WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

The Good
First of all, the chrome is as shiny and brilliant as can be. The graphics were souped up nicely from the original Warcraft’s somewhat blocky sprites to a smooth and spiffy SVGA. The colors are bright and full of contrast. Buildings and units are a joy to look at…and also to listen to. WC 2 set the standard for injecting personality into an RTS, with convincing sound effects (swords clash, bombs boom, etc.), charismatic vocal responses, and a sweeping musical soundtrack. The intro cinematic is also very well done.

The basics of the first WC are expanded upon just enough to make for a great sequel. There are more units and buildings, but not too many. There is one new resource to collect, oil, but no more. It’s just enough new stuff to add naval and air dimensions to the combat. Zeppelins, Flying Machines, Oil Tankers, Subs, Battleships, and more enhance what was already a pretty cool arsenal of fantasy toys.

There are two full campaigns, one for each side (Human-centered Alliance vs. Orc-centered Horde). There is also multiplayer. More on those below.

The manual and box art are wonderful. I don’t even like this kind of fantasy-themed stuff that much, but WC2 certainly got my attention with its loads of style and gameplay.

Finally, I give Blizzard high marks for not following Westwood’s lead in making a buggy, clunky, cheesy, wildly overrated mess like Command & Conquer. The RTS genre is not my favorite even as it stands now. How bad would real-time games generally be if we didn’t have Blizzard around?

The Bad
Like most RTS games (at least 1990s ones), WC2 puts a heavy emphasis on speed over strategy. There are no build queues or unit formations. Shortcut keys and fast mouse-clicking can cover up a multitude of tactical sins and just plain not thinking. It’s not a big problem in this kind of light, mainstream game, but it still seems a little bit like cheating to the more hardcore strategy/wargame player. Also, the pace makes WC2 exciting, but also a bit stressful. If you just want to relax and unwind at your computer for a while, WC2 is not that good of a choice. Then again, it’s less intense than Doom, so maybe it’s a happy medium.

The enemy AI is merely passable. Which is not a problem, unless you happen to be like me. I generally don’t like to play campaigns or online/multiplayer, so I’m stuck with the skirmish mode. I tried hard to get through the campaigns, but I kept losing interest and quitting before I got very far into them. Would it have been that hard for Blizzard to have included a random map generator?

It’s not the most rewarding game in the world. It’s quite fun and passes the time, but I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished that much when I’m done playing it.

The Bottom Line
Clearly the product of much love and affection, I love WC2 against all my better judgment. A guilty pleasure, yes, but a pleasure nonetheless. Unlike Command & Conquer, WC is a genuine classic.

The Good
I'm not the first person to write a review for this game, other reviewers have pointed out the quality of the music, interface & graphics and I agree with them. Even today the cartoonish graphics are a joy to watch; notice the Christmas lights on Orc buildings during winter missions. Also, compare a Grunt from Warcraft II with a rifle infantry soldier from Red Alert (which appeared one year after Warcraft II) and you'll realize how well Warcraft's graphics have aged. Moreover the voices of the units (especially the Orcs) are great, Zog Zog & Swobuh!

Warcraft keeps things basic; there are only three types of resources and a limited number of units, but you'll really know their different strengths and weaknesses. No unit will ever become obsolete or replaced by another unit. Units do get upgraded. The units are balanced, there is no super unit with which you can easily win a mission. Footmen can easily destroy a Catapult, Catapults take out Guard Towers, Guard Towers are a great defense against Dragons and Dragons kill Footmen. So your army will need to consist of almost all available units in order to win. By the way some of the units have great magical spells like raise dead and the spell that turns an enemy soldier into a sheep or pig.

And oh yeah, the mission editor is easy to use (but why did it require Win 3.1 when the game ran in DOS).

The Bad

• Both sides are almost identical, so once you've completed the Orc campaign, the human campaign isn't that much fun to play (playing with the Orcs is more fun anyway).
• Units do not always respond to your commands and there are some pathfinding problems. Especially getting your naval units somewhere involves a lot of mouse-clicking.
• In the campaigns, your computer opponents always seems to start with a lot of gold and a well fortified base. In the final missions this enables the computer to send wave after wave of dragons / gryphons when your just getting started, frustrating.
• Mouse scrolling goes to fast.
• Bad A.I. An easy way to win the game is to wait until your computer opponent has mined all the gold from the mines near his base. It then keeps sending unprotected peony (easy kills) to mines near your base until it runs out of gold. Also your units perform a lot better on the battlefield when you control manually.

**The Bottom Line**
An RTS game from the dawn of the genre that's still fun the play despite the approximately 3.5 million RTS games released after it. Really addictive. Although I've often told myself "I've had it up to here with this game", I always enjoyed playing it when I came back to it after a couple of weeks.

The Good
I don't have much to add to the other reviews here. The sound, graphics, user interface and so on are all done very well here. As has been pointed out, the graphics on the playing field in particular are noticeably superior to those of the popular Command & Conquer series from Westwood.

The basic concept - form and execute a plan to overcome the opposition by marshalling diverse resources and defeating it in battle - is one I've always enjoyed. The underlying idea is not that different from chess, although of course in the RTS genre the opposing sides do not wait to take turns.

Chess is also a good analogy in particular for Warcraft II in that the two sides, while appearing different on the surface, are in fact fairly similar in capabilities. Not being a teenage boy, I haven't ever played the orcish side, but I can't really see much difference between a juggernaut and a battleship, or a dragon and a gryphon.

One item that needs to be stressed is the custom scenario editor. I haven't used it myself, but many others have, and it's finding the results of their efforts that have extended this game's life for me (more below).

The Bad
With one exception, most of my reservations are nit-picking:

• the scoring system emphasizes the number of enemies killed. The score is meaningless in any practical sense anyway, but it would be nice if cleverness could be rewarded somehow. A neat win is esthetically more pleasing to me.

• the user interface is not quite as rock-solid as I would like. When the pointer gets near the edge of the screen in particular is where the chances of unintended results get quite high.

• if I saved and reloaded a scenario in progress, it sometimes seemed as if all my enemies had suddenly quit playing. I got in the habit of rebooting the whole game every time I wanted to resume a saved scenario, which seemed to always give me enemies minded to fight.

• in this version there is an apparently unintentional play imbalance. In scenarios where both sides start with fairly limited resources, one strategy is to create a barracks before a town hall, create a warrior, and send it after the opponent while it's still possible for one warrior to destroy everything the opponent has. I've won scenarios with this sort of "blitzkrieg" attack, but it's not very satisfying. I've read that the "battle.net" edition has outlawed this strategy by forcing the technology tree to begin with a town hall, so apparently others don't like it much either.

• the included single-player campaign is only fifteen missions, which didn't seem long enough...

• ..but later I discovered all the included single player "built-in" and "custom" stand-alone scenarios (although as applied to what comes with the game itself, the distinction eludes me), and that was additional fun for a while. But eventually that led to my biggest objection:

• aside from the "blitzkrieg" strategy, there is only one other strategy needed, and that is to dig in, wait until your opponent runs out of resources, and then move in to destroy him. In fact, so all-encompassing is this strategy that I never needed to learn many of the capabilities of my "pieces" in order to win every scenario that came with the game.

Was this deliberate? One thing limiting resources does is also limit the time anyone spends playing a scenario, and that may have been a factor in Blizzard's design decisions. But the custom scenario editor in the proper hands proves that other decisions are possible. I've recently completed a scenario I found on the net ("Rocnor") that took me hours (possibly days) of real time to finish. The computer simply had inexhaustible resources and a very fast generation time for dragons from multiple roosts on a very well-protected island. My guard towers killed more than 20,000 of them by the time I won. More importantly, I couldn't win at all until I'd completely re-thought my strategies and also learned to employ some those mage spells I'd never had much use for.

Now that was fun! There's life in the old game yet.

The Bottom Line
A generally well-designed game with a good balance of thought and action. A violent game (albeit a fantasy-themed violence), and not for those who prefer cooperative games where everyone lives together in peace and harmony. Everyone interested in RTS games should experience it - there are lots of them about, but how many are still being played (and still sold!) five or six years after their introduction?

The Good
Just about everything.

To start with, it looks great. There was some 3D rendering done that makes the top-down view look better than games 3 and 4 years older than it (like Age of Empires II). Other graphical enhancements make the game flow very smoothly.

There's always background music - which was picked perfectly - and sound effects are classic. You will laugh out-loud the first time you hear "They're destroying our city!" until you realize your city is in deep $#!^.

The story line is on-par with great RPGs - something often overlooked in many RTS games to begin with.

You get to play both Orcs and Humans, and while each has similar units, they're different enough. Example: Orcs have peons, Humans have peasants. Both pretty much do the same things, but peons sound like peons, and peasants sound like peasants. Each has their own individual sayings. Same for grunts/knights, trolls/archers, all the way up to death knights/mages. Extreme thought went into making it balanced AND different. Death knights can raise dead (when bodies are around) and cast destruction spells (death and decay, anyone?), mages can cast invisibility and fireballs. Paladins can turn undead (which hurts and scares death knights) and heal. Ogre mages can cast floating eye-balls.

Details, details, details. While waiting for your peons to collect gold, you start clicking on them over and over again, and you find out that they start to get pissed off at you! Turns out every character in the game will get pissed off at you, and each category of character gets pissed in different ways ("Don't you have a Kingdom to rule?")

Map editor to share with your friends.

One CD can play four people at the same time, up to eight can play one game! Full-fledged ability to play any of the multi-player maps - no cheap spawn copies that only let you play a little bit.

The Bad
On my 1.2 Ghz, I can't figure out how to slow down the mouse scrolling (I've tried the options menu, it doesn't work).

Some of the battles got a little long, some were more difficult than I cared for (I LIKE taking in an army of Death Knights...what do you mean that's all the gold I get?!?)

The Bottom Line
Don't let the Real-Time Strategy portion get you down. It may be that, but it's so much more. It's just a fully-enjoyable game that will keep you laughing and playing for a long time. Even my wife knows what happens after I say "My tummy feels funny... ."

Blizzard was so financially set after this game, they could have just created WC3, 4, and 5 all based on the same basic game and retired. They didn't. I can only imagine that they didn't want to detract from the game in some way by screwing it up with cheap or cheesey add-ons or sequels. There was only one real add-on, and there were similar games like StarCraft, but even that was quite different.

The Good
A definite up in the graphics since the previous. The storyline in WC2 is allot more in-depth than the one in WC1. The new units such as Elven archers and Troll axe throwers give the game allot more variety. This is the only Warcraft to have ships and oil which was not that bad of an idea but for some reason they didn't carry the idea on to WC3. It has allot of different maps that were not available in the first one such as maps with snow etc.

The Bad
Even though the story line is a little more in-depth in this game the missions are still mostly just: build a base, make lots of units and then go and defeat the enemy. The fact that the population limit is quite low gets annoying nut it is not that much of a problem.

The Bottom Line
A definite must for any RTS fan or any fan of the Warcraft series.

The Good
I like to refer to Warcraft as the rough draft of this game. It has nice playability, and it don't take no genius to play it. You can assault your enemies by land, sea and air with missile or melee weapons. It even comes with a map editor so you can build your own scenarios! Warcraft II is definitely the second best strategy game ever made (the first best being Starcraft).

The Bad
Nothing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this game.

The Bottom Line
If you've never heard of this game, you must be SSSSSSLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWW. PC gamer rated it the fourth best game ever. You can't lose with this game. By that of course, I mean you can't lose by BUYING it, not that you'll win every single scenario. (sorry to disappoint you on that one)

The Good
What can i say that hasn't been said yet about this splendorous game? When i first saw the majestic demo i never expected what i was going to face, the RTS game i have spent most hours with. The story is grand, epic, very heroic and with a bit of tolkienesque modified feel. There are a lot of inclusions that make the game a great advance from Warcraft 1, new engine that made possible the battle by air and water, and a difficulty level more adjusted to common players not familiarized with that kind of games.

The Bad
As said by everyone, the AI sucked, you always knew the next step the enemy was going to take, your units sometimes are a bit dumb too, you could have a lone footman being attacked to death just at few steps from a bunch of soldiers of yours and they stay in their places as if nothing was happening until you order them to do so. Also the map editor was limited, you couldn't give the map any special victory conditions rather than defeating all the enemies on the map.

The Bottom Line
Great game to begin with real-time strategy genre. And a classic nowadays!

The Good
I remember playing the Command and Conquer demo and thinking what a bother it was. Shortly afterwards I tried the Warcraft 2 demo and was pleasantly surprised at how much different it was (in a good way.) The SVGA graphics were fantastic and very smooth. The interface was great, especially for its time. The buildings and units were instantly identifiable. However, it wasn't until I got a hold of the full version that everything came together into one incredible gaming experience.

I think my favorite part about the game was that it did not try to overcomplicate matters like later RTSs. There were relatively few units and buildings, but you knew just how they were supposed to be used. And is there really a need for balancing 15 different resources? The comic responces of annoyed units did not hurt matters either.

The Bad
The AI wasn't all that great. It was extremely common to see enemy peons/pesants making unescorted beelines to your fortified mines once their resources ran out. It was also very easy to lead the AI's units into ambushes. The computer was pretty good at doing humanly impossible things like having 10 wizards start shooting fireballs simultaneously though.

Some people might not like the cartoonish graphics, but I didn't mind at all.

The Bottom Line
The game that did for the RTS genre what Doom did for first-person shooters. If you consider yourself any kind of an RTS gamer, you have no excuse for not having this masterpiece in your collection.

The Good
Warcraft II is a classic in its own right. Relying on the yet unrealized potential of the real-time strategy genre, Warcraft II set the rules of the game with an amazing game which superceeded it's predecessor in every way.

The first thing you notice in Warcraft II is the amazing graphics, starting with the great menu interface, which is extremely well-drawn and well-thought out. Then there's the credits, with probably the smoothest SVGA scroller seen to date on an Intel machine (I had a 486 DX2/66 at the time) and the amazingly smooth game engine: Great graphics, along with smooth screen scrolling and sprites, everything in Warcraft II screams speed and beauty. Then there's the music, in which Warcraft II certainly does not lack: some of the best music in any game, let alone RTS, to date and fits the gameplay perfectly. The MIDI soundtrack is simply mind-boggling and rarely gets the appreciation it genuinely deserves. Warcraft II certainly does not lack in gameplay either.

On top of it all, Warcraft II offers network play! Here's a concept! Even though same year's Command & Conquer did offer network support, Warcraft II came out earlier and beat C&C in that too as it featured very smooth network/modem gameplay. Even I, though not being a big RTS fan, found Warcraft II's network support to be greatly underappreciated.

The Bad
For one, I could never be bothered to complete it; for some reason, the built-in scenarios get just plain boring after a while. Another complaint is the ridiculously stupid computer AI - the computer is not being smart, he just cheats with the ability to control units much faster than a human player. Unless you're very well-trained, this leads to very short lived human-computer mélees. Shame.

The Bottom Line
A classic game which brought RTS to the spotlight again. Until Warcraft II saw the light of day, there hasn't been a single game other than the magnificent Dune 2 to play.

The Good
Warcraft 2, along with Command & Conquer and This Means War, was part of the second wave of RTS games to assault PC gamers senses. The graphics are quite cartoony, and nicely detailed, without ever looking brilliant. Each character has a nice little face picture on the side panel, where you can issue commands like move, attack and unit specific commands like cast spell or harvest timber. The storyline is quite nice, involving the humans running from their home nation after the story in Warcraft 1, and sailing across the seas. Unfortunately for them, the Orcs follow. War ensues, and it is your job to pick one of the sides and try to win. The action is all in real time, with resource gathering, structure and unit building and attacking all needing to be taken care of. The units are a wide range, with most having melee weapons only, but the magicians and axe throwers/archers having range attacks. There are also a few token air units for each side which don't do a hell of a lot, and some sea units which help make the game more varied. While the two sides have different units, they are all fairly equal, like the axe thrower vs. the archer, or the ogre vs. the knight.

The Bad
In terms of gameplay, Warcraft 2 is a little flatter than Command & Conquer, while still being good. Whereas in C&C the strategies seem to be quite varied, in Warcraft 2 it is mostly a case of learning how the computer acts which can be done within the first 5 or so missions, and then repeating the same strategy to counter it. All in all, the game is definately worth getting, but if you can get C&C instead you'll probably find yourself playing that more.

The Bottom Line
Warcraft 2 is one of the most influential RTS titles of all time and has won numerous awards. The learning curve is excellent, but the slightly dodgy AI can put more experienced gamers off.

The Good
Nice interface, smooth gameplay, excellent multiplayer options, nice background music

The Bad
Outdone by later RTS releases (1997>). Game became stagnant once you had completed one storyline (VERY similar storyline between Orc campaign and Human campaign). Very similar race strengths.

The Bottom Line
Similar in gameplay to Command & Conquer, Starcraft, Age of Empires...