Many, many moons ago I remember purchasing Warcraft III Reign of Chaos, and the add on Frozen Throne. It was one of the best Real-Time Strategy games I have ever played and I have put so many hours into it over the years. The first time I set up a LAN party was while playing Warcraft III. We had three laptops connected up together in a small cold room on TV dinner size tables and it was awesome. Nearly twenty years after it was released Blizzard announced they would be remastering both the Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne, along with The Founding of Durotar campaign. Naturally, when it was released earlier this year I snagged myself a copy.
I love M&M's, there are so many different types and flavors, so no matter what mood you are in there is something for you. I have gone through bouts of eating bags and bags of them and made myself feel quite sick but loved consuming them all the same. Playing Warcraft III Reforged made me wonder whether eating so many M&M's was a good thing?
Story
The Warcraft Universe is huge and highly detailed and that was way before World of Warcraft was released. Warcraft III Reforged has sixty missions! It is hard to sum up everything that the story covers in Warcraft III Reforged but I will give it a try. There are multiple campaigns and races you get to play with; Humans, Orcs, The Undead, Night Elves, Blood Elves, and a Mok'nathal. A demonic race known as the Burning Legion is trying to take over the world, this is essentially the base story. Within that, each race has its own story, the Humans are trying to stop the Burning Legion's army known as The Scourge. The Orcs are trying to deal with being part of the Burning Legion for a long time and now being free to be their own people. The Night Elves are trying to stop the forests and essentially mother nature from being destroyed by not only the Burning Legion but also all of the races taking resources to build their armies. The Undead wants to claim the world for themselves but there are a lot of different ideas on how this is to be done and who should be in charge. The Blood Elves are dealing with no longer having a pure source of magic and are essentially a dying race being bullied by the humans. Finally, there is Rexxar, a Mok'nathal who is a lonely wanderer trying to find his place in the world.
There is so much happening in the story, what makes it interesting is that there are a lot of grey areas. The heroes are not always as pure as they seem and willing to go to extreme lengths to get what they want. The villains are not just simple one-dimensional characters but complex characters who often made me wondering who the real villains were.
Overall a fantastic story that still holds up exceptionally well especially for a game that is almost twenty years old!
Visuals
When it comes to RTS's visuals have never been that important to me. I grew up playing series like Command and Conquer and The Settlers. Over the years RTS's visuals have improved massively, great examples of these for me personally would be Halo Wars and Frostpunk. The visuals have definitely been enhanced, remastered and upgraded since the release of Warcraft III in 2002. Each of the units looks a lot sharper and more defined, and when zooming in characters don't look pixelated. The levels themselves look really good (but being honest I always thought they looked good). I really love the visuals in the Night Elves campaign, the forests look lush and alive. One thing Blizzard has always been synonymous with is their cinematics. They look so good in fact that it makes me excited for a day that games have the same visuals for the gameplay itself.
Overall the new visuals help make a good looking game even better and I never tired of looking at them.
Music
The music for Warcraft III Reforged is the same as the original Warcraft III Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne. It has a distinctly old school sound, it's not quite retro, perhaps the best way to describe it would be to say it is a more civilized music, from a more civilized time (yeah, I have kind of taken that from a New Hope and repurposed it). That isn't a knock on it but is definitely very different from modern-day video game soundtracks.
The soundtrack is composed by Glenn Stafford, Tracy W. Bush and Derek Duke, who between them have provided the sounds of Warcraft II, III, and World of Warcraft along with Starcraft, Starcraft II and Overwatch.
The soundtrack is just shy of two hours and my favorites tracks include; 'Comrade Ship', 'Doom', 'Human #1', 'Human Defeat', 'Main Screen', 'Night Elf #2', 'Orc #2', 'Orc #3', 'Orc x1', 'Undead #2' and 'Undead #3'.
Gameplay
Warcraft III Reforged is like many RTS games, build a base, manage resources, build an army, destroy the enemy. Outside of the normal missions, you have ones where you have to defend an area or destroy one in a limited time. Then there is Defence of the Ancient (DOTA) style missions where you control one or two heroes and a limited amount of units, not hugely dissimilar to the mechanics of Diablo III.
Each race has its own strengths and weakness and you will get to explore all of them as you journey through each of the campaigns. The human race (ROFL) has well designed and strong buildings, mages and great siege units, the downside is that many of them are quite weak and can easily be killed. The Orcs have less refined and more tribal looking structure (which I really like), they don't tend to be very strong but make up for it in the strength of their units. The Undead have a big effect wherever they take up residence, a lush green area can be transformed into a deadly poisonous one. The base defenses are quite strong, while some units can be killed easily they are often cheap to produce and the stronger ones can easily take on multiple units with ease. Night Elves use nature to their advantage and rather than cutting down trees they kind of absorb the wood without destroying them? Don't ask me, do I look like an arborist? Their biggest strength is that at night they appear or don't appear visible to enemies making it easier to sneak around. The base structures are all living and can be moved around if needed which is really cool. The Blood Elves are quite similar to Night Elves, at least base structure-wise but I found their units to be a lot more battle-hardened and magic rich.
Separate to all the races you have the Mok'nathal, well one of them, named Rexxar. A traveler who is always accompanied by his pet companion Misha. There is no base-building involved with him and he can be controlled solo. His role starts as the new Orc empire is being established, he helps complete small missions which when combined together offer many hours of gameplay.
The game features many heroes and villains, there are around twenty of them in total. The standout ones for me were; Thrall, Lich Kel'Thuzard, Illidan, Prince Kael'Thas, Lady Vash and Rexxar. Each of them can be leveled up and gain four abilities that can then be further upgraded.
Some missions will seem quite quick, there are some really tricky ones along the way that I had to replay a number of times before beating them but it was all part of the fun. Overall the game holds up pretty well after all these years and the gameplay very solid.
Final Thoughts
So, after almost seventy hours (yeah, you read that right) how did I feel? Pretty damn good. It was great to revisit a familiar world with a fresh coat of paint and some tweaks. The main story and side stories are really interesting and are easy to see why there is so much literature on it. The visuals went from good to great, the more refined, polished look really helps bring it closer to modern-day RTS visuals. The music remained the same, I can't knock that but certainly feels a little aged or maybe I have just gotten too used to modern-day video game music. The gameplay is good but is often not for the faint of heart or those not willing to dedicate some serious hours to it. Overall this one gets a solid 4 out of 5
