The games take place on a planet called Eo, a high fantasy world ruled by near-immortal mages and inhabited by various sapient races, such as humans, dwarves, elves, orcs and trolls. The mages used servants called rune warriors, summoned from magical monuments, to keep peace. Several years before the start of the first game in the series, the mages discovered an ancient text describing the Convocation: a dangerous, but supposedly power-granting ritual. They started fighting amongst themselves, rune warriors being their main weapons of war. When the planets and stars aligned, enabling the start of the ritual, each of the 13 of the most powerful mages performed the ritual; however, unable to control the power, the world was shattered. Where once stood great continents of Fiara, Urgath and Xu, now only small pieces of land remain, centered around magical towers created by Aonir, the Star God. The first game in the series begins with a reappearance of one of the Circle mages: Rohen. He summons a Rune warrior to save the world.
Gameplay
The role-playing game aspects of SpellForce games parallel games such as Diablo, Diablo II, and Sacred in character development, skill trees, equipment customization, and top-down isometric viewing. However, the capacity to control multiple heroes often makes the gameplay comparable to that in the Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights video games. The real time strategy aspects of SpellForce games mirror the Warcraft fantasy real time strategy games. These include the ability to control several separate factions such as "The Realm", "The Pact", and "The Clans". Each faction has its own individual troop and building types. SpellForce games have several game modes, including campaign mode, skirmish mode, and free play. SpellForce can also be played cooperatively or competitively in multiplayer mode.
Games
SpellForce: The Order of Dawn
SpellForce: The Order of Dawn is the first game of the franchise, developed by Phenomic. It was first published by JoWooD in Europe on and by Encore Software in North America on.
SpellForce: The Breath of Winter
On, JoWooD announced the first SpellForce expansion pack named SpellForce: The Breath of Winter. The expansion pack features over 40 hours of new single player campaign gameplay.
SpellForce: Shadow of the Phoenix
Shadow of the Phoenix was released on. The expansion pack continues the storyline from The Breath of Winter and enables the player to continue playing with a previous game character by raising the character's level limit to 50. The pack also includes upgrades for the game's Titan units.
SpellForce 3, the latest entry in the series, was released in December 2017. The game was developed by Grimlore Games and published by THQ Nordic. The story of SpellForce 3 takes place before the events of in the fantasy world of Eo. The first glimpses of the game were seen during Gamescom 2014 in Germany, where Nordic Games first released gameplay of the game, as reported by German online magazinePCGames.de.
