Spellforce: Conquest of Eo Review – Taking up the Mantle of Wizardry

Spellforce: Conquest of Eo is developers Owned by Gravity latest turned-based strategy game filled with mythical spells and wizardry. Explore the realm of Eo, recruit mighty heroes to go on adventures for you, find useful artefacts and ingredients or bring back riches.

The Lands of Eo

Players will be given the choice to pick archetypes at the start of the game. After picking your Archetype, the game offers different starting points, each with varying challenges, enemies, resources and accessibility.

One example of the Archetype would be the Goldenfields. A more beginner friendly place as the challenges are pleasant, enemy types aren’t as daunting and resources are abundant. In contrast would be the Misty Coast with brutal challenges, intimidating enemies and scarce resources.

After picking a starting location, the game then offers five difficulty settings to choose from: story mode, explorer, balanced, hard and impossible. And as expected, each have varied World progression, enemy aggressiveness, economy and battle AI.

Going back on the Archetypes, think of it as a Faction that you get to control in the game. The 3 Archetypes currently in the game are Alchemist, Necromancer and Artificer. Each of them have their own unique playstyles and you can even customise your own Archetype if you’re feeling extra spicy.

Creating your own Archetype comes from picking a crafting (Alchemy, Necromancy and Artificing), along with choosing a Primary and Secondary School that dictates the playstyle. I think other strategy games could implement this feature more, because being essentially able to custom make your own faction tailored to personal tastes is amazing.

Unearth the Secrets

Given how Spellforce: Conquest of Eo is turned-based game, you need a lot of patience to play the game. It’s even more apparent since there’s loads of text that you’ll need to read up and understand the mission.

Your main objective is simple, to conquer the lands of Eo. Although, the process of conquest isn’t as simple on paper. On top of understanding how your units and structures work, you’ll need to manage your resources like Gold, Mana and Research points.

Combat of Spellforce: Conquest of Eo is played on a hexagonal grid base map, sprinkled in with some role-playing elements, something similar to Warhammer 40k: Gladius. The main focus of the game is to gain control of The Allfire. Although, not all of your units can go through there and meld with it.

And while controlling The Allfire is important, players will need to protect their Tower too. The Tower is key in expanding certain parts of the map through the tower’s domain. To conquer an area, it must be within your domain.

In the tower, there are 15 slots to build a room and it unlocks 3 slots every time your tower’s level is upgraded. Each room has a unique function and varies from one another. There’s the Human Barracks where as the name implies, train and improve human forces. There’s the Troop Quarters where you can train and house Goblins. It also can be extended with defensive addons.

I Like Your Funny Words, Magic Man

No good Wizard is without its Grimoire, and in Spellforce: Conquest of Eo it’s no exception. The Grimoire is your bread and butter as you’ll need to invest research points to research spells. You get access to tons of spells right off the bat, but you’ll also unlock more spells the further you progress into the game.

There’s the Tower Spellpage, Artifice Spellpage, Hero Page, Room Blueprint, Apprentice Spellpage, Earthmaster Spellpage and much more. Some of them require you to invest some time to conduct research, while some will need you to clear missions to gain access of the spells.

An example to that would be Apprentice Spellpage, you’ll be able to summon Enchanted Wisps to meld with the Allfire. Whereas in the Blueprint room, there’s 10 rooms to be unlocked, each of them having a different mission.

Speaking of the Allfire, after completing the mission where you meld with the Allfire, you’ll be able to recruit your own apprentice. Aside from your tower, your apprentice is also able to control some of the area by building their own base.

Before you set out in your journey of conquest, you’ll need to have a strong army to back you up. There’s a lot of choices for you to choose from, like goblins and thieves. Each army has a different specialty, most of them are cut from the same cloth. The main difference would be if they’re either melee or ranged.

To Conquest

Combat in Spellforce: Conquest of Eo is relatively straight forward. All you need to do is move your army and attack the enemies. But different strategies will have different outcomes. Although, if you would want to skip through the battles, there’s a neat mechanic called the “Autoresolve” that does the battling for you.

But before initiating combat, the game will predict the chances of victory. So, it’s not always guaranteed that you’ll be able to plow through the game with only relying on “Autoresolve”.In the battlefield, you’ll have a stack army that you can control and each of them have a different step and range that they can go.

Eye of the Beholder

Setting all the graphic options on high, the game while isn’t the best looking, is still pretty good. Zooming into the map and your army, you’ll be able to see almost all the subtle details, which is pretty nice.

Since I started at the Greenfield, the environment that surrounds my tower is pretty beautiful and gives off a peaceful vibe. I also like the details they added by having particles in key places to show its importance.

Everytime you receive any mission, you’ll be greeted by a pop up on the screen. The banners while simple, offer gorgeous artworks, which makes you really appreciate the detail the artists put into it.

Verdict

Overall, Spellforce: Conquest of Eo is a decent turn-based strategy game with complicated mechanics but the game does a good job at explaining its gameplay. Visuals are really nice and I don’t have any problems with it. Although personally, I wish they would add a mission tracker in the game since I would prefer it if I have access to all of the available missions on the corner of the screen.

Spellforce: Conquest of Eo was review on PC via Steam.

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