SpellForce

SpellForce is a combination Real Time Strategy and RPG franchise created by German game developers Phenomic.

The original game SpellForce: The Order of Dawn was followed by two expansions: SpellForce: The Breath of Winter (2004) and SpellForce: Shadow of the Phoenix (2005).

SpellForce Gold Edition includes the first two games in the series, while SpellForce Platinum Edition includes all three games. SpellForce: Universe includes all three of the SpellForce games as well as both the sequel games.

A sequel, SpellForce 2: Shadow Wars was released in 2006 and SpellForce 2: Dragon Storm was released in 2007. JoWooD Entertainment spent many years working on a standalone expansion called SpellForce 2: Faith in Destiny, which was released in 2012 after many delays and acquisition by what is now THQ Nordic. A third expansion pack, Demons of the Past, was released in 2014.

A third game, SpellForce 3 released in 2017. An expansion to that, Soul Harvest has been announced.

Both games take the RTS/RPG concept and run with it, using slightly different leveling concepts along the way. There are Diablo-like hero-only maps, and full scale RTS maps as well.

Like everything else, there's a wiki.

Tropes used in SpellForce include:

All games in the series provide examples of:

All There in the Manual: Background information to the units and races are found here
Exclusively Evil: Subverted! The Shadows are portrayed as very nearly Eldritch Abominations in the first game. In the Shadow Wars the Big Bad makes a pact with the Shadows, (which most characters consider her Moral Event Horizon). They turn out to be bound to a particular artifact, and more of a Proud Warrior Race than anything. Also Averted with regard to every other playable race.
- Played straight with the Demons.
Authority Equals Asskicking: Bosses tend to be the leaders of their factions.
Batman Gambit: How the Big Bad kills the Big Good. Also, the Convocation on the part of the Demons and elemental powers. They convinced the Circle Mages that performing the rituals at the right time would give the performer unlimited power. It turned out that it summoned them to wreak havoc on the world.
Blessed with Suck: Rune warriors can summon huge armies and are immortal. However, if they are stay too long "dead" they will loose their memories and abilities. Oh, and they have to completely obey the person who has their rune stones.
- Maybe more a bit of a case of Cursed with Awesome are the Shaikan: They can revive other Shaikan, summon them from great distances and can use Blood Magic. The downside? If they die, they are not allowed into the River of Souls and have to stay on the riverside forever.
Broken Bridge: Many of them. Most portals don't become available until you've done something on that map. A new quest arc is usually kicked off by a previously-inaccessible gate in a major city becoming available.
Call Back: SpellForce and all its sequels start with a shot of a hero monument, which lights up and summons the Player Character. SpellForce 2 starts with a shot of a hero monument, totally inactive, then pulls back to the Player Character ruminating on the fact that the Rune Warriors are no more.
Contemptible Cover: Look at that smoking hot elf chick! What do you mean the graphics are nothing like that?
Critical Existence Failure: Almost. One's damage output is unaffected by Hit Points, but at about 15% of a unit's health, it slows way down. Useful to you when hunting down enemies, but it cuts both ways.
Cutscene: Most in-engine, the beginning and ending ones are cinematics.
Dark Is Not Evil: The PC can use Black Magic, if you like. Also, both the light and dark races are playable, and form a segment of the campaign.
Dropped a Bridge on Him: A npc in a side quest informs you that the ice elves from The Breath of Winter were wiped out by an invasion.
Expy: Craig Un'Shallach is a dark elf who wields two swords and had to leave his homeland.
Good Is Not Nice: The light races suffer from Obstructive Bureaucrats in Shadow Wars and Jerkassery throughout. Also, the PC is more than willing to slaughter armies of the light races if they get in his or her way.
Head Desk: To get your siege units to use their anti-building attacks against buildings, you have to set them next to the buildings without ordering them to attack -— otherwise, they'll bang their heads against the walls as they melee attack the buildings.
Infinity+1 Sword: There's always some convoluted quest to craft or find one. The quest for Amra's Armor (from The Order of Dawn) particularly stands out.
Lady Not-Appearing-In-This-Game: Every cover for every SpellForce game or expansion has a scantily-clad woman on it. Most of them have nothing to do with the game, and the few that do tend to have minor roles that don't warrant their place on the cover.
Loveable Rogue: Flink McWinter.
The Medic: Various healing units, the player if they choose Life Magic.
Mana: For the PC, heroes, and basic units alike.
Portal Network: The world is set up as a series of interconnected RTS or RPG maps. Travel is via portal, or Bindstone for the player character.
- Furthermore, the Portal Network was set up by the Big Good during the timeskip between The End of the World as We Know It and the beginning of the first game. When he gets killed Deader Than Dead, the portals begin to fade... see The Magic Goes Away.
Novelization: A trilogy written by Uschi Zietsch about the Shaikan.
Precursors: The Formers. No plot significance until Dragon Storm, just the source of some MacGuffins and Plot Coupons.
RPG: Whenever it's not a RTS. Notably:
- Adventure Towns: Each inhabited island generally has a big problem and some little ones. Uninhabited ones generally have a whole bunch of demons/undead/orcs/whatever to kill.
- An Adventurer Is You: Pretty much any option is available.
- Black Magic: Direct damage and life-sucking spells.
- But Thou Must!
- Level Cap: 30, except in Shadow of the Phoenix. 24 for the rest of the Player Party.
- Featureless Protagonist: The Player Character, which is used in all the cutscenes. There's a male and female voice actor, but that's it.
- Player Party: Up to five heroes serve the player character. In the first game they don't level, you just replace them with new ones as you level. In the second one they do level, and are actual characters in their own right.
- Sidequest: Aplenty. Some particularly convoluted ones lead to the Infinity+1 Sword and Armor, and stretch throughout entire games.
- Take Your Time: Unless you've opened up a headquarters for an RTS mission. In that case, get an army ready, and quick, because the CPU will start attacking soon and the attacks will get stronger and stronger unless you destroy their camps.
  - Either way, you can still turtle like an absolute Frenchman for hours - the plot can't go on without you unless you go through the Portal Network, and there are no Timed Missions.
- White Magic: Healing and buffing, as well as Turn Undead.
Real Time Strategy: Sometimes. Notably:
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Upgradable to a point.
- Damage Is Fire
- Hero Units: The Player Party.
- Non-Entity General: Averted. If the Player Character goes down, you cannot give orders until he respawns, which can be very bad for your undirected troops.
- Reinventing the Wheel: You need to research Double Crossbow... again.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: Seven different resources in the original. Some are Uselessium unless you control the appropriate race. Simplified vastly in the sequel.
The Siege: You defend at least a few bastions of light from The Horde.
Stable Time Loop: All Time Travel seems to work this way. Anytime the player helps build a Time Machine, he'll also be deeply involved in the resulting time loop. The entire plot of the first game is one of these, with the Big Bad/Big Good as the time traveler in question.
Standard Fantasy Setting: Just about everything on the list. Notably:
- Five Races: Dwarves, Elves, and Humans for the "light" races. Fairy and Cute are excluded.
- Fantasy Axis of Evil: Blizzard-style Orcs, Trolls and Dark Elves for the "dark" races. SpellForce 2 splits off Dark Elves into the Pact along with Gargoyles and Shadows, and adds Barbarians to the Trolls and Orcs to form the Clans. Keep in mind that Dark Is Not Evil, and the dark races are playable and take up half the campaign in The Order of Dawn and two-thirds of the campaign in Shadow Wars. Eldritch fulfills the Exclusively Evil role and are universally unplayable (see The Horde below). Crafty is excluded.
- The Horde: Of Undead or Demons, usually. They're the primary unplayable races. Also the Blades in The Order of Dawn. The Orcs act like it at first, but that's more a bunch of mercenaries than anything.
Storming the Castle: If the enemy has a legendary, nigh-impregnable fort, you'll take it from them. No Exceptions.
Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Urias in Shadow of the Phoenix, Borias and Lyen in Dragon Storm
Take a Third Option: The Circle Mages began to research and create rune warriors as a result of their need for reliable assistants. Standard magical servants such as bound elementals were loyal but unable to think for themselves, human mercenaries had the power to think and learn, but were prone to treachery. The rune warriors, humanoid souls bound to magical runes, have the best of both worlds.
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Logistics don't apply to the CPU at all in SpellForce's campaign. In SpellForce 2, less so.
The End of the World as We Know It: In the opening cutscene, as a result of "The Convocation". Only regions immediately around the Godstones fail to be reduced to chaotic ocean. This justifies the Portal Network.
Time Machine: Terminator rules. The Player Character helps build at least one in the first entry of each game. In both cases, it's an extremely elaborate process and takes the entire game. The one in The Order of Dawn is by way of MacGuffin Delivery Service, and is used by the Big Bad to go back in time and... become the Big Good.
Unholy Nuke: The Death sub-branch of Black Magic.

SpellForce and its expansions provide examples of:

An Ice Person: Any mage specializing in ice magic, of course. Notably, both Rohen and The Dark One (in-game, not in the opening cutscene). Also, all offensive elf spellcasters, since they worship an ice/nature deity.
Animate Dead: Classic style and high-powered, magic-induced Face Heel Turn style.
Back from the Dead: Rohen, in Shadow of the Phoenix. Animate Dead style.
Beef Gate: Of undead at the gate from Greydusk Vale to the Northern Windwalls. And another at the Frost Marshes made of Mecha-Mooks. Removed in a plot event by the Order of Dawn, at the cost of most of their manpower.
Big Bad: The Dark One.
Big Good: Rohen.
Crippling Overspecialization: The elves can only recruit their strongest units if they have iron, but they CAN'T GATHER THAT RESOURCE ON THEIR OWN.
- They can, but are highly inefficient in it.
Deal with the Devil: Uram in the backstory. The Player Character in The Order of Dawn, when he or she gives the Mask of Belial to Hokan Ashir.
Evil Versus Evil: Hokan versus Uram in the backstory. (Undead/Blades and Demons, respectively.)
Face Heel Turn: Rohen, as a result of Animate Dead.
Free-Fall Fight: In the opening cinematic, between Rohen and The Dark One.
Giant Flyer: Griffon Riders. They don't actually fly (in gameplay terms) until SpellForce 2.
Heel Face Turn: The Big Bad!
Horny Devils: "Seductress" demons.
I Hate Past Me: The Big Good in "The Order Of Dawn" is the future self of the Big Bad.
Late to the Party: You, several times. Most notably when the Order takes Frost Marshes from the Blades, being killed almost to a man in the process.
MacGuffin: The book. Later, the Phoenix Stone.
Love Makes You Evil: The emperor in Shadow of the Phoenix.
MacGuffin Delivery Service: Just about every single MacGuffin you get your hands on. See Unwitting Pawn.
The Magocracy: In the backstory, the thirteen Circle Mages were the single most powerful power bloc. And when they had a falling out, well, see The End of the World as We Know It.
- Notably, Circle Mages (specifically, Hokan and Uram) were responsible for the creation of Undead, Iron Ones, and Demons, which are all three of the major Exclusively Evil/The Horde factions you have to deal with in The Order of Dawn.
My Death Is Just the Beginning: By the Big Good. He knew he would die and that the Big Bad would get the MacGuffin because, well, see Stable Time Loop.
Names to Run Away From Really Fast: The Dark One.
Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Rohen/The Dark One's goal at the end of The Order of Dawn. At some point while taking The Slow Path, he resigns himself to the Stable Time Loop.
Stealth-Based Mission: The ruined city Mulandir. On your first visit, the city is full of high level Medusas who petrify your characters on sight. But Mulandir is only a stealth based mission the first few times you visit the place, because after some grinding, the enemies in the city are weak compared to your characters.
Stock Shout-Outs: "The Raven". Specifically, an undead called the "Nevermore" drops an item called the "Ravencap".
Unwinnable By Mistake: Present in The Breath Of Winter, on the Firefangs map. Did you get the Shadow Ring from the hermit before activating the Dark Elf monument? Have fun restarting the campaign from scratch, provided you didn't just break the CD first. However, if you are not above cheating, you can cheat yourself to victory and continue your adventure as normal.
Unwitting Pawn: The Player Character. Repeatedly.

SpellForce 2 and its expansions provide examples of:

All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Shaikan fall to the Pact nigh-immediately.
Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: The hat of the Shaikan. You later learn that in every generation the Big Bad takes control of one of his descendants, partly explaining their "disloyalty"
Deadpan Snarker: Mordecay: "You are rescuing a dragon from a woman? Shouldn't it be the other way round?"
First Episode Spoiler: The Shaikan are all but wiped out by the Pact in the first level.
In the Blood: A Shaikan is anyone with even a trace of dragon's blood in their veins. It has a tendency to turn them into a Blood Knight. This is viewed as the Dark Side by the Shaikan at large. One Shaikan in each generation also has the spirit of the evil first Shaikan in him. That would be the Player Character, of course.
Last of His Kind: The player and his party in Shadow Wars are the last of the Shaikan. In Dragon Storm this is no longer the case, as a result of the first player character's actions.
Heroic Sacrifice: You at the end of Dragon Storm. You get better.
The Magic Goes Away: Partially. As a result of the events of Shadow of the Phoenix, all the Circle Mages have been Killed Off for Real/are now Deader Than Dead. Therefore, anything they did now suffers from No Ontological Inertia, and such things as the Portal Network and the Rune Warriors are losing their magic. Repairing/duplicating the magic of the Portal Network is a major goal in the second game.
Previous Player Character Cameo: Previous Player Characters figure prominently in the plot. In particular, the PC from The Breath of Winter is the shadow who helps lead his race in a Heel Face Turn, and the Player Character from Shadow Wars becomes a dragon in Dragon Storm.
Religion of Evil: The red cult.