Reviewed by: DNM
Developer: Phenomic
Publisher: JoWood

One of the surprise hits of 2003 was 'SpellForce: Order of Dawn', which went on to spawn two excellent expansions taking an already massive game to gargantuan size! The game managed to blend traditional RTS style play with RPG driven story elements. It did it rather well too. It had its drawbacks though, horrible load times, frighteningly poor voice acting and larger battles absolutely crucified the CPU, but it was never enough to deter or to hinder. Phenomic have now bestowed 'SpellForce 2: Shadow Wars' upon us, and with my expectations ludicrously high I once again entered the world of SpellForce.

It's very hard not to draw comparisons between the sequel and the original game, but when a game has had such an effect on one and genuinely is a candidate for game of all-time, it is tough not to! Okay, let's put this simply, SpellForce 2 is essentially more of the same but refined. The most obvious improvement is the load times, no longer necessitating making a cup of tea, putting a wash on, popping to the co-op to buy some milk and then maybe play the game if its ready! You think I'm joking; players of the original will be nodding their heads right now. Now we're up and in the game in just under half a minute. You can choose to play the game in all its intended glory in 'Campaign' mode, which also houses the tutorial for those unfamiliar with the game. Alternatively you can choose to jump into battle mode for a quick fix battle, and of course you have multiplayer over a local network or internet. Interestingly the latter allows for up to three players to play the game co-operatively online! Not tried this out at the time of writing, but rest assured I will be giving this a go.

Campaign mode begins with the character creation screen, which like its predecessor is very limited in how your male or female avatar will look. There then follows a wonderful cinematic showing the battle of the Dark Elves versus the menacing Shadows. It seems though that the Dark Elves are allying with the Shadows, and when Dark Elf general Craig Un'Shallach gets wind of this he sends his daughter Nightsong away to warn other races of the impending evil that is growing. This is where the game begins with Nightsong barely alive being rescued from the dead by the main character you control, a Shaikan, legendary dragon warriors who are able to resurrect the recently deceased. That's enough of the story, you've heard it time and time again; evildoers want to ravage the lands and make them black as the night with hell-fire, and the good people simply don't want any of it thank you very much! Fin.

Not very far into the game you will have control of four characters, yourself, your brother, a mage who's name escapes me and Nightsong herself. However, you can only govern where she moves to in the game, and no access is given to her inventory. You are free to customise the other three characters to your heart's content though. Any items that fall off slain enemies can be allocated to any of your party providing they meet certain requirements .. for example a kick-ass warrior isn't able to wield a mage's staff. Basic RPG stuff in other words. As with all RPGs there's a level system in place, with your other characters aptly named 'heroes' levelling up with you each time, allocating them with skill points to use to increase strength, mana etc.etc. You can choose to allow the computer to allocate the skill points automatically for all your characters or you can decide to do it yourself. The skill tree is simple to use, and is merely split into Combat and Magic abilities. You can normally tell what kind of character it is you have in your party, but you can quite happily change a mage into a warrior if you so desire. Other characters will come into your party but simply follow you around as part of ongoing quests.

Movement around the game is much the same as the original; draw a box around the characters/squad members you want to move, and then right click on the map or area on screen that you want them to move to. What is nice in SF2 is the ability to select a unit type by double-clicking them, this then highlights all like units nearby which you can then assign a hotkey to. This makes the whole troop selection an absolute doddle! Hover the mouse over an enemy and it'll turn into a sword icon, and a right click sends your highlighted party into action. NPC characters can sometimes be communicated with indicated by a speech bubble or an exclamation mark above their head. NPC's don't always follow the main quest of the game, with a lot of side quests being available for extra equipment to utilise or sell. Merchants are few and far between in my experience though, and finding them is a real pain in the bum!

Pretty soon you will be faced with your first RTS element of the game. Once again this follows your usual RTS style of play where you have a headquarters, a handful of grunts and resources for the grunts to harvest. One cool thing in SF2 is that you can now spawn grunts that harvest particular resources, lessening the 'what the hell happened to those grunts I created' syndrome! Of course the object is to build up a base strong and competent enough to create the games tougher units. You'll begin with standard soldiers and archers, but as the game wears on magicians and paladins will bolster your squad. What squad you create is very much dependant on the type of enemy group you're going to be fighting against, providing a good level of thought instead of your run-of-the-mill create a zillion soldiers and win scenario! My only quibble with the RTS side is that you can't create formations, your troops marching in single file to their destinations, then huddling together in a rather untidy mess! The temptation is to micro manage everything and forget the rest of the game, but you will soon discover that the enemy is most definitely a threat, and you can easily be defending two places at once! Fun stuff!

It's not all about hack'n'slash though with the questing being of a higher and more varied standard than the first game. Your quest log is divided into main and side quest threads and is very easy to flip through and check at-a-glance what stage you're at. Thankfully the developers have listened to the moans of SpellForce fans and quest locations are now indicated on the map! One of the tedious things from the first game was having to remember where quests were instigated from to complete them!

As you'd expect in this day and age the game looks a treat, with some really lovely textures used for the units and characters alike. Landscapes are also of equally good quality, and all this glides quite nicely along with my set up. My PC at the time of reviewing SpellForce was above minimum spec but struggled badly, this time round the minimum specs are much more accurate. Audio consists of the usual grunts and cries from your troops as they clash swords in battle, with a very familiar fanfare sounding whenever you are attacked. The original SF soundtrack was horrendous but I cannot stress enough how good SF2's is, something they have got 100% right this time around. You will recognise one of the songs though, a blatant rip-off of one of the songs from the 'Lord of the Rings' movie. Whether intentional or accidental I don't know, but it still fits the game style nicely along with all the other music. On the downside is the very poor voice-acting, something that has spilled over from the last game unfortunately and gets very irritating and quickly! Why oh why with such quality on show in all other departments do they screw up something so fundamental?

'SpellForce 2: Shadow Wars' makes the grade ladies and gentlemen, ironing out the kinks from the first game and polishing things up rather nicely whilst retaining its own identity. Now to find two willing online participants to co-op! :O)

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Minimum Spec	Reviewed on
(to be completed)	Athlon 3200+ 1Gb RAM 256Mb ATI Radeon x800