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Reader Reviews
23 reviews. Average Rating: 9.09
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Publisher:  Genre: Strategy & War Expansion For:
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Mac OS X: 10.1.3 Mac OS Classic: Mac OS 9
CPU: G3 @ 400 MHz RAM: 128 MB Hard Disk: 700 MB 4x CD-ROM Graphics: 16 MB VRAM |
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Game play
Most of the game play improvements are subtle tweaks, such as adjustments to mana cost or damage, but they all add up to a smoother and more balanced game. It’s easier to deal a lot of damage or raise a huge army, but it’s also easier to defend against these tactics. A lot of magical abilities have been added, and a lot of anti-magic abilities have been added. What you end up with is a much larger bag of tricks to surprise your opponents with — or be surprised by.
My favorite new addition is the ability to queue just about anything. This is available to anyone, expansion-owner or not, who updates to the latest patch. If you’re tired of micromanaging peasants when putting down farms, you can now hold shift and queue up an entire row. Technology and unit upgrades can also be queued. You can even throw in a unit upgrade before or after a unit. These are things I’d longed for since Warcraft II, and they really take a lot of the tedium out of micromanagement.
You can also look forward to a food cap of 100, a great and well-balanced set of new units and spells, better path finding for flying creatures, and faster building. It all fits in well with Warcraft’s shift away from resource management and toward combat.
And throw on your admiral’s cap, because boats are back!
The New Kids
The new units and heroes are excellent additions to the game, each of them well balanced and each adding a lot to the overall game play. The least interesting new hero is definitely the Night Elf Warden, but her short-range teleportation ability, Blink, is great for quick escapes and allows some of the single player missions to progress in surprising ways. My favorite addition to the Night Elf toolbox is the Mountain Giant, which with its Taunt ability, adds a true tank to the game. You will find that walking your giant into the middle of enemy forces and using Taunt to draw all attackers to itself will sometimes turn a tense battle into a cakewalk. And nothing beats watching your new pet rip a tree out of the ground and use it as a club.
The Alliance Blood Mage is a great damage-dealer and has a brilliant new ability, Phoenix. This spell summons a flaming Phoenix that doles out gobs of damage but burns so brightly it takes damage until it dies, leaving behind an egg. If the egg is not destroyed, the Phoenix is reborn. The new Alliance units are the spell-stealing, magic-immune Spell Breaker and the Dragonhawk Rider, which can cast a spell that disables defensive structures.
The Undead gain the Obsidian Statue, a large mechanical unit that can replenish the health or mana of other units. Group one of these with four or five Necromancers and you can raise a huge army of skeletons and the new skeleton mages in no time. They make excellent material for rushing and it is very frustrating to defend against. The new hero, the Crypt Lord is a superb addition to the game and has the most useful hero ability yet. It turns a corpse into a Carrion Beetle. You can produce up to five of these, and they don’t disappear unless they’re killed, unlike most other units you can summon or raise from corpses. This ability can be set to auto-cast as well. You’ve always got backup when you’re on patrol with the Crypt Lord.
The Shadow Hunter is the new Orc hero, has a Healing Wave ability and is a decent all around magic user. The new Orc units are the ethereal Tauren Spirit Walker and the Troll Batrider, a light flying unit great for recon and taking out buildings. The Orcs also gain an upgrade for Troll Berserkers, better Burrow and Watch Tower armor, and a nice splash damage upgrade for Demolishers.
There are five neutral heroes, available from shops in multiplayer games and in some of the single-player levels. They all have their place in the game, and it’s difficult to pick a favorite. But everyone seems drawn to the Pandaran Brewmaster, a giant panda and a drunken boxing master. He looks cool, and his abilities are amazing. Drunken Haze sprays booze over an enemy, slowing it down and making some of its attacks miss. Breath of Fire is just what it sounds like but does extra damage to units under the effects of Drunken Haze. It doesn’t get much better than that.
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