"Blizzard Delivers Another Gem"

Introduction: Warcraft II followed up Blizzards first real time strategy game, Warcraft: Orcs vs. Humans. It did so with great success. WC2 incorporates more campaigns, more levels, and more units than its predecessor. Battle.net edition gives you added maps and the ability to play blizzards battle.net servers. Previous version of the game only allowed modem/network connects.

Game play: WC2 is easy to interface with. First, an improvement from WC1 allows you to move nine units at a time instead of just four. Battle.net edition goes a step farther, allowing you to hotkey your groups of selections for better control. Hotkeys make choosing actions quick and painless. The game has varying speed options making it controllable for people with slower reflexes. Unit health is easy to see when highlighted, NPC stand out; all around good interface.
8/10

Story: WC2 has a great storyline. It picks up right where WC left off and ran with it. The Expansion, which is built into battle.net edition, picks up right where WC2 left off. Both species have different storylines. The Orc storyline is somewhat lacking though, mostly because it goes nowhere. The human storyline is excellent though.
8/10

Graphics: Battle.net edition graphics are no different from the original game; in that respect they are very dated. Units are easily distinguishable though and the terrain isn’t too bad considering when the game was made. There is no noticeable image lag or breakup. As always Blizzards Movie sequences were state of the art, comparable with today’s standards.
7/10

Sound: The sound effects are good, voices are well done. There are multiple sounds for arrows, swords, and explosions and the like.
7/10

Music: Another gem here, WC2 has excellent music. Though there is only about a half hour of total music, the songs are well composed and don’t get old or annoying even during the course of a long level.
10/10

Play time: As far as the campaigns go, you can save at virtually any time. Individual levels can be as quick as a couple of minutes to as lengthy as a couple of hours. Online games can also be as quick or long, except you can’t save them in the middle.

Replayability: Since Battle.net edition has both Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal, there are four reasonably long campaigns to play. You’ll probably only want to play each one of those once, since they don’t change any. However, the game comes with several other maps for player vs. player or player(s) vs. computer matches. If you get tired of the built in ones, you can download others. Overall, there’s always another stone to turn playing WC2
9/10

Final Review: You’ll have to buy the game, since it requires a cd-key to play online, I don’t know of any place that rents them so I can’t recommend doing that if you wanted to play it single player. It is only twenty or thirty dollars, which is a great bargain for the hours of enjoyment that you will get from it.

Final Rating: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/15/02, Updated 12/16/02