WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos

The Good
I like the way the characters are drawn, the graphical enhancements upon Warcraft 2. The concept of being able to build up your heroes.

The Bad
Micromanagement. They wanted to change it around a bit, so they added micromanagement. Why the hell they wanted to kill a good thing, I don't know. And this isn't coming from a big Starcraft or Warcraft II fan, I played Warcraft II a lot, and I accept change, but this killed it for me. Everything is dependant on the heroes, there's too small of a selection of units, and you can only have 80 food at a time, with the amount of food you need for each unit ranging from 1-5 so obviously you can never have an army to defend and to attack, you have to choose. Upkeep sucks, the lack of upgrades and units sucks.

The Bottom Line
An utter disappointment in terms of multiplayer.

The Good
First off, it is graphically awsome. If you have the power to run at full details, it's rather stunning. Sadly, you need a beast to be able to run at full details, and not lag in games, especially 4v4.

This is a fast game, and I like fast games. You'll need to make quick decisions to be able to get anywhere levelwise.

This brings up the micromanagement. This game requires a very large amount of micro. If you aren't able to manage every unit in a battle, you're going to lose games. Being able to spot which unit is getting hurt, and moving it away; being able to cast hero spells as soon as they are available; never having a break in production (all at the same time) is crucial to winning. Luckily, the population limit is so low it's a bit easier. The population limit is 90, but it's essentially 70, because once you go over 70 you start paying 7 gold as "upkeep" for every 10 gold you mine. Once over 40, you pay 4 gold for every 10 mined. And, of course, almost nothing takes only one population point. The armies are quite small compared to previous RTS games.

The heroes are a nice RPG twist to the RTS genre. Each race (Night Elves, Undead, Orcs, and Humans) have three heroes from which to choose. Each has strengths and weaknesses. The hero you choose at the start can, and should, greatly effect your tactics in the game. For example, if you are Humans and playing vs an Undead, you would strongly consider the Paladin hero as one of your early choices, as he has a spell that not only heals your units, but harms Undead units. If you, as an Orc, decide to go for the Tauren hero, you will find that a defensive style is probably the way to go. Etc, etc.

The creeps (units controlled by the AI) are another interesting injection into this game. Special places on each map (a health fountain, fr example) are guarded by creeps, ranging in difficulty from terribly easy to terribly hard. Killing these creeps with a hero nearby allows him to gain experience, and therefore, more skills (just like an RPG, as mentioned). They also drop items which can be used by your heroes.

Lastly, if you just want to go online and play a game, it is simple as can be. Just a couple clicks, and Bnet will match you up with another person, within a certain level. Levels are basically a meter of your skill. More wins and you will go up in levels. Lose, and you could drop in levels. Beating high level people will give you bigger boosts then lower people. It is another RPG concept inserted into Warcraft III.

The Bad
The micromanagement can still get incredibly overwhelming, and if you don't keep up, it will quickly destroy you. Trying to process all the information isn't always easy for us people over 20.

The creeps have lead to several, shall we say, cheap tactics. On certain maps, it is quite easy for an orc player to quickly destroy VERY high level creeps, and have the experience go to their hero, without sacrificing more then a peon. This, of course, leads to a huge advantage within five minutes, and theres almost no way to overcome this.

The fact that you get so few units leaves little margin for error. Lose one little unit by mistake, and it could cost you the battle, and if you're not careful, the entire game. Losing a hero is even more catastrophic, as they can take a while to revive, especially at higher levels.

There is little variety. Each race has a pretty specific thing they do to win, and the only difference is who has the better micro. Sometimes you will be surprised by a different strategy, but not too often. It can get rather dull. I know of several high level players who do the same thing every game, no matter what they are facing, and they tend to win because their micro is insanely good. There's just not much you can do against that.

The Bottom Line
A decent, fun game. RPG elements help make it more then a simple RTS, but little room for error can make it a very frustrating experience.

The Good
The story is really awesome and you can play it without having to play the earlier games first. Each campaign tells a different story and there is a lot of variety in the missions. Even to this date Warcraft 3 still has the best story in a RTS-game ever.

It has some pretty good voice-acting and animation. There is a nice balance between story in cutscenes and story in gameplay/dialog, but what amazed me the most was the voice acting. They got some really good actors for this because I believed every word they said.

The controls are just perfect for a strategy game on the PC. If you need to get some soldiers from A to B in a hurry, you don't have to go through a menu and wait for the soldiers to start moving, it is just two or three clicks and they are on their way.

The soundtrack is pretty damn sweet. The credits song actually got me to watch the whole thing. This is much better than just some black and white animation made in Windows Movie Maker!

The Bad
The first few missions of every campaign are boring and if you are like me and you need to delete games from your PC on a regular basis you will see those levels a lot.

The difficulty curve is rather annoying, some missions are incredibly easy, but the one after can be unbelievably hard. That got on my nerves quite a lot because you don't notice that until you are already thirty minutes in and about to die.

The fights are really small because you can only have like fifty units on the field and this includes your peons. Personally, I prefer my RTS fights to be a little more chaotic, but to the game's credit this does make for a more tactical approach.

The Bottom Line
This is one of the best RTS games out there and if you are a fan of the Warcraft games (especially the MMORPG) or strategy games in general you might want to check this out. People who are more interested in action and chaos will most likely get bored during the first few missions and find the later ones to be too difficult, so my advice to them is to stick with other games.

Do I like this game myself?, yes, yes I do, but only every once in two years when I completely forgot what the story was about.