WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos

The Good
WCIII goes a bit further into "roleplaying game" territory than any of its predecessors did. In Starcraft, you had "character" units, true, but they weren't much more than standard units colored differently, and with unique character portraits. Warcraft III goes hogwild, here, making Hero units VERY different from standard units, complete with colored patterned underlighting effects that make your heroes stand out no matter WHERE they are! In the single-player game, heroes play an important role in the plot; in multiplayer, they're basically very powerful, very expensive units. As if that wasn't enough, they've also added "creeps" -- random monsters that are neutral to all players, and wander around attacking or being attacked by you. Some have treasure and magic items that can improve your heroes... in a lot of ways, it felt a bit like Diablo Meets Warcraft... The scenery is fantastic. The look of the game has been enriched in every way.

The Bad
1. No ships? No oil? Nope. This element of the game was dropped completely.

1. Upkeep. Depending on the size of your force, you get "taxed" -- a medium sized army means each peon is docked three gold before he even gets it to the town hall, and with a major force, he's docked even more. What the heck was THIS all about?

2. Any player now has a maximum food outlay of 90. This puts a SHARP limit on how many troops you can have, and what type. This is, I suppose, something that's supposed to make you play smarter, instead of depending on "zerg swarms" and "tank rushes"... but, well, hell, I LIKED tank rushes...
   
   The Bottom Line
   If you're a diehard RTS gamer, in the Age Of Empires and Total Annihilation vein, you will hate this game. Don't buy it. If you're an adventure/RPG gamer, you won't like this game. Too much RTS in it. ...but if you're the kind of person who can appreciate a delicate mix of the two, it's really quite good...

The Good
This was the very first Warcraft game I played. It was so good that I'm now playing Warcraft II BNE edition. The story was very good, providing the background for the battles and adding a sense of risk and reward. Not one single klinker in the voice acting. Music never became repetitive because it added to the drama of the scene as you built your forts. I'd get an exultant feeling when I saw my army decimate the opposing forces after failing and reloading my game. I would be Balancing my forces when they attack and assisting them when they are injured or binded. I had a blast learning how to use the strengths of every race to win a scenario.

Its the first time I've felt SO guilty about running a cheat code that I'll go back and play a scene without cheating.

BTW, the voice-overs were the funniest of all the Blizzard games.

The Bad
2 things really bugged me about this game. * The long load times.
The 'bubblegum chewing' animation when the characters spoke. It was wretched when LucasArts & Sierra did it in their early Adventure games. Its pretty standard for game studios to lipsync their characters now. It was disconcerning to see that archaic design shortcut in such a A list game.

The Bottom Line*
Fun, challenging, engaging and well worth your money.

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.