Developed by Owned by Gravity, Spellforce: Conquest of Eo is the latest title in the series first launched 20 years ago. The game tells the story of you, a magic apprentice who was one day summoned by your master to his tower only to find it in ruins, raided by enemies and your master murdered. Determined to seek the truth, you will inherit your master’s ambitions (and his messy grimoire) and step on the journey to becoming one of the strongest mages on the lands of Eo. On your journey to conquer Eo, you will meet The Circle, 13 of the most powerful mages on Eo who are wary about your ventures. Depending on your reaction to their requests, some might treat you as (temporary) friends, while others could not wait to see your demise.

Before you embark on your campaign, you will have to decide what kind of mage you aspire to become. The game allows you to choose from three base archetypes, with each representing different playstyles. Alchemist is probably the more balanced playstyle, where you can craft a plethora of items that could aid you in and out of battles. Being a Necromancer means you will overrun the lands of Eo with undead, winning battles through sheer size of your army. On the other hand, Artificers could craft magical items such as glyphs and artifacts that could empower your units, best chosen when you prefer your armies strong, despite not as large as armies of undead.

Then you will have to choose from five starting locations that bring upon different challenges. The starting location you choose will determine the kinds of enemies and types of resources that you will encounter early in the game. Some might seem an obvious choice for certain archetypes, such as starting in Draycott will give Artificers access to more ores, but the rather scarce resources and peripheral map location might give you a hard time later on.

Regarding difficulty, you could choose from five levels between Story Mode and Impossible. The higher the difficulty level, the more intelligent the enemy AI will be, as well as the strength of their armies. It also determines the aggressiveness of the Circle Mages. Being a newbie to the series playing on Balanced (the middle difficulty level), I find it challenging enough as the frequency of base-raiding by the Circle Mages and independent factions had me panicking sometimes, especially when my troops were away from base surveying nearby lands.

As a 4X-like turn-based RPG, the game’s main and side stories are closely connected to map exploration. In order to proceed with these “adventures”, you will have to step on their respective hexes on the map, and most of the time it will trigger battles, as seen with a skull icon beside the title of the adventure. After the initial tutorials, you are free to choose what you want to do next. Some might prefer to expand their armies and establish stable incomes first before moving on with the story, while others might rush straight into quest battles (and find themselves decimated). In this open world, it is all up to you how you want to progress the game.

However, the freedom allowed by the game might be confusing for new players as to what to do first, with some of the quests located far away from your Tower. The difficulty of quest battles is also unknown before you trigger the quests. Imagine treading all the way to a distant quest before finding out that you require 2x your current army strength to win the battle.

For a turn-based tactical RPG, Spellforce: Conquest of Eo has a pretty unpredictable, yet fun and fast-paced battle system. Every time you step into battles, the game will generate a random map based on the current landscape that you are standing on. One thing in common among all the different maps is that they are all pretty small, taking only two to three turns for average units to move from one end of the battle map to the other. Add this to the fact that units trying to retreat against melee opponents will be struck by an Attack of Opportunity, it is far easier for your squishy ranged units to die to the enemies’ melee units as they could be easily closed-in. However, you could counter this by using items such as Smoke Bombs which allow your units to blink to another hex, or just block the enemies’ path into your backline by positioning your frontline tanks wisely. Still, you’d have to be careful as the enemies could use the same strategy against you. 

Other than that, you could also recruit Heroes or Apprentices to your ranks. These are powerful units that have their own unique perks and skills. For example, there is a boy who is possessed by a demon and can switch between his human and demon forms in battle. As demons are weak against White attacks, despite the demon having access to multiple strong skills, you might want to keep him humane when fighting against units with White attacks. Each type of unit has its own strengths and weaknesses, thus pre-battle preparation and decision-making during battles are both extremely important to ensure victory.

Good resource management is also key to your pre-battle preparations. Most resources output in the game will deplete after some turns, so the game is designed in a way that the player would not have a static base throughout the game. Your Tower can be magically moved to settle at other places in order to exploit new resources, which could also be a way to move your base away from strong enemies early on in the game. For me, I just couldn’t settle near the cunning Hokan Ashir, who was the reason why I had to maintain armies of White attackers. Curse him and his armies of undead.

Also, the game actually allows you to manage your relationship with the Circle Mages. To be frank, they aren’t that united within their own little circle. Each of them has its own ambitions, and from time to time, they will pay you surprise visits and try to talk you over (with a big stick) to join their schemes against each other. As I started near Rohen, I find myself with no choice but to heed his requests for me to do dirty works against Uram. After weighing the stakes on the line, I just couldn’t risk angering Rohen as he always has his armies patrolling near my domains.

Without fancy skills and flashy combats, I think the instances that could best epitomize the fun of strategy games are exactly when victories are brought by all the well-thought-out preparations that you’ve made beforehand. However, by keeping some information hard to access (such as types of enemies lurking within ruins), the extra unpredictability could make the battles even more engaging, and the sense of accomplishment would be even greater should you manage to turn the tide of a battle against all odds. I think it’s fair to say that the game has done pretty well at balancing between planning and unpredictability.

All in all, although the game could still do with some QOL improvements (such as a “quest list” instead of having me zoom out and pan the whole map to check what I should do next), after almost 30 hours of gameplay, I am still amazed by how much I could explore in the game. Different archetypes and stories that constantly challenge players’ decision-making will also make every playthrough feels unfamiliar. Blending 4X elements with turn-based RPG, I think this game truly stands out in the market and is definitely worth checking out by fans and new players.

That’s all for the review of Spellforce: Conquest of Eo written by Lluvia.