YMMV / SpellForce 2

• Anti-Climax Boss: The final fight of Shadow Wars. Getting to Malacay (both in the final mission and the mission before) is harder than actually killing him. His gimmick is that he constantly teleports. However, if your party can equip ranged weapons (bows or wands), then like Aryn's fight back in Breath of Winter, you simply position your party so that they are always within range and let your ranged attackers fire away. You just have to ensure that the party's healed up (particularly Nightsong, who must run into melee range).
• Contested Sequel: Downplayed, as the game is still generally liked, but it had gathered less positive review than the first one, due in part to the great reduction in race and simplification of the resources.
• Continuity Lock-Out: The expansions published by Nordic can cause this in newcomers to the franchise, simply because they came out years after Dragon Storm.
• Demonic Spiders: In Shadow Wars, Malacay's Malar. Tons of health, very fast movement, extremely powerful attacks, and they respawn virtually the moment they're killed. Bonus points for actually looking insectoid. The aptly named Firestarters are arguably the worst of the lot due to their fire nova's immense range and damage output. Thankfully, they only appear in the final mission, and there's a special type of weapons available that deals considerable bonus damage against them.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: Both Faith and Demons were hit with this (Demons more than Faith). It didn't help that both games were released years after Dragon Storm, ^note Faith was released 5 years after Dragon Storm, while Demons was released 1.5 years after Faith. with no updates in the graphics engine, and were developed by different studios. In addition, reviews were mixed, and Demons had various issues which went unresolved. However, Spellforce 3 may avert this. ^note THQ Nordic has engaged a third studio to develop the new installment.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Leave and re-enter any map and you'll find it exactly as you left it... except for your collected resources, which have all been reset to zero for no apparent reason during your absence. This can cause some serious headaches especially in the Westguard if you seized the first opportunity to strip-mine everything in preparation of coming battles, only to find your amassed resources gone with no way to replenish them upon your return. If you're really unlucky, you may end up in an Unintentionally Unwinnable situation.
• That One Sidequest: Searching for metal geodes and Black Legion armor pieces at the Gate of Swords is basically easy but lies somewhere between tedious and frustrating, depending on how methodically you approach the search. Many pieces are buried in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no hint as to their position, so if you miss a spot and come up short by one piece, you can start combing the fairly large area all over again.