Vnlr: As a sidenote, the first symphony is going up :p
How are you all doing? Good I hope?
Hello, Vnlr !!
How are you doing ? :)
So, you'll invite us soon to discover your symphony ? :D
AgentBirdnest: Don't be sorry :-) You should be a doctor... All the doctors in my town suck donkeys... They don't seem to care about people much, which is kinda an important trait for doctors, in my opinion at least :-p
Oh, well in that case, I hope you are left in the dark, so you get to go home :-D
I certainly feel slow... as Anthony would say,
"I got to got to gotta take it slow..." ;-)
*passes out on keyboard*
Hum, no, I couldn't be a doctor :)
It consumes too much time and energy...
Hum... maybe you should take some rest... passing out on youor keyboard won't help much !... :-\
GreenDamsel: Spellforce is its own genre in my opinion. Coming closest to Warcraft 3, because you have to manage your hero abilities during combat as well.
The story in 1 is definitely more intriguing than in 2, imho, but they are almost completely unrelated. They reference it ones. The first is about so called rune warriors fighting to save the world from corruption and the second starts years later with a race of people trying to save themselves. You meet a rune warrior in Spellforce 2 once, so far, and he doesn't say any relevant stuff.
So yeah Tl;dr: Not connected.
You can relieve some management stress when you set your heroes to auto learn their spells and how they develop. You'll usually get the old archetypes out of it and that's all you need to progress.
I'd recommend playing the first one regardless of if the stories are connected. It was in my opinion the better strategy experience. Further zoom-out, more abilities, more interesting army development, in general a more difficult game, more dynamic map interaction (suddenly a giant appears is attacked by undead and when you get to him in 5 minutes and save him he helps you find a shorter way to the enemy base).
Spellforce 2 was more streamlined and is easier to play, but I find it to lack depth and variability. I always build the same units, cast the same spells and bumrush through the maps. I basically only play it to see how the story develops and in general what maps I get to see.
Because the map and mission design in both games is quite amazing.
But Spellforce 1 was and always will be the "hidden gem" (That's how I found it: In a printed magazine back in 2003(?) in just one short column as "Hidden gem from Germany. A RPG/Strategy mix that you didn't know about!" or something like that)
Wow, thank you for this very complete and interesting review !!
(I don't know Warcraft III... I played the II, though... in 2D !)
Ok, so... even if it's not "needed" to understand the story, I should play the 1st one firstly, I take note. It definitely sounds really good, even better than the 2... (I was about to add it on my wishlist, but I see that I already own it !! \o/ woohoo !! awesome... I really should buy less games, I can't even remember which ones I have or not ^^)... Well, thanks for all the useful information !! :-)