Phenomic's Spellforce was definitely a love-hate kind of relationship. It had nearly everything one could ask for from a hybrid game. It kept the primary portions of each genre, threw in some of the quirkier bits from each for flair, and brewed up a fine bit of creativity. Sadly, somewhere along the way there were some problems. It hit some walls that, for many, ruined the entire rest of the game. In a stunning move rarely heard of in entertainment, the developer listened to the complaints and the suggestions of fans and reviewers; enter stage right: Spellforce II: Shadow Wars.

The Spellforce series is built off of the concept that real-time strategy titles and role-playing games are both so great when independent, why not combine them to make a whole new kind of gameplay? Phenomic is not the first to try this, and probably won't be the last. Judging from the portions of the game sent to me for trial, this could be a very, very welcome trend.

Much like the first title in this series, Spellforce II combines the management and resources of the RTS genre with the character development, plotline, and questing of RPGs. In the first title, too much time had to be spent organizing and tweaking your resources and base on each map to be enjoyable, even for most RTS fans. Phenomic has revised this, much like most of the original, to be more streamlined, more efficient, and more fun.

For instance, there are now only three resources instead of seven, and they are universal between the races. Gathering these is much easier, with a feature that comes in extremely useful and could teach some major RTS creators a lesson: designation at build. This means that when you create a peon or gathering unit, you click on a different build button for whichever resource you wish that unit be assigned to. Thus you can click three times on the Silver gatherer button and as each is made, they automatically head to the silver and get to work. No more waiting for each one to be trained to assign it. It's the little details like this that make a game stand out among so many.

The role-playing elements have been largely beefed up, bringing about a great number of RPG elements that felt sorely lacking last time around. Your custom created hero is totally of your creation, from the first incarnation to the skill distribution at each level. There are thousands of pieces of gear for them to use, each with its own details and design that shows through not only in the gameplay but also in the cut scenes. These cut scenes are also a great deal more frequent, as Spellforce II has a very deep and personally involving plot. Two of them, in fact. I wasn't able to get my hands on it, but word is the game will ship with a two or three player co-op mode featuring its own 20 to 30 hour long campaign, completely separate from the main storyline.

The visuals are a shocking improvement. Most, including myself, believed that Phenomic would simply give a slight facelift to the first Spellforce's engine. This isn't the case, I'm glad to say. There is a whole new graphics engine at work, bringing all kinds of shading, glows, and many, many other enhancements. The game, put simply, looks phenomenal. The two angles each display their own variety of effects, bringing new life into the same terrain and units. Regrettably, this caused an enormous amount of slow-down and a staggering drop to frame rates.

With a bit more balancing, a good amount of tweaking to performance, and some good multiplayer (which I hope is already underway in the beta) this could easily be contender for a huge breakout hit. The marketing will take some work to sell the idea of a hybrid to most traditionalists, but once they play a slightly improved (probably a single patch's worth) version of Spellforce II: Shadow Wars, they will forget the old hybrid stigma. This is definitely one to watch.