Players control a mage called Tahar and a group of supporting characters with different backstories and abilities.

Many maps allow players to construct buildings and gather resources to create additional units with fixed abilities.

[2][3] Like many role-playing games, these characters can be customized by equipping them with different items such as weapons, armor and jewelry which influence their various abilities and effectiveness in battle.

[4] Some maps require players to construct a base of operations and specialized buildings to gather resources and recruit units to defeat larger groups of enemies or fulfill certain tasks.

[2] Each character has five attributes (strength, dexterity, intelligence, willpower and constitution) which influence what weapons, armor and items they can use as well their health, focus, damage, block and critical strike chances.

Alternatively, selecting an enemy and holding a certain key will slow down the game and shows a wheel of possible skills to use on the unit.

They allow players to focus a positive or negative effect, e.g. healing a group of friendly units or damaging a certain enemy.

Passive skills improve a character's abilities directly, such as increasing damage dealt with a certain weapon or heightened health regeneration.

[2] Skills are depicted as pictograms below each character's portrait in the upper left corner of the screen and can be accessed by clicking on them.

[2][7] Unlike in most real-time strategy games, workers are limited in each sector and cannot be controlled directly; instead, they are assigned to a building.

Several races such as humans, elves, orcs and dwarves co-exist and magic is an important part of life.

Noria takes Isamo's child to the queen, who grants them amnesty and allows them to train as a Wolf Guard.

Sentenced to death, Tahar is incarcerated beneath the Keep where they befriend Yria, an elven light magic user.

The Purity of Light's leader, Rondar Lacaine, asks for their help to stop the Bloodburn and gives them runes that allow them to use the Godstones.

He tasks them to travel to Farlon's Hope to find Isgrimm, a dwarven archaeologist looking for Mulandir, the lost city of the Shapers.

Tahar establishes a base of operations in Mulandir and convinces the Mohir Elves, the human Wayfarers and the Orcish Firewielder tribe to help find a cure.

After driving back Lacaine's forces, Tahar, now aided by the Lord Marshall, travels to strengthen their union.

After rescuing Angar's sister, the Lady Myriah Ultran, from Lacaine's mind control, they seek an alliance of the remaining noble houses.

[15] THQ Nordic previewed SpellForce 3 with screenshots at Gamescom 2014 and 2015, sparking interest in the game from trade magazines.

[25][26] On 19 December 2018, THQ Nordic announced a standalone downloadable expansion entitled SpellForce 3: Soul Harvest.

[29] On 3 November 2020, THQ Nordic released the second standalone downloadable expansion entitled SpellForce 3: Fallen God.

Versus offers skirmishes against the computer AI and ranked multiplayer matches but only a single scenario as a campaign demo.

[32] Unlike in regular free play, players can create a Journey hero which will be the same for all these maps and which can be customized from the races and skill trees from the base game as well as the expansions.

[31] Reforced also bring mechanics and designs introduced in the expansions to the base game as well as improvements to graphics, artificial intelligence and loot distribution.

[33] Critics lauded the visual design and the attention to detail as well as the variety of settings and lighting effects which enhanced the realism of the landscapes.

[24] GameSpot criticized the amount of detail, which caused slow loading times and overwhelmed the player, making it hard to notice certain important elements.

[4][24][12] PC Gamer praised the story but noted the number of similarities to Dragon Age and The Witcher, and criticized the companions as likeable but not memorable.

[4] The combination of role-playing and real-time strategy was considered a success, with many reviewers noting the unique and cohesive experience created by the merger.

[8][1][12] Rock, Paper, Shotgun expressed surprise that the multiplayer worked so well despite the missing context of the single player campaign and associated quests.

Critics likened the release to a beta version and pointed out various bugs, such as missing triggers for missions and broken quests, leave players unable to progress in the game.