WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos

The Good
Being a huge fan of Warcraft 2, when I heard Warcraft 3 was being developed I had very high expectations for the title, so when it came out I instantly bought it. And man, what a waste of money that was.

The graphics are pretty good and there's a lot of variation of enemies and locations which are pretty interesting to see. Additionally, there's a lot of custom graphics available on the net. However this is just another way of fooling you into thinking this game is cool.

The editor is very extensive, and still probably one of the most extensive RTS editors to this day. But even so the game has some retarded limitations that can get incredibly annoying at times, and some of the editors aren't nearly as powerful as they seem, like the AI editor. Still it was pretty fun to mess in the editor every once in a while

The Bad
Why the HELL did they turn the fastest RTS game ever made into a RPG piece of crap? Warcraft II is still one of the best RTS games ever made but it hasn't aged as well as other games due to the engine limitations, so I was hoping that Warcraft 3 would have been a great sequel with the same premise but better gameplay and a much better engine. So why didn't it happen?? They ruined the entire Warcraft universe with an overly serious business story with many unlikeable characters, extremely bland, RPG-esque gameplay and a lot of other things.

My main problem with Warcraft 3 is that the game is overall a lot slower because of the addition of RPG elements. As I've said in most of my reviews, RPG elements do not make a game "deep" or "fun" but they just ruin it. I can understand placing RPG elements in an actual RPG game but this is a sequel to the fastest RTS game ever made so it's totally out place. Everything takes way too long to build, to attack and to die. You put two units fighting each other and it takes like 2 minutes for the other one to die. It's not fun at all, it's absolutely atrocious. In Warcraft 2 units would take approximately 6 seconds to die but that's why the game was so much fun to play to begin with, but here it feels sluggish and totally ruined. And they even removed naval warfare!

Of course there's a ton of other issues, most of them still dependant on the fact this is a RPG game. There are new hero units which sound cool on paper but in reality they're incredibly boring to use and manage, since you got to kill random creatures on the map to level up, and I'm sure I already mentioned somewhere how much I hate leveling up, but it goes without saying.

Not only is the build time an absolute joke, but somehow they managed to screw up the population count as well! You can't have more than I think 90 food units, but unfortunately most units take up about 3 food units, with some even consuming up to 9 units. Yes, that's right, it means that not only is the game painfully slow but your selection of units will also be incredibly limited. And apparently the more units you have, the more expensive stuff becomes. I don't think it can get worse than this.

Another new element introduced is an inventory system, which is probably the only decent RPG element in the game (although it's not necessarily an RPG element so maybe that's why it's acceptable), but it's not implemented well at all. Essentially most of the items are just upgrades that give you more armor. As if units didn't take way too long to die already! The idea is nice, it's just the execution that leaves a lot to be desired.

But the most pathetic aspect of the game is that, despite how slow it is, most online matches do not go beyond 20 minutes. How sad. The campaign is varied but it isn't particularly fun, either.

The Bottom Line
Without a doubt the most disappointing game I ever played, and this game marks the beginning of Blizzard's downfall.