Metareview - SpellForce 2: Shadow Wars

With all of the attention given to Rise of Legends and Heroes of Might and Magic V over the past month, another strategy title quietly made its way to store shelves. Aspyr's SpellForce 2: Shadow Wars is the latest attempt to mash up the role-playing and RTS genres, and with their expansive maps and attention to detail, German developer Phenomic should give Atari's Dragonshard some healthy competition.

• IGN (84/100) is impressed by SpellForce 2's sheer amount of gameplay: "One thing this game has in spades is replayability. Not only is the single player story campaign very long and involved but there's also a free-mode which amounts to a second campaign. There isn't as complete a story as in the normal campaign, but there are a lot of new quests across 31 maps and all of these maps can be played alone or with two friends along for the ride."
  

• GameSpot (82/100) applauds the ease of use: "Command and control of all these different units is easy thanks to the slick interface. While you can use regular real-time strategy conventions to create unit groups, SpellForce 2 goes a bit further by letting you easily designate targets for various groups or telling a hero to unload a particular spell or skill on a specific target with just a couple of mouse clicks."
  
  

• Yahoo! Games (80/100) feels the mix of RPG elements is just right: "Unlike most role-playing games, Spellforce 2 doesn't limit your hero's advancement with a class system. So you can explore both the combat and magic skill trees as you wish -- hybrid characters are entirely feasible. Although the system is nowhere near as deep as, say, Diablo's, it is considerably more complex than most other RTS games can boast."