Ok i guess
(also hows Spellforce 3 Reforced i got the game a while ago but its so fucking big like 60gb one of my fav games is Warcraft 3 so if that is anything to go by)
After years of patching, everything other than lore is amazing. Sound and visual assets (maps especially) are top tier, each faction (including ones added by standalone expansions) is unique enough and you grasp how they're supposed to be played right away, unique/legendary items and builds are fun, intuitive and it's easy to find synergies. English voice actors did a stellar job, their lines feel natural and situation appropriate - a calm zealot sounds eerily confident and in control, a downtrodden asocial pariah stutters and pronounces words like someone who's one day from necking himself, a grieving, angry soldier has an outburst of anger in an authentic way, and it manages to be even better in expansions. Game has a sort of active pause, which is important in RPG missions where you have to interrupt bosses when they're casting something nasty. The main quest is linear in the base game, but side quests can affect parts of it in surprising way. From technical point of view the game on release was a Gothic 3-tier disaster. Everything that could have been bugged, was bugged, including a nasty memory leak. Fortunately devs got so much shit for it, that standalone expansions released in an almost bug-free state, even if dev studio went down with the ship. Overall if you're looking for an RPG/RTS hybrid it's a good title.
Unfortunately if you care for Spellforce lore at all, you'll be fucking furious. I'm not going to spoil the main story or its twists, but writers took extreme liberties with certain aspects of established lore (like who Shapers had been, and how their cities/technology looked like), characters (there are some... "current year" aspects of certain side characters, and while it's never preachy, it adds nothing to the characters in question other than a diversity token), and dialogues. The last part is the most egregious - some characters swear
a lot. Like I mentioned, in the first paragraph, they do it with gusto and it doesn't feel forced, but I'm not enjoying that the game tries to be more "mature". Like in previous games, you eventually end up with a hub of sorts, and in said hub you have the opportunity to talk with side characters and build rapport with them. Their stories are interesting on their own, if you make sure to learn more about them you unlock a unique skill for each character, and it can alter the result of some quests later down the line, so nothing new. That's only the basic game, both expansions however are more conservative in desecrating the lore, and focus on their own stories with much greater results, including a certain plot twist in Soul Harvest that was a masterclass in hindsight bias. When a certain thing was revealed, I was staring at the screen dumbfounded, in a positive way. The second expansion on the other hand made me feel sad for a troll, which surprised me given how disconnected I should feel.
If you end up resonating with the story and don't care for it being compliant with Spellforce 1 and 2's lore, give it and its expansions a chance.
