Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness

"Orc King."

In this sequel Blizzard solved all the problems the first one had and that kept it for being the best, so as now they are all gone, WarCraft II rises as one the best strategy games (and one of the best computer games in my opinion) of all time, an absolute classic not to be missed by anyone who calls himself an strategy fan.

Gameplay:
WarCraft II`s gameplay is an example of how to improve a promising interface that the only thing that needed was a few enhancements, and that is exactly what Blizzard did, enhance the gameplay to make it almost perfect.

The interface is a lot better because it is faster and more than anything ten times more intuitive, which was the big flaw in the first one. Now we are able to make bigger groups of units, we are able to select more units at the same time, we are able to give them orders much easily with just a few clicks, there is no need to build paths between our structures, etc.

Like in the first in the series and unlike games such as Command & Conquer, here each unit has special abilities, something that makes them more important and interesting because they are not just more or less powerful, faster, or whatever, they are like in the first game, useful for an specific task also, only that, of course, with better made and newer abilities.

The enemy and unit`s AI has improved a lot, our peasants are no going to get stuck in the middle of the forest like before anymore, or at least not so frequently and in easy paths, then the enemy units are also far more intelligent than before, they are not going to attack like morons every five seconds anymore.

This time we have airborne and sea units, something that expands the possibilities a lot and adds a new resource to be gathered, oil. There are only two aerial units as far as I can remember, which is not very much actually, and even the less considering that one of them is just an explorer unit without weapons, it is a pity really, they could have added some more. Thankfully, the sea units are as well made as scarce are the airborne ones are, and the task of extracting oil is not as simple and to gather wood or gold, to obtain oil we need to build boats, as well as specific structures and warships to defend them, so it is harder and more expensive to get, and it is not a good idea to start with it unless we already have a nicely structured economy.

If there is something I don`t like is the fact that the units are too balanced, what I mean is that each unit has its counterpart in the other band, if the Humans have Wizards the then Orcs have Death Knights, and both are basically the same unit only that with different appearances, because even their abilities are quite similar. The problem is that there is no use on complaining about this because this is something that was made on purpose, and it is something that almost any strategy game features, they do this in order not to make a band better than the other, I’m not agree with this, if a band is better, better, like in Command & Conquer, this adds challenge in both multiplayer battles and while playing alone.

Graphics:
A huge improvement over the first one also, bigger and more detailed. The graphics are no longer very pixilated and the backgrounds have a lot more life, as well as a lot more variety. The structures are now simply remarkable, specially the Orc ones, with an impressive level of detail and a terrific design. Overall WarCraft II is a lot more humorous game, and with brighter colours, so it is not as dark as before, which is not a bad thing because while darker, the first one wasn`t exactly a serious game. Excellent graphics.

Music:
A very cool fantasy soundtrack that fits the game perfectly, as expected. It does gets repetitive because there is not exactly too much variety, but it is ok anyway, you will never get too tired of it. Something that I can`t remember if the first one also had are the hilarious voices, if we bother our units too much they will end up pissed off very badly. Outstanding voice acting.

As a result:
WarCraft II renders the first one completely obsolete and is, together with Command & Conquer and StarCraft, the best real time strategy game out there, even nowadays. A classic, a must, but saying this is useless, because, you have already played don`t you?

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/15/04