I bought it for $3ish a long time ago on Steam. I tried to get into it (spent about four or five hours on it) but in trying to marry the two genres (RPG and RTS) they only succeeded in watering down both. It's pretty bland. Sort of plays like one of those Warcraft 3 mods where you tool around with heroes completing objectives. Can't say I've played Dragonshard.

I picked up a copy from Gamersgate. I would rather have got it from GOG when it goes on sale here but I had some old blue coins to get rid of.

http://www.squidinabox.com/2012/02/birthday-sale-waves-50-off/

Directly downloadable via authors website.

Half price. Includes Steam key.

Any good?.

Well, I think you'll enjoy SF2 a lot more, since it is more balanced and polished. Some of SF1's campaign maps were quite boring and imbalanced, I got pissed off one day and started using cheats (it still took a long time to complete the game).

For example, your units die from 2-3 hits... the enemies' units die from 20-30 hits. Expect this to last until the end, once you pass the first few missions. It is THAT imbalanced.

Not much of a deal, but still...

IGN Prime is giving away beta codes for Risen 2
http://www.fileplanet.com/betas/risen/

Steam keys.

Spellforce is interesting. Some missions are almost purely based around you running around as a lone hero, killing enemies and leveling up. Others are focused around building up huge armies in a classic RTS style, and some have an even mix of both. It is not all that similar to Dragonshard though, which is a more fast paced game (and also closer to traditional RTSs).
If you intend to get Spellforce, be prepared to spend a lot of time with it. It is a bit of a slow starter, and it is also very time consuming. At times it feels a bit crude, and the translation is far from perfect (and sometimes the game will even revert back to its original language for no reason). It is also a rather polarizing game, some people love it, others hate it. If you feel like playing something different, then give the game a try, the worst thing that can happen is that you waste a few $.

I never noticed that. Did you forget to upgrade your unit gems (or whatever they were called, those things that dictated the level of your units)?

Everytime I've tried to play Spellforce I've quit out of pure boredom. The campaign.... blows. Really badly blows, in fact.

It's probably not the worst game in the world, not even close, but there's probably way more fun games that you haven't yet played (have you played Giants: Citizen Kabuto, yet?).

Yup, my units where at their highest possible level, always. And I was playing it on Easy.

That is really odd. Sounds like you encountered some kind of bug. There are very durable enemies in the game, but all the basic troops have the same stats as yours, so a level 1 orc under your control is no different from a level 1 orc under the control of the enemy.

The point is, my units were level 3-4, and the enemies' units were level 13-14... On almost all maps... A map that was supposed to take a hour to clean, took 3-4 hours. Which is why I couldn't take it any more, and started using cheats.

No. You like it, I take it?

Yeah, it's hilarious. I played it far more for the story and the gags than the actual RTS gameplay (which was novel, if not especially outstanding or balanced).

You may still be able to dig up a red blood patch, Gamershell probably has it (there were two last minute publisher changes from the developers' vision: green blood and putting a bikini on Delphi, I'll leave it up to you if you want to "fix" that last one, it's an easy change too).

You should really play Giants if you are looking for something to play. It's one of those games that sticks with you long after you've moved on.

Getgamesgo weekend Iceberg Interactive sale:

Wings of Prey for $7.50

Nuclear Dawn for $7.00 (Steam key)

Oil Rush for $10.00

More stuff here.

I agree. I'd heard such good things about it and then would up really disappointed. It was actually the first RTS that I ever played when it first came out and it really soured me to that whole genre of games. Maybe I just don't like RTS. <shrug>.

Majesty 2 Collection €5.99
Majesty Gold Edition €1.35