HomeReviewsWarcraft III: Reforged
Wot I Think - Warcraft 3: ReforgedLet slip the crafts of war
Let slip the crafts of war
Release:Out nowOn:WindowsFrom:Battle.netFor:£25, $30, €30
Warcraft III was an immensely important game for a lot of people. A fantasy RTS that lead right into the start of World Of Warcraft, it left a big, war-booted footprint on the landscape of games. Odds are, you will have felt its impact even if you never played RTS games, since the original Dotagrew out of a modfor Warcraft III’s multiplayer mode.
People never entirely stopped playing the original Warcraft III, so when you think about it, a remastered version feels long overdue. In some respects,Warcraft III: Reforgeddoes a serviceable job of fulfilling that need. In others, it’s a bit - dare I say - underforged. In further respects still, some people might wish it had never happened.
For the uninitiated, Warcraft III is a real time strategy game (and for the really uninitiated, that’s what RTS stands for), where you play as one of several fantasy races (though humans and orcs are the perennial favourites). You build up your base, generate different fighty units with slightly different tactical applications, and then do a war on your nearest neighbours on the map.
“Let the challenge… BEGIN!”
Even the old cheats still work. When I was a kid I thought Keyser Söze was one word, pronounced key-zer-soze, and had some mysterious provenance relating to money, because it’s the gold cheat in Warcraft III. This diligent replication of little details is understandable, because if too many changes were made - if, for example, the orc worker unit didn’t say “Work, work!” when you clicked on him - there would have been war (although, while we’re at it, time has long passed for Blizzard to rethink how they portray e.g.Trolls across the whole company)
But all this fidelity has brought its own problems, since it shows up the fact that the changes that have been madedon’t go as far as Blizzard initially suggested. Reforged isn’t really as bad as all that, and if you haven’t had your expectations set that high then, in terms of grass-wafting at least, this is a fine remaster that’s clearly had some effort put into it. If you were expecting new bells and whistles based on the promotional material, however, manage those expectations.
Warcraft III has always been a slightly weird mix between building a big army and steamrolling the opposition, and applying some actual tactics. The different factions you can play as are distinct in imaginative ways, and do actually favour different play styles - but then sometimes, if you have enough big lad with swords, the tactics can go out the window. The latter approach is kept in check with a comparatively low unit cap, but still, after mixing all these slightly lumpy ingredients together, Reforged can’t help but taste a bit dated.
Of course, the long shelf life Warcraft III enjoyed was mainly thanks to the online community playing together, building a loada weird custom maps together, and making mods. As mentioned, Dota developed from multiplayer maps involving Warcraft III’s hero units, for example. And multiplayer works still, as you’d hope. Online matchmaking worked fine for me, and I was happily getting roundly destroyed within minutes. In one particularly humiliating game, the opposing player just kept worrying me with raids, like a cat (an orc cat) toying with a particularly pathetic mouse (an undead mouse).
What is happening
Reforged, like a lot of remasters today, is good for a run around if all you wanted was to give your nostalgia a long leash - long enough to punch some elves in the face, say. But if Warcraft III was a game you not only once loved, but love still; if it’s a game you’ve been playing for the better part of 20 years… Well. It’s not hard to see how Reforged could end up being a bit of a disappointment.
