I was immediately drawn to the concept of Spellforce: The Order of Dawn. I've not been disappointed. The RTS side of the game is challenging, but not frustrating. As for the RPG aspect, it's very engaging. It's not quite as in-depth as an actual RPG - the story is linear, quests have generally one solution - it's still very fulfilling. The graphics in this game are phenomenal. Something fresh that the developer, Phenomic, did was add the ability to go into 3D, first-person view. Most of the time you want to keep the game zoomed out into the standard RTS isometric view, but sometimes it's awesome to just look at the buildings or units up close. The music in the game is fantastic. It's very appropriate for the genre, and it moves from beautiful to haunting to menacing and back again. All dialog is voiced and has sub-titles, which is nice. Most of the voice acting is decent, some of it's great, but every so often, about 15% of the time, you get some that's just ludicrous. Thankfully, those characters are generally the ones you only have to talk to once or twice *whew* As for value - I've been playing the game for about a week straight, probably about 40 hours so far, and I'm only about 1/3 of the way through. I can also see replaying the game in about 3-6 months to try different types of avatars. In conclusion, this is a wonderful game. It's fun, it's gorgeous, and it's innovative. Give this game a try (there's a demo available) but if you like RTS and RPG's, you'll love it!
Rating: 
Summary: Won't run
Review: Before you buy this game, I'd recommend you read through the Forum for Spellforce and see just how many people are having problems with it not running. My system exceeds the requirements and I even have an nVidia card, but it won't run. I tried downloading the 29Meg patch and it gives an error and closes so fast I can't even see what the error is. Very poor quality software in my opinion to have this many people being unable to use it.
Rating: 
Summary: Best game in 2003!
Review: Great graphics, great gameplay, can`t stop playing, I love it!
Rating:
Summary: Empire building meets RPG
Review: I bought this game recenty and I have to say, I'm addicted. True that the battle system leaves a little to be desired butI personally throroughly enjoy building little hamlets for troops, and wandering around finding lost chests, creatures carrying items and generally enjoying the rpg story line, the main plot is straightforward and engaging, the sidequests are fun and intriguing. over all it's got marvelous graphics, decent voice overs, you have to give kudo's to any game that gives sound to every single sentence the character's speak, excellent character customability, and hours worth of good old fashion goblin bashing. my only gripes with the game is your character is human, no choosing race there, and you have to build towns to get troops. don't get me wrong, i love empire building games, i'm just not used to doing it and an rpg at the same time.it's just..odd. but over all i love the game and forsee many many more hours of fun game play.
Rating:
Summary: Good gamebut No Support for Tech Problems
Review: I found that the combination of RPG/RTS was interesting but the game is buggy. After installation and uploading of lots of patches it still is graphicly jerky and reduntent in the "teleporting". Loads slow as well. Do not look to get quick tech support or answers. Best source is the Forum, if not a posted problem you can get an answer in a week or so.
Rating:
Summary: A good RPG though a bad strategic game
Review: I'm a huge fan of both RPG and strategy games. When I saw that there was a game that combined the two I was excited. This game really is decent. It even had potential to be even better though. As an RPG it is fairly straight forward. You can choose certain paths, but there aren't any consequences, other than missing out on side quests, for either not talking to or choosing different options in conversations. Fairly idiot proof as the main quest goes. Go and talk to this person and then that person and you're done. As a strategy however it is lacking. You can command your units to go here and there and even attack along the way. Other than that there are no further unit commands. Your healers and mages will rush into battle as though they're swordsman. Your archers actually hang back and for the most part just pick people off until they're physically attacked. The only unit command that you have is 'Hold'. This works great for your healers and mages until the stream of enemies keeps drawing your fighting units deeper into their territory taking them from the healing range of your healers. To make this game truly awesome they really need to incorporate some kind of unit behavior options so that you don't have to constantly tell your healers and mages to back off from physical combat. I'd also like to see some variation in the RPG path that you can go down rather than just side quests. All in all the game IS worth playing though I'd wait for the price to come down to ~$30.
Rating:
Summary: Truely a force to be reckoned with for fans of RTS and RPG's
Review: If you enjoy RTS games and are looking for something with some depth- or if you are an RPG fan who digs strategy- or even if you're just a fan of GOOD games, you will have a blast with SpellForce. Every aspect of the game feels well polished and finely tuned, and the design and balance work is evident. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up; Just in time for the holiday wish list, too!
Rating:
Summary: System problems incorrect on other reviews.
Review: If you've read the spellforce forums or technical FAQ, you'd know that the most current ATI Catalyst software addresses the all the current known problems. I'm running this with a Radeon 9700 and it works like a charm. The only problem I had with it was before I updated to the newest Catalyst (ATI's video driver package).
http://ati.com/support/driver.html
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