SpellForce: The Order of Dawn

SpellForce: The Order of Dawn is a computer game from the German development studio Phenomic Game Development that combines various elements from real-time strategy games , role-playing games and fantasy . It was released on November 28, 2003 for Windows , published by the Austrian publisher Jowood . In 2004 and 2005 two expansions appeared with the titles The Breath of Winter and Shadow of the Phoenix , in 2006 the successor SpellForce 2 followed: Shadow Wars , in 2017 SpellForce 3 appeared .

action

The setting of the game is the fantasy world Eo. The 13 most powerful wizards of Eo, the circle mages, have plunged the world into chaos and despair. In their pursuit of limitless power with the help of a special astronomical constellation, the convocation, they brought death and destruction, huge armies of summoned rune warriors, who are bound by the will of their rune owners, devastated the land. Entire continents sank under the power of the elements that the magicians had conjured up in dark rituals. Eventually the circle mages themselves perished.

The game begins eight years after the convocation. Rohen, the apparently only surviving circle magician who built the magical portals on the few remaining land masses for the purpose of connecting them, learns of the return of evil. He therefore summons a rune warrior, the avatar, to support him in the upcoming battle. This receives its rune, which allows it to act of its own accord. A messenger reports to Rohen of the attack by the "Iron", a huge army of very powerful magical beings made of iron, whereupon the circle mage sets out to face this threat. On his instructions, the hero first goes to Satarius, Rohen's friend and leader of the “Order of Awakening” in the city of Graufurt and henceforth carries out various assignments for the order and its allies. Finally, there is a momentous reunion with Raw in the Frost Marshes, because he has no idea of the existence of another circle magician, called "the dark one". He kills Rohen without the hero being able to intervene. Now the Avatar faces a hard and long fight against the armies of the unknown enemy, which will even lead him into the abyss of hell. After finally succeeding in defeating the creator of the "Iron", the hero meets the other circle mage again, who reveals himself to be the younger raw man. Believing that he can now use the convocation in his favor and attain limitless power, he travels back into the past through a time portal.

Gameplay

The plot is linear, at the end there is a fight against a boss. Successful battles and the completion of various missions allow the hero to collect experience points, which he needs to improve his properties. Most of the control is done by mouse. The player can either follow the action from a bird's eye view or control the hero from the third-person perspective .

The game world consists of several maps (levels) that build on each other and are connected by portals. The first card has the lowest level of difficulty; Here the player first learns how to use the soul stones and the monuments and complete simple quests.

With the main character, the avatar , you travel through the individual maps to finally face the final boss. The hero gets experience points through successful fights and the fulfillment of missions, with which he in turn can reach a higher level (usually up to level 30). With each new level he can improve his existing skills or learn new ones. By attaching to a rune (a magical representation of the soul) the hero becomes immortal; if the avatar is killed by an opponent, he awakens to new life on a soul stone, but loses part of the experience points he has gained.

The second function of the soul stones is that of a travel aid. Soul stones, once activated by the hero, are linked by a network and allow the hero to travel from the location of such a soul stone to the location of any other.

At the corresponding monuments, the avatar has the opportunity to call heroes from runes to his side or to build a large army with people, elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls and dark elves. All races have their own technology tree and their own strengths and weaknesses. This makes the missions varied and there can be several ways to complete the mission. Each race also has a powerful representative ("Titan"). However, the opponents do not erect any buildings or collect any raw materials. Instead, they produce unit by unit until all of their buildings are destroyed. This is a common criticism of the game.

technology

The game engine on which Spellforce is based is the KRASS engine from Massive Development , which JoWooD got access to through the purchase of the developer studio in December 2000.

Extensions

The Breath of Winter

The expansion consists of a completely new campaign that takes place on twelve maps and offers around 40 hours of game time. The avatar must be recreated; it cannot be copied from the main game. There are new set items and a co-op mode, but not a new race that the player can command. In contrast to the original, The Breath of Winter is a bit more strategic; an orderly retreat makes more tactical sense in some places.

In the new "Free Game" mode, the player can choose from numerous cards that are built up variably over and over again. Heroes with different characteristics can be tried out here, and some valuable items can also be found. Up to three players can take part at the same time via the network or the Internet.

A Fial Darg, a prince of darkness, has taken control of the Red Empire and seeks the return of the renegades, the dark gods. In order to realize his plan, he needs the blood of a firstborn elf. For this reason he kidnaps Cenwen, the last of her kind, from the environment of the ice dragon Aryn, in order to sacrifice her in his ritual. Aryn, who was sung to sleep by Cenwen's song, wakes up after the elves have disappeared and threatens to turn the world of Fiara into eternal ice forever. The ice elves try to free Cenwen and pursue the Fial Darg into the swamp, where they can capture him. Shortly before, however, his servants had succeeded in kidnapping the elf queen into his fire empire.

There are still numerous refugees from the convocation in the swamp, who now fear Aryn's wrath. Through the two fighters Lena and Grim, a rune warrior is called to stop the ice dragon. Since it appears that the Ice Elves are behind Aryn's awakening, the Avatar supports the fight against them. But soon he has to realize that he was deceived; Grim frees the Fial Darg and reveals himself as his servant. While the Fial Darg returns to his realm with Grim, his now emerging dark elf armies leave a trail of death and devastation. Together with the ice elves, who are now his true allies, the hero must first bring the refugees to safety. He then takes up the fight against the Red Empire to stop the Fial Darg and free Cenwen so that the destruction of the world can be prevented.

Shadow of the Phoenix

The second expansion features a new storyline with 13 new cards. The story of the two previous campaigns is continued in over 40 hours of playing time, so you will also meet many old, well-known characters. It is possible to start the game with a main character from the older Spellforce parts. In addition, there are numerous new spells and items (these can even be modified in the game), as well as two new units and buildings for each people. There are 10 and 15 new maps for multiplayer and co-op mode.

The "masked man", who apparently helped the hero in The Breath of Winter , has reanimated the circle mages and thus made them his slaves. With the help of the once powerful sorcerer, he is now striving for limitless power himself. As the hero learns in the course of the story, the "masked man" is none other than the former circle mage Hokan Ashir, who was considered a powerful necromancer at the time. He owes his new power of all things to the hero from The Order of Dawn , who procured the "Mask of Belial" for Hokan's ghost and thus brought the circle mage back to life. Only with the phoenix stone can Hokan's plans be thwarted. But its contents, a phoenix banned by the circle magicians, can only be released with the help of the shadow sword. Since the avatar from The Order of Dawn has the phoenix stone, while the hero from The Breath of Winter wears the shadow sword, the final part leads to a joint fight between the two characters against their former slave master and their summoner.

Web links

Official Spellforce website
Spellforce at MobyGames (English)

Individual evidence

↑ Richard Aihoshi: SpellForce - The Order of Dawn Interview, Part 2, Page 2 ( English ) RPG Vault. December 9, 2003. Archived from the original on December 16, 2005. Retrieved January 16, 2011.

[engineSpellforce-1] Richard Aihoshi: SpellForce - The Order of Dawn Interview, Part 2, Page 2 ( English ) RPG Vault. December 9, 2003. Archived from the original on December 16, 2005. Retrieved January 16, 2011.