SpellForce: Conquest of Eo is a visually stunning game. You’ll find core features of classics like Diablo II, but with easy-to-understand tutorials, various challenge levels and terrains, and the ability to play in a story mode. The game is a combination of strategy, story, and RPG. In the game, you get the ability to have a levitating tower and participate in over 600 adventures.
SpellForce: Conquest of Eo Tutorial Mode
The tutorial mode is one of the greatest strengths of this game, making it markedly accessible to new players. As SpellForce scales up, it can get complex very quickly, but the tutorial (and tutorial entries) are always there to help, even if you are not in tutorial mode. Learn combat and city building quickly.
The tutorial doesn’t stop in the mode. It’s always easy to find instructions on how to do something.
Recipes an ingredients are also easy to learn about in SpellForce: Conquest of Eo. Explore and learn as you go. It’s intuitive, kind of like Potion Craft.
Combat, Spells, and Navigation in SpellForce
The combat and spells in SpellForce go hand in hand — you kind of learn one as you learn the other, as spells can be learned in combat, then leveled up after victories. The turn-based game allows you to assess the potential outcome of each battle encounter before you commit. There’s also a basic guard mode (which you can advance), putting you into solid defensive stances.
In early game, opposing units will take cover behind barrels or other terrain, and it’s often best to choose a guard stance and let them advance to you, especially if you can’t meet them on your first move turn.
What Platforms Can You Play SpellForce On?
The SpellForce: Conquest of Eo release date is Feb. 3, 2023. It includes controller support and it is Steam Cloud-enabled. Spell Force: Conquest of Eo is available on PC (64 bit OS, Windows 10/11 required).
Is SpellForce Multiplayer?
SpellForce: Conquest of Eo is a single-player game. However, if you have a friend nearby, it’s a game that can be fun to play together if you make cooperative decisions well. This game has more of an OG Diablo II feel than a World of Warcraft feel.
SpellForce: Conquest of Eo Characters
You get to choose from three different archetypes or a custom profile. The archetypes play as follows:
- The Alchemist can summon creatures in battle and brew potions. They do have an overwhelming amount of options and scale quickly. Their crafting nature is alchemy, their primary school nature, and their secondary school is enchantment.
- The Necromancer is able to harvest dead souls! They can sacrifice weak units and grow their undead armies large. They craft with necromancy and their primary and secondary schools are death.
- The Artificer makes magical stuff such as artifacts and glyphs. They’re focused very much on protection (of their armies) and they get special extra upgrades. They work best with small but strong armies. They fraft via artificing, and their primary school is Earthmaster with second school of Guardian.
Once you are done with your archetype selection, you choose your starting location.
SpellForce Game Modes
There are multiple game difficulty modes, which is worth considering in combination with your starting location, which has its own challenge rating. The game difficulty modes are:
- Story Mode: You can play this game mainly to experience the story. You’ll still fight, but the story really isn’t about that in this mode.
- Explorer: This mode leaves you time to explore with weak enemies occasionally attacking your home tower. The devs recommend this for beginners — I started here, and felt like I could learn easily in this mode.
- Balanced: This is the standard expectation — everything’s pretty balanced, and this is largely how the game is meant to be played if you want to experience all elements of it.
- Hard: This provides you with a more combat-focused game.
- Impossible: It’s hell mode, and probably fun for a select group of people!
Note that there is also an economy setting that goes along with each mode. The harder the mode, the harder it is to get coin.
SpellForce Review: It’s a Mixing Board
SpellForce has many elements, some of which you select at game setup. It clearly draws inspiration from multiple fantasy sources, but the best part about it is that you can calibrate your game experience, at least at the beginning of the game, by choosing the game mode and starting location that accommodate the experiences you want. If you want to learn to improve combat, play a story that’s more hopeful, or be like me and indulge your obsession with the awesome that is fantasy elves, you can make it happen.
The game experience is like one big mixing board, so choose wisely at the beginning of the game. You can’t reset those starting elements. That said, the game does have multiple save slots.
Scaling Your Army in SpellForce
Additionally, it scales pretty well. Each unit type has a bunch of different things it can do, but the user interface (UI) clearly tells you what you can level up and when. This makes keeping track of things easier. The combat is turn-based, so there’s no rush to click a bunch of different things smoothly. The Experience is incredibly different depending on the Archetype you select.
City Building and Expansion in SpellForce: Conquest of Eo
No game will ever eclipse my love and obsession for Civilization VI, but Conquest of Eo really scratches that strategy game and resource gathering itch. That’s because your quest is to conquer the land and expand your cities. Army building is a large part of it, but you also get to build cities.
Consider SpellForce for Kids at Appropriate Age Level
This would be a great starter adventure game for kids. The tutorials are clear and easy to follow, and the game has the basics of most standard RPGs and strategy games: combat, quests, and story. Kids can also play with the different game modes and starting locations to figure out what they like best.
I had not played any previous SpellForce games, but found SpellForce: Conquest of Eo very friendly, informative, and easy to learn.
Game Music and Art
The music and art of SpellForce are phenomenal. The animations are fun, the cinematic music changes to match place and action, and the concept art — which is part of the game on some loading screens — is excellent. You may catch yourself leaving the intro screen up so you can hear the music.
Material Disclosure: The author received a complimentary copy of this game for review purposes.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
We hope you enjoyed our guide to SpellForce: Conquest of Eo. Please check out Gamer Journalist on Facebook to join the discussion and keep up to date with our content. You may also want to check out our guide to the best Civ VI leaders for winning a science victory.
