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United Kingdom13775 Posts
2017 has been one hell of a year, so by the end of it I very much needed to sit down and just waste a week or two on something to cool down during the holiday season. As a fan favorite game on these forums (shocking for a Starcraft gaming forum, I know), I decided, why not give WC3 another shot? I sort of liked it back in the day, though I wasn't quite able to beat the campaign before I lost my CD and the computer it was installed on, it was definitely one I hoped to get back to eventually. Seemed like the perfect opportunity, so why not?
For reference, I come from the Brood War scene, and before that from the Command & Conquer games. I briefly played SC2 Wings of Liberty and didn't particularly care for it, and I never really cared too much for the MOBA (LoL/DotA) games. That should give you some idea of what I probably would or wouldn't like in this game and where my commentary is coming from. I haven't ever played the WC3 expansion (The Frozen Throne) but I'll definitely get to it eventually. I'm sure a lot of you are far more familiar with the game than I am, but nevertheless I want to give my impressions as I played through it.
Campaign
With a whopping 34 missions, this campaign is definitely a hefty one. It follows the story of all four playable races - humans, the undead, the orcs, and then the night elves - with a consistent narrative told throughout it all. Since I'm generally interested in the storytelling of it all, I took a look at how the lore is laid out relative to the game's predecessors, and as far as I can tell it's essentially a standalone narrative in the same continuity as WC1/WC2. That's good, I'm not really up for having to play the predecessors just to be able to follow the story of this one.
Obviously the only way to play is to complete the campaign on the hardest difficulty setting, so that's how I played. Though my strategies tended to be extremely simplistic due to the fact that I simply wasn't interested in having to learn complex micromanagement maneuvers and spellcasting systems as are present in professional play. My army compositions usually consisted of basic infantry - riflemen and footmen, grunts and headhunters, so on and so forth - along with the hero units and artillery (catapults, mortars and steam engines, etc). It usually worked alright, with some notable exceptions, though I must say that in subsequent parts of the campaign I often had my ass handed to me by units I never learned how to use. After I finished Human and started playing Undead, in the later missions I continually got brutalized by sorceresses, which I didn't use because of the painfully annoying mechanics they had. Though nothing hurt nearly as much as the sheer beefiness of the Orc armies...
If you need a reminder of what the missions are, here's a list that should give you a decent synopsis of them all.
Prologue Campaign
Not much to say because it's really cookie cutter, but it's definitely a nice touch that it has a story element to it. Gave me a reason to play it, at the very least.
Human Campaign
Following the story of the clearly not villanous Prince Arthas, this game takes you across the great human kingdom of Lordaeron as the prince and his troops attempt to save the kingdom from the undead plague. By the end the prince abandons everything and joins the Undead as his pursuit of victory drives him insane.
Honestly, this part of the campaign is also very simple and I don't exactly have too much to say about it. The first few missions are tutorial-esque, teaching you to build units with the human building mechanics, and to scour the map for NPC opponents ("creeps" I believe they're called in WC3 lingo). At any rate, all of the standard missions were pretty simple mass-and-destroy affairs, where a standard big army composition was more than enough to break through the enemy's defenses and take the win. The fifth mission and the final mission also had a significant defensive component to it, a task which is relatively easy to perform because the human structures are quite beefy. The units were mostly nothing special (just your generic melee/ranged/spellcaster units), with the exception of the steam engine, a short-range heavily armored building killer. Seems like humans would be a great race in a game where you aren't highly incentivized to have smaller unit counts by the low maximum supply and the upkeep mechanic.
It's kind of unfortunate that the best hero you have (Jaina/Archmage) only joins your team for a short time. The result is that you're left mostly with heroes that are usable, but that are really fairly minor presences on the battlefield. Ultimately the Arthas/Paladin hero is very helpful with the Holy Light (heal/enemy damage) spell, but healing standard rather than enemy units is not really all that great. Meh.
The only mission that gave me trouble here was the final one, where Arthas gains Frostmourne and challenges the big villain of the human campaign: the Dreadlord Mal'Ganis. And really, the only difficulty in this mission is dealing with the fact that it's the first time that the enemy sends their hero into battle.
Undead Campaign
Arthas revives as an undead, resurrects a minor antagonist from the previous campaign segment (Kel'Thuzad, who turns from a nobody into an actually decent character), revives a powerful daemon, and destroys lots of people in the process with the weaksauce power of the Undead army.
The Undead units are mostly really brittle and there's really not much I can say about it. The Necromancer represents one of my favorite designs for a spellcaster and it's a real shame that it is nigh-unusable simply because of how dependent it is on high mana and the unrealistic presence of well-positioned mounds of corpses. Ultimately I ended up solving most of the problems with Crypt Fiends, one of the most impressively versatile units in the game that has a great counter to air-based foes and a not-so-bad mix of HP and offensive stats (and is also a really cool unit design). Some problems could only be solved via Frost Wyrm, but most everything else I did using mostly armies of massed Crypt Fiends. I actually really liked the Undead and their unit composition, but it just doesn't seem like they hold up well against any of the other races - which seems to be the case competitively.
The heroes are actually pretty cool though, with Death Knight Arthas being a slightly more usable clone of his Paladin self (mostly due to the added mobility with riding horseback), and Kel'Thuzad/Lich being a useful spellcaster. Better than the human bunch, to be sure.
I felt the design of each of the missions was fairly simplified because as poorly as I played, I got through this set of missions in relatively short order. A group of twenty Crypt Fiends with heroes and artillery mostly killed off any foe that didn't just throw themselves upon a wall of Spirit Towers and died that way. Only the last two missions posed any threats. The seventh (second to last) was tough because the auras made any approach difficult, and the blue base (behind the second aura) was so tanky that I really had no means to break it without abusing the AI to lure out the hero and Frost Wyrms to freeze the base's production (all while having to defend from two bases worth of beefy air and ground attacks). And the final mission because it involved relentless attacks from multiple bases that could only be deflected by Frost Wyrm attacks. Many a time I lost on this last mission with a second or two to go, until I realized that there was nothing stopping me from just casting Death Coil on Kel'Thuzad to extend his lifespan by about that long  .
Orc Campaign
The green dudes that are addicted to combat have to travel west to protect themselves from the daemons, and have to suppress their desire to kill stuff long enough to work with the humans to protect their race from the approach of their daemonic foes!
The Orc campaign is actually a sort of interesting one, with quite a few no-base missions with limited units that relies on efficient hero use. Really, the hardest part of this campaign was to fight air unit swarms (especially harpies) because the orcs' most efficient way of doing battle against air units is simply to throw down guard towers. Overall, Orcs felt to me like an upgraded version of humans, with weaker defensive abilities (weaker structures, no spamming peons to build a building quickly) and no steam engine, but with vastly superior offensive capabilities. Not a single mission was actually particularly difficult because Orc units are just so powerful. Interestingly, the only difficulty in the final mission was the Orc opponent units themselves. The undead and daemonic units? Easy pickings.
All the heroes had pretty good special abilities, but of course by far the best is Grom/Blademaster, with a hefty damage output and the brutal Bladestorm attack that takes out gigantic swathes of enemy units. Basically there was no ground threat that ever made life difficult for the Orcs, by virtue of beefy melee units, a powerful siege artillery, and OP heroes. Only air units were ever a problem, and the campaign never really did have too many of those. Easy campaign, though this part of the plot is the best so far in that it covers a wide range of the characters that play a role throughout the whole series.
Orcs are beefy and strong. What else is there to say? OP race.
Night Elf Campaign
The blue elves who love nature and hate anyone and everyone else fight in the name of a gigantic horse man against everyone who steps foot inside their forest!
I basically played this campaign with nothing but archers and the occasional ballista. I briefly tried diversifying my strategy before coming to the conclusion that Night Elves have by far the best massable basic infantry and that the computer opponent didn't really warrant any other approach. Two missions proved to be sort of difficult for me: the third and the final mission. The third mission, awakening Furion, was tough because of the time limit, it took me a few tries to be able to get past the Orc base quickly enough to meet the time required (had to learn to spam ballista shots at key buildings more effectively and to create more archers). The final mission was a doozy, though: defending the World Tree against constant assault by an all-out daemonic/undead foe, with barely functioning human and orc defenses, for 45 minutes. I have to admit that after spending four days on this mission and trying out quite a few different strategies, I used a cheat code to get the ending - before instantly regretting it and trying again with a strategy that finally worked: archer/dryad spam, save between waves, run away from the base as soon as it becomes clear that there is no way to survive that wave, and generally just stalling for as long as possible against this kind of threat.
All the heroes here are pretty good; the two main heroes have the Starfall/Tranquility Ultimate combination, which makes for a tanky and deadly defense in the final mission. But Illidan/Demon Hunter is by far the most awesomest of them all. Undeniably useful given that this is the most important hero in competitive play, but also just has a great character design. Only present for one mission, but in that one mission he takes out the second most powerful opponent of the entire campaign (Tichondrius) as if it were just no big deal. Too bad that everyone just instantly hates him.
At first I didn't really like Night Elves - their combat mechanics were bizarre and they seemed a tad irrationally xenophobic - but after a while I started to appreciate them. They have some interesting mechanics and spellcasters that, with practice, could definitely make them a really cool race to use. Being the final campaign of the game, they got the hardest mission of it all - but it's a pretty neat race.
Other Thoughts and Conclusion
I gave quite a few thoughts on individual aspects of the gameplay throughout the Campaign section. I didn't devote all that much time to multiplayer, since Frozen Throne is the one that's actually played competitively, but a few things did strike me. I did watch a few pro games though to get a feel for how 1v1s are actually played, most notably this one:
Honestly, with all the mechanics of this game, I have a hard time calling it an RTS in the purest form. Between upkeep, a supply cap that makes it harder to have more than about thirty combat units (and more realistically 10-20), hero units, and most importantly the prevalence of RPG-esque elements like random foe encounters, leveling up heroes, and frequent item use, it's more like a hybrid between an RTS and other genres. I suppose it's a great testament to that fact that that is exactly how the successors of the game developed: the hugely popular MMORPG World of Warcraft built further on the RPG-like elements of the game and the storyline into an RPG proper, and the MOBA games (DotA and its successors) retained something of that hybrid style but focused even further in on that hero-centric mechanic.
None of that makes it a bad game in the slightest; on its own merits this actually turns into a pretty neat game. I sort of see a lot of WC3-esque choices made in SC2, a definite wrong choice since Starcraft is more of an RTS proper than the hero-centric and sandbox-like WC3 mechanic. But in its own way, this game makes for a very interesting spectacle to watch and a not too bad game to play.
Still, it's sort of interesting. Despite still having a definitive fanbase, however reduced over the reality of aging with the times, this game is very much notable for the way it inspired some rather unique successors with its unique twist on the RTS mechanics and its support for custom content. Ironically the game it helped create (WoW) and the genre that was built upon it (MOBA) have eclipsed WC3 itself in popularity. Yet as a board that largely started and functions as an RTS community, the original certainly seems to have a fandom all its own.
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Wc3 campaign is super fun. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
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I know this was focusing WCIII: ROC, but the Orc bonus campaign in TFT was the best.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 02 2018 13:09 Jerubaal wrote:
I know this was focusing WCIII: ROC, but the Orc bonus campaign in TFT was the best.
Ooh that sounds cool. Is it something I’d unlock by actually just playing it or is it one of those secret bonus missions that you have to do something very special to unlock?
Edit: answered my own question by looking at TFT, lol.
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Warcraft III is a really cool game. brings back memories.
I just don't share your enthusiasm about the Demon Hunter. I think it's the most terrible design they could come up with: They design a RTS with a focus on "hero" units. All these heroes use mana to activate their abilities (I don't think anyone would go "ooh cool an aura with +5/10/15% attack speed. how fun"). and then they design the demon hunter whose only purpose is to drain mana so I can't use my heroes.
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Glad you went back and tried WC3 again. I loved playing it the first time after WC1/2 and seeing more of the story. Very enjoyable read LegalLord.
As mentioned by Jerubaal. You should really give the Orc campaign in TFT a try. It's mostly hero focused but I found it very fun leveling up and finding hidden items and quest. Leads into WoW quite nicely as well.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 02 2018 21:23 Hryul wrote:
Warcraft III is a really cool game. brings back memories.
I just don't share your enthusiasm about the Demon Hunter. I think it's the most terrible design they could come up with: They design a RTS with a focus on "hero" units. All these heroes use mana to activate their abilities (I don't think anyone would go "ooh cool an aura with +5/10/15% attack speed. how fun"). and then they design the demon hunter whose only purpose is to drain mana so I can't use my heroes.
It's more so Illidan's character than the generic Demon Hunter itself, though I don't think having a mana burn mechanic is all that bad either. Honestly it seems that a pretty significant part of the support unit mechanics (i.e. non-heroes) actually used in play are about denying heroes their gamebreaking spells by one means or another, though draining their mana is for sure one of the most aggressive means to that end.
The thing I don't like about the Demon Hunter is how it's a melee unit in the company of a faction that is largely based on ranged attacks. Despite being so useful independently that it necessarily makes up the core of the party of the player, the Demon Hunter really is outside of the scope of what most Night Elf units are actually about.
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TLADT24920 Posts
I loved WCIII. Yes, the game is very different from BW but it shines in its own right imo. The demon hunter is one of my favourite units and Illidan was a favourite character of mine back in the day. Summoning elementals, blizzards and having all those fantasy units, like dragons was pretty nifty and fun to play with. I also liked how all the races played differently. If you were only trying to play the game using the basic units, I think you missed out on a large chunk of some of the cooler units like I think it was Raiders that Orc had that can strap flying units to the ground or the bat unit, whatever its called.
Necromancer with the undead siege unit that auto-generates corpses was lots of fun too. Mix the two together and you get almost infinite skeletons especially if you toggle autocast! haha. Given, I can't remember if this was in RoC or in TFT but it was a pretty cool thing. Banshees were also awesome as well! I think you were able to possess units as well, at least if I recall properly. Been a while since I last touched the campaign. Frost Wyrms were another unit I really liked.
For humans, probably the spellcasters and paladins. One cool thing about night elves is the ability to hide at night. Trying to remember if there's a specific unit I liked, probably the druids. The ability to transform into bears and birds was interesting to toy with.
Agree on the hero-centered orc storyline in TFT, must play imo. Lots of fun and quite laidback despite only have to control like 4 units at best. Also, you have to try TFT. New heroes for each races, more cool spells and interesting units too. The story also gets more interesting! Did I mention a brand new race as well?????
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On January 03 2018 03:19 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2018 21:23 Hryul wrote:
Warcraft III is a really cool game. brings back memories.
I just don't share your enthusiasm about the Demon Hunter. I think it's the most terrible design they could come up with: They design a RTS with a focus on "hero" units. All these heroes use mana to activate their abilities (I don't think anyone would go "ooh cool an aura with +5/10/15% attack speed. how fun"). and then they design the demon hunter whose only purpose is to drain mana so I can't use my heroes. It's more so Illidan's character than the generic Demon Hunter itself, though I don't think having a mana burn mechanic is all that bad either. Honestly it seems that a pretty significant part of the support unit mechanics (i.e. non-heroes) actually used in play are about denying heroes their gamebreaking spells by one means or another, though draining their mana is for sure one of the most aggressive means to that end. The thing I don't like about the Demon Hunter is how it's a melee unit in the company of a faction that is largely based on ranged attacks. Despite being so useful independently that it necessarily makes up the core of the party of the player, the Demon Hunter really is outside of the scope of what most Night Elf units are actually about.
Well granted, the mana burn ability in itself is not the main problem. it's imo that you can trade 50 for 150 mana, thus not rendering only one but all enemy heroes useless with one hero. Said hero also deals a fair amount of damage.
I think the Spellbreaker (TFT unit) does it better: medium ranged units which burns a small amount of mana when hitting a unit. Thus you can hit a hero in range, but the hero can be microed out of it.
I honestly don't remember all the Matchups of RoC.
I know that HvO was mostly spellcaster (priest/sorc/vodoo doc/shaman) war with both sides trying to hit good aoe spells. (Archmage Blizzard/Mountain king Thunderclap vs Tauren Chieftain's Shockwave) and dispelling the Vodoo doctor's wards and Bloodlust.
HvNE was riflemen vs dryads. You couldn't use spellcasters b/c dryads dispelled everything and were immune to magic.
HvUD was priests/sorc vs fiends, again b/c skeletons could be dispelled. Here HU tried to go triple hero w pally trying to counter the hero sniping of ud. (Coil/Frost Nova)
OvUD was at first spellcasters vs fiends but then wyvern vs fiends b/c the hero sniping of ud was too strong.
forgot about OvNE, UDvNE.
the main hero for Orc, i.e. was always the far seer 1st and then Tauren Chieftain.
The switch to grunt/raider/Blade Master came with TFT and the shop. The shop allowed melee units to heal up and don't depend on the summons from the Far Seer to not take damage from creeps.
Also a change in the damage dealt severely weakened spellcasters.
NE actually does have a melee unit with the druid of the claw metamorph. it's just that ranged units dealt absurd amount of damage to "heavy" armor (iirc the name) that no one used it (and knights/tauren/abombs for that matter.)
But I can defenitely see that a melee hero for a ranged race seems odd.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 03 2018 05:23 BigFan wrote:
I loved WCIII. Yes, the game is very different from BW but it shines in its own right imo. The demon hunter is one of my favourite units and Illidan was a favourite character of mine back in the day. Summoning elementals, blizzards and having all those fantasy units, like dragons was pretty nifty and fun to play with. I also liked how all the races played differently. If you were only trying to play the game using the basic units, I think you missed out on a large chunk of some of the cooler units like I think it was Raiders that Orc had that can strap flying units to the ground or the bat unit, whatever its called.
Necromancer with the undead siege unit that auto-generates corpses was lots of fun too. Mix the two together and you get almost infinite skeletons especially if you toggle autocast! haha. Given, I can't remember if this was in RoC or in TFT but it was a pretty cool thing. Banshees were also awesome as well! I think you were able to possess units as well, at least if I recall properly. Been a while since I last touched the campaign. Frost Wyrms were another unit I really liked.
For humans, probably the spellcasters and paladins. One cool thing about night elves is the ability to hide at night. Trying to remember if there's a specific unit I liked, probably the druids. The ability to transform into bears and birds was interesting to toy with.
Agree on the hero-centered orc storyline in TFT, must play imo. Lots of fun and quite laidback despite only have to control like 4 units at best. Also, you have to try TFT. New heroes for each races, more cool spells and interesting units too. The story also gets more interesting! Did I mention a brand new race as well?????
Well... I didn't completely neglect using more advanced units, they just rarely made up a big part of my army in base-building missions because it was just so much more convenient to spam up a huge stack of basic units.
For humans, I kind of neglected the sorceress far too much. She has a shitton of useful spells and perhaps those could have made some parts of the missions a bit easier. But the biggest issue was always the heroes and I think heroes are immune to sheeping. Gryphons also seemed useful, but a pain to make. Priests probably would have helped a bit, but really the units that would have been under attack would have been the ones that died the least (knights, footmen, and melee heroes) so it seemed pointless.
Undead... ugh. Crypt Fiends are probably spellcasters in a sense and they were really cool to use, because they could just take an entire air armada out of the sky like it were nothing. Ghouls were too fragile as to be useless, so I never really used them. Necromancers I used to use, but honestly I have to admit they suck. Using meat wagons on graveyards is a great way to get skeletons, but I found that skeletons were far more useful when you spawned them amongst the enemy units and maximized your attack area, which becomes a much bigger challenge and just not worth it for the mana requirements of necromancers. Frost wyrms kind of qualify as the advanced spellcaster, and I definitely used those a fair bit.
Orcs have the troll doctors, which have the same issue as priests. The raiders I tended not to use because grunts were beefier and because their ensnare just didn't have the same magical effect (via autocast) of taking down significant air forces. I know it's more useful in some ways but fuck micro .
Night elves, dryads are a definite must-use because their presence in the army just makes bad stuff stop happening. Druids of the claw are pretty beefy and I like them, especially in the "commando" missions, though I just didn't end up using them too much. Druids of the talon feel so fragile, but I bet that their cyclone ability is super handy. Everyone says great things about hyppogryph riders, but in practice they always seemed like just a double-supply archer -.-. Huntresses were way too fragile for a unit that ultimately served a decidedly melee-based role.
I'm sure I still missed something here and there, but yeah. It often seemed that it'd be easier to just replace fallen basic units than to have a more solid, one-shot army. Though this might just be the rules of a different game talking.
Tried TFT a bit today. Interesting take on the original, still considering if I like it or not. Optional quests seem to be a bit more frustrating than in RoC...
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hmm. may i ask, with which patch version you're playing and if they affect the single player campaign?
b/c if you're playing with the patched TFT units, then it's quite a different experience from the vanilla one.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 04 2018 17:01 Hryul wrote:
hmm. may i ask, with which patch version you're playing and if they affect the single player campaign?
b/c if you're playing with the patched TFT units, then it's quite a different experience from the vanilla one.
I'm playing 1.21, which IIRC is somewhat out of date? The RoC balance comments here are definitely interesting to note.
Just finished up through the Alliance campaign of TFT. In all honesty I feel like I'm getting tired of the game by now. Pretty neat new features; the Naga is a cool race. But either I'm playing it wrong or all these missions take forever to complete. Base building missions and a game where you have very small unit caps don't really mix, even when you have spellcasters and heroes. At least in BW/C&C you actually get rewarded for good macro. Here you just get high upkeep...
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On January 05 2018 04:50 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On January 04 2018 17:01 Hryul wrote:
hmm. may i ask, with which patch version you're playing and if they affect the single player campaign?
b/c if you're playing with the patched TFT units, then it's quite a different experience from the vanilla one. I'm playing 1.21, which IIRC is somewhat out of date? The RoC balance comments here are definitely interesting to note. Just finished up through the Alliance campaign of TFT. In all honesty I feel like I'm getting tired of the game by now. Pretty neat new features; the Naga is a cool race. But either I'm playing it wrong or all these missions take forever to complete. Base building missions and a game where you have very small unit caps don't really mix, even when you have spellcasters and heroes. At least in BW/C&C you actually get rewarded for good macro. Here you just get high upkeep...
This is not the latest patch, but it is a patch from 4 years after the frozen throne release. So you're defenitely playing something completely different from what I experienced back in the days.
This includes a hefty damage nerf to the spellcasters and them being reduced to what they should always have been: supporting units.
So what i wrote about the ancient strats belongs in a museam. it's long dead.
Storywhise i think the UD campaign is the best of them with a lots of backstabbing and better characters (mostly). Also you switch between two storylines.
I don't like Kael'Thas. He's a bland character and the hero sucks. Naga Sea Witch is also better in Multiplayer where frost arrow is used to slow down and snipe enemy heroes.
Also the addon mostly changed multiplayer. I don't think the new units add all too much for single player. This means for UD it will again be mostly Fiends and maybe some abombs to tank. This allows building two statues for healing and mana. Destroyers are mostly multiplayer units (high burst potential, not for long consecutive fights like in the campaign).
I also don't know about the Orc campaign. It's mostly a small WoW with quests. You can't lose it either because upon death the heroes respawn at a resurrection stone.
I would finish the UD campgain if you have the time. I think it's quite enjoyable storywhise. If you're annoyed then I would skip the Orc campagin. It's completely disconnected from the rest and "only" explains how Jaina settled on Theramore (Which is also more interesting for the WoW lore buffs)
It's sad that the big community from back in the days is gone and I can't say: And then hop into the multiplayer and enjoy the real strength of the game.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
Well, I got through the TFT campaign, with the exception of half of the second Orc mission and all of the third. I want to take my time on those, but I kind of rushed through the main campaign as fast as possible because I knew I wouldn't be in the mood. Cut a few corners here and there in various ways to save time; I spent a good few weeks doing the RoC campaign but TFT I really just wanted to get through it. Quick thoughts:
Overall, it was a definite downgrade from RoC in story, and about equal in gameplay value. The difficulty of the missions often stemmed from a requirement of precision and making fewer mistakes, rather than from good strategic thinking. I used saves way more in TFT than in RoC because it was definitely far more necessary since tiny mistakes made a world of difference here, especially in comparison to RoC. Still, as with many expansions, this one had a few interesting "creative" designs that I did enjoy. The naval units were undeniably just a gimmick, something to be fought with just Naga or with air units, and contributed little to the gameplay. The Naga are fun to play, not fun to play against, in that they're really beefy and all-around strong units. But at the same time it's a gimmick race all around; their units really are pretty one-dimensional. Blood elves are like High Elves in that they's 80% a Human ripoff, 20% Night Elves. The final Alliance mission was pretty cool because it was hero-centric at first, evolving into army-building off of collected coinage. But it also relied heavily upon using Illidan's metamorphosis spell to just rip through anything and everything.
The Sentinel campaign was pretty good; too many spammy Naga units but I got through it without too much issue. Maiev is an alright hero unit; not that strong at first, but after she unlocks her ultimate, holy shit is she useful. Story-wise it isn't all that remarkable; it's basically just the story of a single-minded warden pursuing Illidan at all costs until everyone else realizes she's way too obsessed with it. The final mission, getting to play as the Naga, was pretty cool - I particularly like the Dragon Turtle which is a siege unit that can also eat a beefy grunt or abomination for free.
The Alliance campaign was merely ok. Gameplay-wise, not the worst you could come up with. Actually the second mission was the only one I didn't really like, where you have to break a really powerful Undead base without siege units, which I only managed to do by attacking after sniping a gigantic ground and air attack mid-flight with the dragon riders. This one kind of fell flat on the story though. Kael'thas really is a pretty dry and uninteresting character, who quickly goes from "Illidan is evil!" to "I love Illidan and will serve him forever" with almost no reason whatsoever. And Maiev was also sort of unremarkable here, sort of appearing as a "hi I got my prisoner" then leaving without any real dialogue or further appearance. The unexplained reason why Illidan agreed to serve the demon lord is also a bit vexing, especially with the way the ending just sort of dumps that appearance of the demon lord on us. Still, gameplay-wise it had a few decent moments.
The Undead campaign I did not enjoy in the slightest. That's probably because I think Arthas is a pretty shitty character and only a moderately useful hero unit, so playing as him was just nothing special. Every single mission was not enjoyable for me here, because this story hopped around so much as to lose meaning and events occurred without much continuity to them. Just more "you're gonna pay for the people you killed" shmucks all around, ad nauseum. The Sylvanas story is a not-too-awful sidequest, but also kind of out of place. I will say that I did really enjoy one part of that sidequest:
"Kill your dreadlord brother!"
"Please no! I can't do it!"
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"Kill that annoying human!"
"Yeah ok sure, that's fine with me."
lol
The crypt fiend hero is sort of interesting in principle, but sort of felt like a distraction in context of that the main story was about getting to the frozen throne in time, so his story felt out of place. Really, my problem is that everything about TFT seemed like it wasn't really a genuine story in and of itself, it was just a build-up to the WoW continuation. And maybe I'm just not interested in playing a gigantic MMO to see the end of that story. Meh.
The Orc mini-campaign is a proto-WoW, plain and simple. It plays like an RPG because it basically is one. My only complaint is that it just takes too long to actually make any headway in a given mission because of the RPG-style gameplay, focused on grinding and getting through a given obstacle filled with opponents rather than on any semblance of strategy. I didn't quite finish it, but it's pretty fun. Though I've tried WoW in the past and found it not to my liking, so I can't say that I'm enamored with a proto-WoW either.
The multiplayer does look genuinely fun. But it's well past the game's active years and I'm not really that into playing a multiplayer game again, given how busy my schedule is these days. Oh well.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 07 2018 10:17 The_Canadian wrote:
Shut up Steve Man
Oh hey, I haven't seen you in years. Sup?
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This is funny that I'm just seeing this thread topic now! Just purchased WC3 on a lark from G2A and am currently playing through the human campaign right now, as we speak. The very simple graphics are noticeably oldschool. The storyline is fun enough & you notice new things going through the game the 2nd time around
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/mPB8w1i.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/LlrA3pG.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/L0oPWnz.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/C1TZjzI.jpg)
