SpellForce 3

The pitch

SpellForce 3 asks you to run two games' worth of systems at once. On one layer, it's a real-time strategy game: build a base, manage resources, train and command an army, and fight skirmishes against AI or other players. On the other, it's a party-based RPG: a customisable hero character gains levels, equips gear, recruits companions and works through a branching story campaign. The two halves are meant to feed each other -- your hero fights alongside the armies you build, and RPG progression carries between and inside the RTS missions -- and it's a structural combination few other games attempt this thoroughly.

Developed by Grimlore Games and published by THQ Nordic, SpellForce 3 released as a full game on 7 December 2017, following a 2017 open beta that gave an early look at its content rather than a separate-year Early Access period. It's the third mainline entry in a series stretching back to 2003, and it landed carrying real expectations from longtime fans of the earlier games.

A genuinely rocky launch

Reading the negative reviews from December 2017 through much of 2018, the complaints are specific, consistent and largely mechanical rather than about the core concept. Unit AI on the RTS side gets called "dumb as bricks," requiring constant micromanagement while the game's own AI opponents play more competently. Bugs recur across many reviews -- missing quest markers, dialogue that could stall progress, systems that didn't behave as documented -- and at least one reviewer explicitly suggests the game needed another month or two of development before shipping. A January 2018 review sums up the tone of the period well, describing "a bumpy release with mixed reviews, mostly due to the presence of bugs and a fairly high retail price." None of this reads as reviewers rejecting the hybrid concept -- multiple negative reviews explicitly say they wanted to like the game and found real things to praise in its writing and art, while still concluding the execution wasn't there yet.

The Red Shell controversy, briefly and specifically

SpellForce 3 also carries one specific, well-documented 2018 controversy worth stating plainly rather than gesturing at vaguely. In June 2018, PC Gamer and other outlets reported that Red Shell, a third-party marketing-attribution tool that tracked whether players who'd clicked an ad later bought or played a game, had been quietly bundled into dozens of popular titles -- Civilization VI, Kerbal Space Program and Elder Scrolls Online among them -- without clear player consent, and was tracking device and browser data beyond what the game itself needed. The backlash was broad and fast: developers across the industry pulled the tool within days of the story breaking, and Grimlore Games removed Red Shell from SpellForce 3 in that same window. Neither the current standard release nor the Reforced version contains it. It's a real episode in the game's history, but a resolved and dated one -- not an ongoing concern for anyone buying the game today.

What actually improved: Reforced

What separates SpellForce 3 from many rocky 2017 launches is what Grimlore Games did about it. In 2020, the studio released SpellForce 3: Reforced, a free overhaul available to every existing owner, which folded improvements from the game's two paid story expansions back into the base campaign and reworked balance, pacing and a number of the systems launch reviewers had criticised. It's now the only version sold on Steam -- the storefront listing itself carries the Reforced name. Reviewers who specifically compare the two describe a meaningfully better game: "Reforced version is SpellForce 3 like how it should have been done from start on," reads one, crediting it with merging the expansion-era improvements back into a single, more polished whole. That kind of direct, substantial post-launch course-correction is relatively rare, and it's the clearest reason this review scores meaningfully higher than a snapshot of the December 2017 launch build would have.

Where fans of each half still land

Even in its improved form, SpellForce 3 draws a specific, recurring complaint from genre purists on both sides: RTS players sometimes find the strategy layer thinner than a dedicated RTS, and RPG players sometimes find the character-and-quest layer thinner than a dedicated RPG. One reviewer puts it plainly, guessing that people who dislike the game "are either dedicated RPG fans or hardcore RTS players," while players without a strong preference for one genre over the other tend to enjoy the blend more freely. That's a structural trade-off rather than a bug, and it's worth weighing honestly: SpellForce 3 rewards players who want both halves roughly equally, more than players who came primarily for one.

What the achievement data shows

Global achievement completion tracks a familiar shape for a long campaign RPG/RTS hybrid: early story milestones sit at 40-65%, dropping steadily through the mid-campaign, and late-game and multiplayer-specific achievements -- defeating a late-campaign dragon, completing skirmish matches -- sit under 5%. That's consistent with a substantial single-player campaign that a meaningful share of players don't finish, in line with the genre's usual pattern rather than an unusually steep or unusually shallow drop-off.

Value

At NZ$59.95, currently 75% off at NZ$14.98 at the time of checking, SpellForce 3 -- now sold as the Reforced version by default -- is a strong value case for a substantial campaign with two additional story expansions' worth of content folded in. The steep, frequent discount reflects a franchise title rather than a AAA blockbuster, but for RTS/RPG hybrid fans specifically it represents a large amount of genuinely distinctive content for a modest price, particularly compared to what its 2017 launch price and reception would have suggested.

Verdict

SpellForce 3 is a good example of a genre experiment that shipped before it was ready and got meaningfully better afterward rather than being abandoned to its launch-week reputation. The rocky 2017 launch -- bad unit AI, real bugs, an unfinished feel -- was real, and reviewers from that period documented it consistently and fairly. The free 2020 Reforced overhaul is just as real, and reviewers who've played both versions largely agree it addressed a meaningful share of those problems. Buy it today, and you're buying the improved version by default; approach it as a genuine hybrid that asks you to want both an RTS and an RPG at once, and it remains one of the more distinctive entries in either genre.