1st: Best intro movie ever. If you haven't seen it, go to www.planetspellforce.com and download it. Graphics: Excellent. I found the environments to be richly detailed from far zoom to 3rd person view. Each character and soldier were nicely done. It's nice to zoom in on a battle consisting of 150+ characters and watch all the hacking and magic. Each piece of equipment was done well also. Does cause a slight computer slow-down with AA and AF on full. Sound: The sound for the battles, towns, and workers were done nicely. You could here all the blades hitting and spells crackling in battle, wood chopping, mining et al. The voices, were....ok at best. Some were good, however a bunch seemed to have bad accents. I just read most of the text and skipped the voices. The rest of the sound was adequate. Gameplay: The controls were easy to follow for your character and you could set up your army into groups to move them. Clicking on a hero character brought up their spells and abilities lists, and clicking on an enemy would bring up hero and group icons allowing you to attack or cast spells. It was tough to control your army though. Mostly they would run amuck with no real formation, and often 3-5 of my troops would get cut down before the rest of the army caught up. Also, archers and magicians sometimes took the lead and would block the fighters from getting to an enemy first. They need an option to move a group by soldier type like fighter, then mage, then archer, then healer etc. and definitely more efficient use of magic. Often times a healer would waste mana on a barely hurt soldier, then run in and attack with a wood stick (and promptly be torn in two by a troll). Overall, the storyline was nicely done, with some RPG type quests among the fierce battles. With practice, patience, and perserverance you can control your army well enough to take down anything, and the earlier maps should be used for practice. And value-wise, this one's taking a good amount of time to beat.
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