I recently bought Spellforce 3 Reforced for my PS4. Looking at the box art it was a wizard and warrior type of thing so my kind of game.

I got it installed and find a weird looking main menu with lots of options. Finding my way into the main games solo campaign I became baffled with how overcrowded the screen was with information everywhere. I liked the sound of the early story with hunting a mage enemy being a key focus and I was having a bit of a moment getting used to combat but could see myself potentially enjoying it with a clear view and enough practice. I didn’t like the point and click location movement control scheme, this always makes games feel like they belong on PC and are out of place on consoles (even Baldurs Gate has free movement outside of combat on console).

The game then had me assigning workers, making them build a barracks and defending the town. I still hadn’t figured out inventory by this point. The attack on the town had me hating the combat as the little soldiers were so tiny with health bars so small I couldn’t tell what was happening as I used random abilities in the hope that something was helpful to the little men. The game then told me that if my town ever fell it would basically be game over.

At this point I saved the game, feeling overwhelmed and found that I’d had six minutes of playtime. I play games for fun, sometimes strategy games, sometimes other things, however having so much thrown at me in such a short time is too much to fit my idea of fun, it feels like admin.

I’ve enjoyed Civilisation Revolution, I tried Command & Conquer when I was young. I liked Dragon Age, Divinity Original Sin and have had plenty of fun challenges with both pause-then-act and real-time combat. Spellforce feels like a weird blend of everything so far and I’m struggling to get the desire to play it.

The question is: Are all RTS games terrible or is Spellforce just a bad one to start with? Maybe just the console version. This is the fastest I’ve ever regretted buying a game.