Info about SpellForce: Conquest of Eo:

Official game description:
In this turn-based strategy game set in the fantastic world of SpellForce, take up the mantle of your master as the heir to his mysterious wizard’s tower.  
Study a multitude of spells to cast over the lands around you, summon fantastical minions and train mighty warriors to roam the world. Fight in fast-paced but tactical turn-based battles.
Explore the Realm of Eo
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Win over mighty heroes to go on adventures for you, find useful artefacts and ingredients or bring back riches.  
Seek out talented apprentices to expand your domain and workers to gather a wealth of resources for you. Unearth the secrets inherited from your master and follow his quest to tap and unleash the ultimate source of magical power – the Allfire!
Face powerful foes
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Among the other mages, there are those who would oppose your rise to power. You will have to face great armies and even greater ambitions of your rival Mages. Can you survive the struggle for domination?  
To expand your domain, you will need to control sources of Allfire, so you can fill your grimoire with new magical spells, craft mighty artefacts, and expand and improve your tower.
Choose wisely
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Become a Necromancer creating dozens of powerful undead, an Alchemist concocting potions and explosive vials for use in battle or an Artificer crafting glyphs and magical items to furnish your troops with. Bolster your might with over 60 spells and more than 100 different troops from lowly goblins to majestic griffons.
Leave your mark
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Befriend cities, harvest resources, and expand your domain. Fill your grimoire with arcane knowledge to best your rivals as you vie for sources of power. Hunt arcane artefacts and unearth the long-hidden secrets of the Shapers or take control of mythical locations to absorb their power. Improve your tower and furnish it with new rooms to grow your dominion, with upgrades ranging from a necromancer’s crypt to the mystical crystal chamber.
Tower on the fly
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Your immense magical sophistication allows your tower to levitate from the ground and travel the lands.  
On your path to exploit the sources of magical power on Eo, you will face New Purity fanatics, hostile granite dwarves, and bloodthirsty orcs. Encounter undead, demons, and monsters as you explore forgotten ruins or help a village haunted by ghosts.  
You might even need to face the other wizards’ armies of minions and best them in battle so you can march on your competitors’ towers and reduce them to rubble. Or perhaps you might find a way for you to appease them and profit from their knowledge?  
SpellForce: Conquest of Eo lets you dive into a rich world, filled to the brim with magic and adventure. Will you succeed or perish in the struggle to become the greatest mage the world has ever seen?  
*   Expand and improve your tower and construct new rooms to forge your wizard’s path  
*   Choose from one of three archetypes and six spell lists, all allowing different styles of play  
*   Recruit individual heroes and apprentices to lead your troops  
*   Make the living interactive grimoire reveal new secrets and spells to you  
*   Craft anything from magical glyphs and artefacts to undead minions  
*   Explore over 600 adventures different with each procedurally generated campaign

Release date: 3 Feb, 2023

Categories: Turn-based Strategy, 4X, RPG, Base Building, Crafting, Unit Management, Exploration, Tactical Combat


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Highly Praised Turn-Based Strategy (weight 1): Players overwhelmingly enjoy the game, describing it as a fantastic, addictive, and deeply rewarding turn-based strategy game. Many consider it a hidden gem and a masterpiece in the genre, offering fresh ideas and engaging gameplay that keeps them coming back for 'just one more turn.'
- Unique 4X/RPG Hybrid Mechanics (weight 0.47): The game is lauded for its innovative blend of 4X strategy, RPG elements, and HoMM-style combat. Reviewers appreciate its streamlined approach, avoiding the tedious city management of traditional 4X games, and focusing instead on narrative, exploration, and powerful sorcery, often comparing it favorably to Age of Wonders 4 and Master of Magic.
- Diverse Gameplay and High Replayability (weight 0.25): The game offers significant variety through its distinct classes, varied factions, and multiple gameplay styles. This, combined with rich content, extensive lore, and adjustable difficulty, ensures high replayability and a fresh experience across multiple playthroughs.
- Balanced Difficulty and Progression (weight 0.13): Players appreciate the game's balanced complexity, which is easy to start but offers a satisfying challenge, even on higher difficulties. The progression feels natural, and the game avoids becoming bloated or tedious in later stages.
- Excellent DLC Content (weight 0.12): The game's DLCs are consistently praised for their high quality, adding significant variety, new factions, unique classes, and expanded lore. They are considered valuable additions that enhance replayability and provide new gameplay experiences.
- Large and Varied Maps (weight 0.12): The game features large, beautifully designed maps that offer ample content and encourage exploration. The inclusion of random map generation in DLCs further enhances variety and replayability.
- Faithful SpellForce Lore Expansion (weight 0.1): As a spin-off, the game is highly regarded for its excellent expansion of the SpellForce universe lore. It successfully integrates RPG elements and provides a nostalgic experience for fans of the series, often surpassing previous installments in certain aspects.
- Immersive Mage Role-Playing (weight 0.1): The game excels at making players feel like powerful mages, with engaging interactions with mage classes, unique spells, and a fantastic UI that enhances the magical experience. The progression of heroes and apprentices further deepens this immersion.

Common complaints:
- Unbalanced & Repetitive Gameplay (weight 0.69): Players report significant issues with game balance, including an unengaging and formulaic progression, inconsistent difficulty spikes (both too easy and too hard at different stages), and a general lack of depth. The core gameplay loop becomes repetitive and tedious, leading to a loss of interest.
- Limited & Monotonous Map/Content (weight 0.34): A major complaint is the lack of map variety, with the base game featuring only one fixed map that quickly becomes boring and repetitive across playthroughs. This significantly impacts replayability and makes the exploration phase unengaging once the map is known.
- Poor Combat & Tactical System (weight 0.32): The combat system is widely criticized for being unsatisfying, basic, and repetitive. Issues include cluttered battle screens, frustrating UI, lack of tactical depth, and poor animations/sound. Auto-combat is often unreliable, forcing manual fights that are also not engaging.
- Lack of Core Features & UI/UX Issues (weight 0.25): The game suffers from a poor user interface and user experience, making it unintuitive and cumbersome. Key quality-of-life features like a quest log, proper map navigation, and key rebinding are missing, contributing to player frustration and confusion.
- Weak Diplomacy & AI Behavior (weight 0.17): Players note a complete absence of diplomacy options, limiting interaction with enemy factions to only hostile encounters. The AI is perceived as having infinite resources and spawning units unfairly, leading to an unbalanced and frustrating strategic experience.
- DLCs Essential & Pricey (weight 0.08): Many players feel that essential content and features are locked behind paid DLCs, making the base game feel incomplete. The combined cost of the game and its DLCs is considered too high for the overall quality and content offered.
- Divergence from Spellforce Series (weight 0.06): Long-time fans of the Spellforce series express disappointment that the game deviates significantly from the established gameplay and spirit of previous titles. It is perceived as more akin to other strategy genres like Heroes of Might and Magic, using recycled assets without maintaining the series' identity.

Gameplay feedback:
- Mobile Wizard Tower Mechanic (weight 0.36): Instead of traditional city-building, players control a mobile wizard tower that serves as their base. This unique mechanic encourages nomadic gameplay, as players frequently move their tower to new locations to gather finite resources and expand their influence.
- Deep Class & Crafting Systems (weight 0.36): Players choose from distinct wizard classes (Alchemist, Necromancer, Artificer) and various magic schools, which significantly alter gameplay and strategy. A robust crafting system allows for creating items, potions, or undead units, enhancing the role-playing experience.
- Fixed Campaign Map with Randomization (weight 0.3): The base game features a single, large, fixed world map for its main campaign, with key locations remaining constant across playthroughs. However, resource nodes, quests, and some encounters are randomized, and a DLC adds full map randomization, enhancing replayability.
- Challenging Learning Curve (weight 0.21): The game features numerous unique mechanics and a complex system that can be initially overwhelming. While some find it easy to grasp, many players report a steep learning curve and a challenging early game, requiring methodical planning and multiple attempts to master.
- Customizable Units & Heroes (weight 0.17): Units and heroes gain experience and level up, acquiring new abilities and perks from a random pool, allowing for varied army compositions. Apprentices act as special hero units, leading squads and establishing temporary lodges.
- Varied Victory Conditions (weight 0.13): Beyond simply destroying rivals, the game offers multiple paths to victory, such as leveling up heroes, gathering apprentices, learning spells, or befriending cities. This provides strategic depth and encourages diverse playstyles in its turn-based wargame structure.
- Engaging Quest System (weight 0.13): The game features a rich quest system with randomly appearing missions, city quests, and points of interest. These quests often involve choices that impact rewards and faction relations, adding narrative depth and supporting the RPG elements.
- Tactical Combat Focus (weight 0.05): Combat is a significant aspect, featuring turn-based tactical battles on hex-based maps. Players manage small armies with unique unit abilities, and manual combat is often required for strategic victories.

Performance notes:
- Mixed Performance & Optimization (weight 0.14): Player experiences with game performance are varied. Many report smooth gameplay and good optimization, even on devices like the Steam Deck, with minimal bugs or crashes. However, a significant number of players also report optimization issues, high hardware temperatures, and performance drops, especially on the world map or with higher settings.
- Game Freezes & Crashes (weight 0.05): Several players encountered game freezes and crashes, particularly in later stages of the game (after week 20) or after specific in-game actions like accepting city quests after using a 'Reputation Increase' spell, or accepting units after helping trolls. Some crashes also occur after key fights or during loading.
- Hardware Overheating Issues (weight 0.04): The game can cause significant heating of CPU, GPU, and even SSDs, leading to high temperatures, fan protests, and in extreme cases, system halts or Blue Screens of Death (BSODs). Players have resorted to various workarounds like increasing fan speed or lowering graphics settings.
- Loading Time Concerns (weight 0.04): While some players note fast loading times on SSDs, others experience constant menu loading or long scene loading times. Lowering texture settings can significantly reduce map loading times, suggesting a potential optimization area.
- Quest Disappearance Bug (weight 0.01): One specific bug was reported where certain quests, like 'into the snows,' can disappear if another path is chosen and then the player returns. This suggests a potential quest-line logic error.

Recommendations:
- Mixed Value & Purchase Recommendations (weight 0.34): Player sentiment on purchasing the game is highly divided. Many recommend buying it only on sale, especially the base game, while others feel it's worth full price or even more. There's also a strong desire for more DLC, with some recommending purchasing all available DLCs.
- Genre Appeal & Comparisons (weight 0.27): The game is highly recommended for fans of turn-based strategy, 4X, and RPGs, particularly those who enjoy titles like Age of Wonders, Heroes of Might and Magic, or Master of Magic. However, some players suggest other games like Age of Wonders 4 or Endless Legend as better alternatives within the genre, or advise against it if expecting a typical 4X experience.
- Desire for More Content & Features (weight 0.06): Players frequently request more content, including additional scenarios, mage classes, enemy types, races, biomes, and a sandbox mode. There's also a specific request for a quest log as a crucial Quality of Life improvement.
- Specific Gameplay Feedback (weight 0.04): Players provided specific feedback on game mechanics, such as the need for rebalancing the Demonology DLC, improving automatic combat, and making the combat spell system more flexible.
- Spellforce Fan Reception (weight 0.03): There's a mixed reception among Spellforce fans; some recommend it for its universe, while others do not, suggesting a reboot of the original Spellforce game instead.

Other player notes:
- Strong Developer Support & Content (weight 0.24): Players appreciate the ongoing developer support, including bug fixes and frequent, high-quality DLCs. There's a strong desire for more future content, including expansions and sequels, indicating a positive long-term outlook for the game.
- Localization Efforts Appreciated (weight 0.23): The availability of multiple languages, including Japanese and Russian, is appreciated. There's a call for continued localization work and better visibility of supported languages on store pages.
- Atmospheric World & Story (weight 0.23): Players praise the game's cool, atmospheric setting and well-constructed world. The narrative is engaging and serves as a strong foundation for the gameplay, drawing players into the fantasy.
- Visuals and UI Excellence (weight 0.22): The game is lauded for its beautiful visuals, gorgeous illustrations, and fantastic UI, which is styled as a magic book. This strong presentation enhances the magical feeling and overall player experience.
- Genre Identity Confusion (weight 0.15): There is significant confusion among players regarding the game's genre. Many expected a traditional 4X game based on initial impressions, but found it to be a unique blend of RPG and strategy, leading to mixed expectations.
- Lore and Spin-off Status (weight 0.08): The game is a spin-off within the SpellForce universe, which is appreciated by fans for expanding the lore. However, some players expected a traditional SpellForce RTS experience, leading to a divergence in expectations.
- Mixed Sound and Music Design (weight 0.05): Feedback on sound and music is mixed. While some find it appropriate and atmospheric, others criticize the lack of variety, unregulated volume, and unmemorable musical themes, suggesting an area for improvement.
- Desire for Modding Support (weight 0.04): Players express a strong desire for more robust modding support, particularly for custom maps and locations. While some QoL mods exist, the internal system complexity currently limits extensive modding.
- Non-Interactive World Map (weight 0.03): The game features a non-interactive world map with a limited scale. Players hope for future updates or DLCs to expand the map and introduce more dynamic elements.
- Limited Character Depth (weight 0.02): Some players feel that characters are mostly flat and utilitarian, lacking thematic ambition. This suggests an area where the narrative could be deepened to enhance player immersion.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.31): Players are highly satisfied with the game's overall quality, fun gameplay, and unique blend of RPG and 4X genres. Specific causes include well-designed mechanics, engaging class differences, high replayability, and a challenging yet rewarding experience, often compared favorably to other titles in the genre.
- Frustration (weight 0.17): Frustration stems primarily from repetitive gameplay, a perceived lack of balance, and issues with the UI/UX. Players also express annoyance with the AI's behavior, high difficulty spikes, and technical problems like crashes or the inability to save during battles.
- Disappointment (weight 0.13): Disappointment arises from unmet expectations regarding content, replayability, and game depth. Players are let down by a lack of map variety, an unengaging plot, and perceived shortcomings in combat and strategic gameplay, often feeling the game doesn't live up to its potential or previous titles.
- Excitement (weight 0.09): Excitement is driven by the game's innovative genre blend, its success as a successor to classic titles like Master of Magic, and the potential for long-term engagement. Players are thrilled by new content, unique fantasy elements, and the immersive wizard experience, often leading to an addictive 'one more turn' feeling.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.05): Players enjoy the game for its absorbing single-player experience, richly rewarding gameplay, and high replayability. The blend of RPG and 4X elements, interesting mechanics, and varied units and factions contribute significantly to this positive feeling.
- Appreciation (weight 0.03): Appreciation is shown for the game's originality, developer support, and the quality of DLCs. Players value the thoughtful integration of mechanics, beautiful map design, and the innovative approach to turn-based strategy, including community contributions like translations.
- Joy (weight 0.02): Joy is experienced through having an outright blast with the game, finding it incredibly fun and addictive. Players particularly enjoy specific character builds, the brilliant crafting system, and the unique 4X adventure experience, often preferring it over similar games.
- Boredom (weight 0.02): Boredom sets in due to repetitive gameplay, a dull campaign, and unengaging story. Players find the late game lacks challenge, and the grinding, slow movement, and uninteresting quests contribute to a feeling of monotony.
- Hope (weight 0.02): Players express hope for continued development, future DLCs, and bug fixes. There's a desire for significant improvements, new features like a sandbox mode, and for the small company to achieve commercial success and expand the game further.
- Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion arises from unclear narrative purpose, unintuitive UI, and difficulty understanding game mechanics or progression. Players struggle with poor tutorials, language barriers, and not knowing what actions to take for many hours.
- Surprise (weight 0.01): Players are surprised by unexpectedly high playtime, unexpected enjoyment after initial skepticism, and the game's good execution. Discovering hidden features like Russian language support or finding the mechanics crystal clear after initial doubts also contributes to this emotion.
- Admiration (weight 0.01): Admiration is directed towards the game's atmosphere, quality, and its ability to improve upon existing ideas, achieving masterpiece status. Players commend the lovingly crafted design and believe the game deserves high positive reviews for its quality and unique approach.
- Mixed feelings (weight 0.01): Players experience mixed feelings due to a combination of enjoyment and various issues, such as a good combat system contrasted with a weak plot. This also stems from the game's deviation from series canons and moderate replayability, leading to an overall ambivalent experience.
- Anger (weight 0.01): Anger is caused by perceived unfairness, such as rigged combat, AI cheating, and poor game balance. Players also express frustration with DLC practices and the developer's perceived misunderstanding of game length, leading to sarcastic recommendations.
- Engagement (weight 0.01): Engagement is high due to the addictive 'one more turn' gameplay loop and the variety of game elements. Players find themselves spending double the usual amount of time, drawn in by rewarding exploration and a sense of urgency that keeps them on their toes.
- Desire (weight 0.01): Players express a desire for more content, such as frequent events, a multiplayer or co-op mode, and more extensive metagame content. There's also a wish for improved graphical immersion to enhance the overall experience.
- Concern (weight 0.01): Concerns revolve around the presence of bugs, game balance issues, and the potential for replayability to run dry due to a single map. Poor optimization, particularly related to large map textures, also raises worries among players.
- Relief (weight 0.01): Players feel relief when the game is simpler and less overwhelming, especially regarding min/maxing. Finding a cheaper alternative or discovering the game to be refreshing and different despite initial concerns also contributes to this positive feeling.
- Gratitude (weight 0.01): Gratitude is expressed towards the developers for their support, quality DLCs, and constant bug fixes. Players appreciate the overall experience and the continued enjoyment the game provides, acknowledging the developers' efforts.
- Nostalgia (weight 0.01): Nostalgia is evoked by the game's style and mechanics, reminiscent of classic titles like Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic. Players feel a connection to the Spellforce series and see the game as a modern evolution of beloved classics.}