Spellforce: Conquest of Eo PC Review

Spellforce: Conquest of Eo is the latest entry in the beloved fantasy series. Unlike its predecessors that belonged to the mix of real-time strategy with heavy RPG elements, Conquest of Eo is meant for the lovers of turn-based 4X games.

Coming from Owned by Gravity, the studio behind Fantasy General 2, the project is set to explore what it means to be a powerful mage in the magical realm of Eo, home to goblins, elves, dwarves, a variety of otherworldly creatures and more.

Build and manage your tower, build rooms, research spells, recruit and lead an army on your conquest. But beware, yours is not the only magical might in this world. The Circle of Magi will stand in your way. You can attempt to appease your seniors by bowing down to them, but confrontation will come sooner or later.

Do you have what it takes to oppose them? Grab your grimoire – this is our Spellforce: Conquest of Eo review!




The events of the game take place about a hundred years after those of Spellforce 3 which saw the formation of the Circle of Magi. As the magic was all but forbidden during the events of SF3, it is no wonder that the creation of the Circle brought its resurgence to Eo.

In the beginning of the game, you are but one humble apprentice flocking to your master’s side only to find his tower in ruins. Armed with your intelligence, your master’s notes and an unshakeable will to figure out what happened, you will rebuild, grow stronger and spread your influence as you dig for answers.

If you expected a deep, nuanced, character-driven story like you can find in other Spellforce games, you might be disappointed. While there is a certain premise with the missing master and there are quite interesting quest chains related to various heroes (such as the Shaikan Elynn and her quest that revolves around SF3’s Corporal Tahar) and Circle magi, Conquest of Eo story consists almost entirely out of trigger-based events and procedurally-generated adventures. It can be interesting but the lack of a real narrative driving force is felt acutely.

The character creation is limited to choosing between 3 specializations: Alchemist, Artificer and Necromancer, each with its own power and effects on the story. An Alchemist can craft and use potions, an Artificer can produce glyphs that can empower your army and heroes while a Necromancer is a master of cheap labor. The required resources and ways to obtain them differ as well.

In terms of gameplay, Necromancer can provide players with quick stacks of additional creatures while Artificer has a way to enhance the existing armies through providing them with powerful glyphs. The glyphs can not be un-equipped or swapped, so think of it as quantity vs quality, with the Alchemist being somewhere in the middle with a variety of potions. Would you prefer to work on a single stack and make it as powerful as it can be or create a group of weaker squads that can quickly spread over the map? Make your choice carefully! Overall, the Necromancer feels the best in the early game but, as enemies become stronger and more plentiful, the other two specializations catch up.

Spellforce Conquest of Eo - Shaikan Elynn

In addition to giving you this crafting sub-system, your choice of class will give you extra dialogue options during the procedurally-generated quests, sometimes giving you an option to solve the problem with your powers right away, greatly weaken a particular enemy or simply create items that can make your life easier.

Regardless of your choice, the beginning of the game will see you with nothing but a crumbling tower and a few goblins for hire. However, thanks to the notes of your master, shortly after you will be able to hold a ritual that will bind you to Allfire and greatly increase your magical might. This process also unlocks more systems, including the Allfire flow management, and raises the suspicion of the Circle of Magi.

The flow lets you convert the influx of Allfire into three resources:

  • Proficiency – needed to level up the Tower, thus increasing the available number of rooms and apprentices;
  • Mana – your magical reserve needed to cast spells and sometimes finish quests. Can also be converted to gold once you’ve researched the corresponding ritual;
  • Research – progress you make towards your chosen research spell. The spells vary greatly in their purpose: from summoning more creatures, to buffing your armies to weakening your enemies.

Managing the flow allows you to chart the short-term and long-term course and the progress made towards them. For example, halting the production of mana and research points to climb a level as quickly as possible.

In addition to the Allfire, you will need to do some actual tower restoration by building rooms: a room specific to your specialization such as the Glyph Smithy, a number of rooms that produce resources, enable hiring of more advanced units, etc. The room blueprints are unlocked by finishing certain quests or buying them for reputation from neighboring cities which can be improved by completing the quests in the respective city.

Spellforce Conquest of Eo Allfire

Spellforce: Conquest of Eo has its own spin on the 4X genre. Instead of allowing you to turtle up and expand your holdings bit by bit, comfortable in the knowledge that no one can battle their way to the center of your area of influence, the game forces you to move around by having finite resources in any particular area.

Your apprentices can build lodges around the world that will automatically make the surrounding area become your domain and start providing resources. Should your apprentices perish, they can resurrect in their corresponding domain in a number of turns. If there is no lodge, that will be a loss you might find it hard to recover from.

The movement animation of your so-called “stacks” can be greatly sped up, so don’t worry if you have a dozen groups scurrying about, it won’t take that long to go through their turns. And, with harvesting and mining requiring your assigned stack to sit in one place for 4 turns or so, you will find that at any given point a half of your armies will be too busy to move.

As for your main tower, at some point you will learn a spell to make it levitate. Between the need for resources, your Tower moving around periodically, quest objectives and more, you will inevitably run into other powers of Eo.

The Circle mages, some of which might be familiar to you from other games such as the orc Gor, regard you with a mix of suspicion and pity. At first, their relationship with you is that of cold indifference but, as your power grows and you start encroaching on their domains, that relationship quickly sours.

Periodically, and regardless of what you do, your relationship with Circle mages will become worse by a few points and soon the disinterest will turn into contempt. You might want to have your army built up, equipped and leveled by that point.

When it comes to battles, Conquest of Eo features the standard grid-based combat with your stacks starting on one side of the screen while your enemies occupy another. Retaliation attacks, defensive stances, all just like in good ol’ Heroes of Might and Magic. Despite a variety of buffs and items to use in battle as well as characters’ abilities, personally I found the battle sequences playing out pretty much the same at any given point and have taken to auto-resolve a few hours in. Perhaps it will prove to be more interesting once the units employed both by the player and by opponents drastically change to more unusual creatures.

Overall, Spellforce: Conquest of Eo is a delightful spin on the 4X strategy genre. However, it remains just a step away from being truly ambitious with most systems continuing to play the second fiddle to the overall exploration and management. The game teases players with character creation and variety of choices, dips its toes into interesting story and setting, explores RPG elements – only to pull back without committing to either.

The great foundation is already there but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that Conquest of Eo needs just a bit more to be great: voice-over for the main quest, a meaningful mission tracker, deeper tactical combat and RPG elements, greater diversity between classes, etc.

For the fans of pure 4X games, Spellforce: Conquest of Eo will likely provide dozens of hours of entertainment with its great apprentice mechanic that will keep you going despite some rough edges. But if your initial interest in the game was its attachment to the Spellforce name and seeing how it progresses the franchise and the world, you might not find out what you were looking for.

Note: the Steam key was provided for free for the purposes of this review.

Similar to: Master of Magic, Warlock – Master of the Arcane, Age of Wonders 3

Summary
Spellforce: Conquest of Eo is a delightful spin on the 4X strategy genre. However, it remains just a step away from being truly ambitious with most systems continuing to play the second fiddle to the overall exploration and management.
Good
  • Strong 4X foundation
  • Can speed-up animations
  • A variety of spells, creatures, etc.
  • Throwbacks to other Spellforce titles
  • Beautiful locations
Bad
  • Lack of voice-over
  • Questionable sound design
  • Combat quickly becomes repetitive
  • No mission tracker
7
Good
Written by
A lover of all things RPG and TBS, Catherine is always looking for a new fantasy world to get lost in.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Lost Password

Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.