WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

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...

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
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.