Review of SpellForce Conquest of Eo – an epic battle of mages

Until now, the SpellForce series has mostly been presented as a mixture of RTX and RPG. Now there is a turn-based strategy SpellForce Conquest of Eo, which, of course, does not contain RPG elements. What aspects prevail here, what we are talking about the mage system and how the turn-based battles go, we will tell you in our review.

• Platform: PC
• Publication date: 02/03/2023
• Developer: Belongs to Gravity
• Publisher: THQ Nordic
• Genre: Turn strategies
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: No
• Data to download: 9 GB
• Game time: 20+ hours
• Price: €29.99 (Steam)

It’s time to take over the world in SpellForce Conquest of Eo

Your master is dead. Someone has invaded his beautiful mansion and turned it into a woodshed. You have to go on a quest, the end of which may not be victory, but death at the hands of the killer of a man who was almost like your own father. The story of SpellForce Conquest of Eo takes place in an open world where you are not alone. There are cities full of humans, elves and orcs living their lives. And “in the middle” of all this are the ruins of a magical tower, which must be put in order and with its help to rule the world.

At first glance, the tower looks inconspicuous. However, after a few rounds, it can be nicely lifted into the air. This makes it a fantasy version of an alien ship that travels mainly for raw materials. Just like conquerors from other worlds, magicians also vacuum everything around them and subsequently finance, or rather, drive, the work of their army from the funds obtained. Some places are inexhaustible. For example, such a pub remains on the map until the end of the century. However, most stocks are limited, so sooner or later you will always have to pick up your mansion from the ground and set off again with it for resources.

That is, at least until the moment when you properly upgrade your tower. Here, the mansion has the opportunity to go through development, closely related to how you make your way through the game world. It is literally overflowing with various tasks that must be completed in order to make it easier for you or its inhabitants to breathe. As in other RPGs, you usually take your army and move from one part of the map to another in order to destroy the army of defectors or collect the necessary herbs. Although at first it seems that this is not the case, the tasks are relatively interesting. I’m not afraid to say that their processing is one of the pillars of SpellForce Conquest of Eo.

Another, of course, is the concept of differently functioning mages who always come into action with a different set of abilities. In addition to the three main directions, SpellForce Conquest of Eo subsequently offers you the opportunity to choose two more of the six schools of magic, which in some way determine how you will play the game. When you start your campaign as an alchemist who dominates the school of life, you can look forward to a relatively easy path in which people will love you. But you have it worse than a necromancer, whose servants are primarily undead monsters. Nobody loves it twice. That is, when he does not have a second manipulation specialization.

You can’t bet on slot machines here.

Mages don’t fight battles alone. They don’t get anywhere near that. Instead, they send their assistants to them, randomly encountered heroes, summoned monsters, as well as ordinary inhabitants of the game world who are not averse to taking up arms and fighting for your cause. However, the size of armies is very limited, so don’t expect big battles. Also, dealing with them is not entirely easy, for example, I did not figure out how to combine units or adjust the composition of armies even after twenty hours of play.

In SpellForce Conquest of Eo, the system of cover and retaliation is very interesting. Whereas in other moves fighters can retaliate against attackers regardless of whether they come from any direction, here they only react if the attacking character gets their attention, which can be worked very effectively. For example, when you have a horde of goblins at your disposal, nothing is easier than attacking in the rear with one group of juice units. During the first attack, the attacked is not able to react, but only turns, which you then use with your other warriors, with which you hit the individual like a baby. In this way, the whole forces you to work more actively with your small army.

The fights themselves are simpler. Although there are many units, most of them have a relatively limited range of attacks. The size of the cards, unfortunately, is very small. Therefore, your tactical options are often quite limited. I wouldn’t have such problems with it. But the auto-battle format was broken, at least in the version of SpellForce Conquest of Eo I’ve been playing for the last few days, so if I didn’t want any extra losses with nuzaks, I had no choice but to go through almost all the fights manually. It was quite annoying at times, but in the later stages, the variety of enemies increased so much that each encounter became an interesting game.

You have to go through the fun world of SpellForce Conquest of Eo on your own.

We can say that SpellForce Conquest of Eo is a pretty pleasant surprise. It’s a turn-based RPG that builds on the legacy of King’s Bounty, but somehow handles it in its own way. Because of this, we have a bunch of competing magicians with different goals, whose main priority is to gather power and slowly define the world of Eo according to their own ideas, with their levitating tower, somewhat reminiscent of an alien colony ship. . In addition to slightly repetitive turn-based combat, there are plenty of side quests and information about your travels that will tell you more about this universe than most SpellForce games.

The story revolving around building your master’s tower is one of the pillars of gameplay in SpellForce Conquest of Eo. However, I’m not sure it’s strong enough to be called memorable. Against. However, this is definitely not a significant drawback. The primary problem is the unresolved auto-battle format and a certain degree of stereotyping, due to the fact that often for many hours you are faced with a rather limited circle of enemies, the scale of which only grows over time. However, it has a lot to offer at its core, so if you’re looking for a game similar to King’s Bounty or HoMaM, then this game might be for you.