Warcraft 3 v. Warcraft 2 (Warhammer 2 Dark Omen & Syndicate Wars (PC))

Member Name: tingrid

Product:	Warhammer 2 Dark Omen & Syndicate Wars (PC)
Date:	13/08/02 (370 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good graphics, very addictive, good level of difficulty, plenty of novelty

Disadvantages: those animated sequences

I absolutely loved Warcraft 2 (from now on referred to as ‘W2’), so much so that I spent almost every afternoon of summer 1996 (or was it 1995 ? Time does fly) directing little (and big) green things across God knows how many maps. Yes, the orcs were my favourite, but still, I completed the human campaign as well. Then I tried my hand at playing against my brother (was it called Battlenet ?), which I hated, because what I liked best was fighting huge battles and building alliances, and above all building neat little camps, whereas my brother liked nothing better than winning as fast as possible by sending a mere 2 basic grunts and a troll to my nascent camp after 2 minutes of play.

Anyway, on to Warcraft 3 (from now on referred to as… ‘W3', I am so predictable) now. Having enjoyed W2 so much, I waited impatiently for the sequel which I knew was planned. And so I waited, and waited…and waited, played Diablo and Diablo2, still no W3. So when, at last, I read somewhere that the much expected and nonetheless much delayed sequel was due in the middle of July, first I could not believe it, then I was overjoyed, and a little bit anxious as well : would it live up to its older version ? Well, the answer to this question is both yes and no (but rather yes).

I pre-ordered my copy for £25.99, and am glad I did, as I have seen it costing as much as £39 in shops.

For those who like me have played W2, there are a few things that need some getting used to. The introduction is very, very impressive, well it would be, things have changed a lot since 1996 (1995?), but still, it is pretty damn good.

After the introduction, the player can choose to play either the campaign or a single mission. I must confess I have not tried the latter yet, so engrossed in the campaign am I. When you choose to play the campaign, the first big difference with the previous opus appears : no choosing the human or the orc campaign. Inste
ad, everybody starts with the tutorial and Thrall, a young orc chieftain who has been raised by and among humans. The tutorial can prove pretty boring for someone who already know their way around the world of Warcraft and have been waiting for 6 or 7 odd years to play the new version of it, but I would advice them to be patient and pay attention, as some things have changed. It is very useful if you happen to be a first timer or if your warcraft skills have rusted a bit, and anyway it is compulsory.

In my opinion, the story in W3 is quite a bit more elaborated than that of W2. It is also easier to follow (no more listening to that deep booming voice and reading the story it tells at the same time) and thus more interesting, and vice versa. It all starts with a prophet telling Thrall of the upcoming arrival, or rather come-back, of the much dreaded demons. The said prophet advices Thrall to lead his people across the sea to the West. Then it is on to the first campaign, the human one, and serious things begin.

All 4 campaigns (1 for each ‘race’, or rather ‘clan’) follow more or less the same pattern, that is to say the first few missions allow you to get to grips with the basic units and buildings, you are not thrown in at the deep end. This is a very good thing, especially when you play the undead or the night elves, the 2 new clans, but more on that later. More often than not, the first mission is one of ‘hide and seek’, where you start with a small number of soldiers and a hero (another new feature) and the aim is to take these across enemy territory to an ally base, a circle of power etc. As you progress through the missions of a given campaign, more and more buildings, units and upgrades are at your disposal, as the level of difficulty increases.

The prophet appears to I-can’t-remember-his-name, the son and heir of a human king, and gives him the same message as he gave Thrall. And this is whe
re W3 has improved : the old orcs=evil / humans=good equation is not valid anymore, as that young heir is decidedly not very nice. I will let you guess what happens next, did you really think I was going to give away the whole plot?

In every campaign, be it with the humans, orcs, undead, or night elves, several heroes are at your disposal (on and off, 3 different ones for each campaign). When playing single missions, I believe you have to lure heroes to your camp (the first one is free though), and then pay them in food, wood and money, whereas in the campaigns you are just given them. Heroes have names and special abilities. They gain experience when fighting, thus earning points that the player can add to one or several of the hero’s special abilities. In addition, heroes can pick up things (watch out for chests, they can easily be missed, unless you are used to playing Diablo, some principles of which can be found in W3) such as potions, books, weapons, rings, amulets, and special items. Finally, only heroes can buy from Goblin merchants.

Goblin merchants are yet another new feature in W3. Theirs are neutral buildings that cannot be destroyed and can be used by any given clan. A goblin merchant sells, depending on which mission is being played, potions, scrolls, mines, but also zeppelins and goblin units (the ones that explode). Mercenaries can sometimes be hired from Mercenary Camps that look like Goblin Merchants.

Apart from neutral buildings and your enemies, there are other units, most of them unfriendly. I am not talking about crows and hogs, but rather about ‘creepers’. Your units can go past them at night when they are asleep, but you may want to get rid of them, as they can be a nuisance, and you get money for every one your units kill. Creepers range from spiders, wolves and lightning lizards, to ghosts, golems and centaurs. Creepers vary in level, and a level 6 or 7 creeper may leave you a chest, and their
killing will give your hero more experience.

On to the building of the camp now. The 2 important new things in that field are the upkeep, and the food limit. In W2, players could theoretically build as many units as they wanted; in W3 they can build as many units as they want… as long as they stay within the food limit, which is 90 (a peon will use only 1 food unit, whereas bigger units will use 4 or 5). For those who, like me, used to play it safe in W2 and liked to carefully prepare a (huge) army and then, only then, launched an attack, this is one big change. As for me, I have grown up a little, I now feel confident enough not to need big armies anymore, so I can safely say that this food limit adds interest and a touch of realism to the game. As for the upkeep, it can appear as a bit of a nuisance at first, but it is nonetheless a useful addition to the game. The rule goes like this: when your camp uses less than 40 food units and your peons come back from their trip to the mine, each peon brings 10 units of gold to the town hall (‘no upkeep’). When they consume more than 40 food units, you have to pay a ‘low upkeep’ : they only bring 7 units of gold. When the population of the camp uses more than 70food, it goes down to 4 (‘high upkeep’).

As for the rest of the game, the gist of it, the principles of it remain pretty much the same (buildings, units, upgrades), but of course there also are changes, both minor and major (apart from the upkeep and food limit).

One of what I consider to be minor changes is the addition of new units to both the orc and the human clans. For the orcs there are :
_troll witch doctors (who, among other things, heal friendly units)
_shamans (cast spells, such as bloodlust and Lightning Shield)
_kodo beasts (motivate other units, fire at both ground and air units, and eats enemies as well)
_wyverns (big dragons who can learn the envenom weapon ability) <
br>_taurens (very powerful melee units gifted with the pulverize ability that allows them to stun their enemies)
_raiders (who are orcs riding wolves; they can ensnare flying units in their nets and bring them to the ground, a very useful skill).
_note that grunts, peons and raiders can learn the Pillage ability, which allows them to win money whenever they hit an enemy building.
For the humans, new additions are :
_ sorceresses (they cause units to slow, shower them with ice, change them into sheep… some very nasty ladies indeed)
_priests (they heal friendly units and cast other spells)
_gyrocopters (those are flying machines equipped with machine guns, can drop bombs on ground units as well)
_riflemen (they are dwarves, incredibly tough and annoying when you play against the humans of course)
_mortar teams (a pair of dwarves and a canon, a very tough unit too)
_steam tanks (very effective against buildings)

Because there are so many additions, it is inevitable that there should be losses as well : no more two-headed ogres and black sorcerers, no more ballista, and more importantly, no more sea units : bye bye submarines/turtles, shipyards…(maybe they will reappear in the expansion ?). Having said that, there is plenty of novelty as well as there are not one, but two entirely new clans. This is the major change.

The two new clans are the undead and the night elves, and they both differ a lot from the more classical orcs and humans. As a consequence, they are the most original and maybe the most challenging clans to play for those who were used to W2. I will start with the undead.

I must confess the undead are my least favourite clan, probably because I did not manage to play them to the full of their abilities (and they are more than a bit revolting as well). Their strength is said to be in numbers, as their necromancers bring out the dead, who come back as skeletons.

Their peons a
re called ‘acolytes’ and they do not build anything; instead, they conjure up buildings on the blight or corrupted ground. At first I thought this was a major drawback, as only one acolyte can conjure up a building, which in turns means that you cannot send several acolytes to the same building to speed up the process, but later in the game I realised that this was also the case with the other three clans. Conjuring up a building takes literally seconds to an acolyte, which definitely is an advantage, as it means that the acolyte can go back to his work right away, but the building is not ready immediately, just as with a normal building process. Mines need to be bewitched before acolytes can extract gold from them, but then they do not need to bring gold back to the great hall, another great thing. You can create another unit by sacrificing acolytes. They will transform into shades, invisible harmless units which allow you to explore the map.

Acolytes do not cut trees, ghouls take care of this, and they fight as well (they are melee units), and can regenerate themselves by eating corpses (yummy !). These corpses can be stored in meat wagons for later use. Meat wagons are the equivalent of the more classical catapults, except that they fire corpses. Spiders (‘Crypt Fiends’) are the equivalent of archers, and they can learn the Web ability, which allows them to throw their sticky cob webs at flying units and thus bring them to the ground, a very useful skill as it means that melee units can then attack the poor trapped wyvern, gryphon, hippogryph…). ‘Abominations’ are the undead’s big melee units. They are quite repulsive, being made of different bits from several corpses sown together, and the surgeon must not have been as gifted as Dr Frankestein, because their intestines show. They can learn the disease cloud ability, another very useful one as it inflicts long-lasting damages to enemy units.

The un
dead have two air units : gargoyles and frost wyrms. Gargoyles are light air units, with a difference : they can transform into statues to regenerate. Frost wyrms are heavy air units, and they possess a very very useful skill: they can learn Freezing breath, an ability that allows them to freeze an enemy building. Extremely useful against towers, as it stops them from firing, thus allowing other units to destroy them without coming to any harm.

Magical units are called ‘banshees’ and ‘necromancers’. Banshees are not strong at all, but they automatically cast a spell that causes enemy units to miss. I already mentioned necromancers, whose main function is to raise skeletons, but they can heal friendly units and cripple enemy units as well.

I forgot to mention the device the undead use to protect their camps : ziggurats (farms) can be upgraded so that they fire at unfriendly units. The great hall, when upgraded, also has this ability.

As the undead were not my favourite, I am afraid I did not play them properly, which is why I do not know about all the spells. However, they are very popular on the Internet because they are very tough to beat. Now on to the night elves.

Night elves, on the other hand, are my favourite (on par with the orcs) because they are so different and so seemingly weak compared to other clans, and also because they are almost all women. As with the undead, the building and running of the camp is very different from the standard way.

Peons are called ‘wisps’ and they look like bits of shiny blue light. Wisps do not cut trees, because night elves do not like hurting trees. They are the ecologists of W3, they live in harmony with Mother Nature. So, instead of chopping trees, wisps merely circle around them, and somehow manage to harvest wood this way. A gold mine needs to be entangled before wisps can go and work in it, and as with the undead, they do not need to go b
ack and forth between the mine and the town hall which by the way is not a town hall at all, but, as you may have guessed, an ‘Ancient of Life’ (you should have guessed). Most of the buildings, with three exceptions, are Ancients, i.e. huge trees. They can be uprooted, ordered to move (they are very slow though) and rooted again. They can also fight when uprooted. I would strongly recommend against uprooting an Ancient of Life (unless absolutely necessary) when there is gold left in the mine because it is the Ancient of Life who entangles a mine, and when it is uprooted, the mine is not entangled anymore, and you waste time entangling it again. Thus, night elves can leave behind a few buildings and establish a new camp somewhere else (around a gold mine when the first one is empty for example) without having to start from scratch.

The ‘Ancients of Protection’ are to night elves what towers are to humans and orcs : they hurl stones at enemy units. They too can be uprooted, which allows them to regenerate themselves by eating trees (so much for the ‘no hurting trees’ motto), but wisps can repair them when they are rooted. Farms are rather poetically named ‘moon wells’, and not only do they provide food, but they heal units as well. Their mana replenishes itself at night only.

A very special characteristic of some night elves (archers and huntresses) is that they can go unnoticed at night when not moving. Huntresses (the melee units, women riding panthers, a devastating combination) can also put owl sentinels on trees. These permanently display the fog of war around the owl. Archers can ride hippogriffs (hippogriffs cannot attack ground units on their own), and a mounted hippogriff makes a very efficient unit. The other air unit is the chimaera, and I cannot tell much about this one, as I have not seen any, let again directed any.

Magical units consist of druids of the claw (they transform into
bears and heal other units when in human – elven – form) and druids of the talon ( they transform into crows and cast spells such as the one that causes a target unit, either friendly or unfriendly, to take off into the air and fly around as though caught in a hurricane, helpless, for a few seconds). Dryads are not proper magical units, but they come from the same building as druids of the claw. Their spear-throwing ability comes in useful, as they can attack both air and ground units, plus they can learn the slow poison ability, and are immune to magic.

Apart from the 4 clans and the creepers, there is a clan that cannot be played (only at one or two points in the campaigns can they be played) : the demons. Most of the time, they are the enemy. They have massive red flying creatures and big red demons who shower your units with burning boulders while their red dogs attack enemies in close combat. They also have huge melee units that look like golems which would have been dipped into fluorescent paint (these are called ‘Infernals’ I think)

Some missions in the campaign bit are quite hard but you can always reduce the level of difficulty. I have not needed to use this option yet, touch wood.

Now on to the bits I did not like. Some animated sequences are inserted into the game, which means that at some points during a mission the computer takes over and there is a bit of talking. I understand that this is good for the story, and that those bits help trying to make all the killing more moral, but it can be annoying when you are engrossed in the game. It would not be half as bad if only the graphics were as good as in the rest of the game. I have not talked about the 3D graphics yet, they take some getting used to, but they work very well. It is as if you were some flying animal watching the whole thing from above. The graphics themselves are stunning, but those animated bits make me cringe whenever they come up. It
is all down to those straight lines and polygons, not a single curve in there. Now, I am no expert, but I am sure they could have done better. I still watch those sequences the first time though, for the story’s sake, and I would advice anybody to do so.

Now on a more technical level, and although the computer I play on has just been upgraded, brand new processor, brand new graphic card and so on, the game has caused it to crash more than a few times, and now that I have almost reached the end of the last campaign, and one massive battle follows on the heels of yet another massive battle, it keeps crashing, which is extremely exasperating, especially when I happen to have made small but good progress but have not saved, because I hate saving every 2 minutes. I feel you would need a reasonably high spec machine to run W3 to the full of its capabilities (it is beautiful on high resolution).

The music I thought was not as lively and enjoyable as that of W2. It is more of a serious LOTR-type music, quite atmospheric. Nothing that stays in your mind, but in keeping with the game and its atmosphere (on the whole I found W3 to be far more serious than W2, starting with the 3D graphics' replacing the cartoony look of W2).

As for the voices, their comments are not as funny as those in W2, but I have not tried clicking 10 times on each and every unit in the game (not yet). Gyrocopters, troll witch doctors, mortar units are among the funniest. Heroes have voices too, and they cannot say much, which can become a bit of a nuisance as you hear them more than any other unit.

So to summarise, I am not at all disappointed with W3, it certainly has lived up to expectations. So much novelty and originality in a sequel, while keeping the spirit of W2, this is quite a prowess. Of course I cannot say it is better than W2, because of the nostalgia effect (and those animated sequences!), but Blizzard have done very well indeed. Who said all seq
uels were bad ?

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