"For the Horde!"

Warcraft II is not exactly the best game ever, but it is certainly the best online game ever. It's easy to use and free. The original game outside of the online mode is great and all but you get the most out of it when you're online. It's much better than Warcraft III or World of Warcraft because of how much faster it is to set things up, the fact that you don't need a fast computer to play it, and cmon, it's free.

For the alliance!

Games can be simply explained like this; you begin the game with a set amount of units, a few peons/peasants that do all the building/mining/lumbering. Certain characters require certain buildings to be made in order to recruit them, there's plenty of upgrades and other things that allow characters to get better. You then build up an army and attack your enemy like any normal game. The last race left after one is completely decimated, is declared the winner and they are prompted to their stat screen of all kinds of scoring.

The campaign modes are very fun and different as you play a new map. It's not just, “Build a base, and go kill the enemy.” It's more of a. “Take these few troops and go kill these guys to control their base, then transport this hero to this place without him dying.” And that's just one of the many missions that can come to you. You originally are prompted to choose if you'd like to be Orcs or Humans and then zoomed over to your first mission where a set of objectives is given to you.

Unlike the original, you have the ability to create your own Map, using the Map Editor you can customize every little aspect you can think of, this feature adds so much more to this game and leaves the original in the dust. You can spend countless hours just creating your own scenario for another to play and then continue to trade off that the possibilities are endless. It's actually in this editor that a huge load of popular internet games have spun off from. (More on that later) The last part I'd like to mention which is probably the best feature, is the ability to go online (For free) and battle people all around the country and even over in Asia/Europe. But it all depends on what you select, so you can move between all different zones and play a lot of different people. There are a few tools that measure your ranking to see who really is the best. But this is abused by the fact that there are numerous hackers (just about everyone can nowadays) which blizzard did work very hard to stop but has moved on to newer titles. But perhaps the worst thing that was invented was a thing called a “Winbot” which gave you free wins just by opening the program and leaving it on. So naturally the top gamers are all fakes. If you can get past that, it's still a great experience.

All sounds in this game are great, having each character have its own unique set of phrases that it says, truly separates this game from the greats. The background of in-game play is also very nice too listen and is arguably the best theme for this type of game. You really feel like you're neck deep in battle and there's no where to run. Plus the voices are all superb to the character, you will get goosebumps when you first hear them.

Controlling in this game is straightforward and very easy. You can click on average six different options depending on the character. You can move, attack, patrol, build, stand your ground, and attack ground for some strategic planning. What's good about this game is that your units will respond nicely and don't move somewhere where they shouldn't go, but will sometimes attack when you don't want them attacking, normally when you're getting a sneak attack going.

The game does have some minor flaws, you'll notice as you progress through the campaign that the difficulty takes a huge turn midway through. Starting off in a campaign it's pretty straightforward what you're trying to do and most players can beat it within minutes. When you start getting to the middle and end, it can be so frustrating that you have to resort to cheats, which they'll then stick with you and whenever you play you will have the urge to use them.

Online mode is where the game shines. You can easily create and account and be playing within minutes. There's countless channels (think chatroom) where you can talk with other gamers out there and where people normally get together other users to create “clans” where they'll change their usernames to have one similar prefix. There aren't to many games going on nowadays but there were some awesome games that people were able to create such as paintball where every units HP would be set at one. And I hate to admit it, a lot of hackers were able to change the game around and create some very fun levels where you wouldn't be able to do something you'd normally do.

Warcraft II has some pretty impressive graphics for a game at that time. I will admit the trees can look a little repetitive but that doesn't take any greatness out of the game. The characters as well, are very nicely created, and give plenty of depth to the game, the fires on buildings almost look real, and all buildings are very cool looking with much detail. Even in the middle of a huge battle do you rarely see any lagging and have the game lose it's look.

As we wrap this up, it's time to mention that this game has or perhaps had a huge replay value. I played this constantly for two straight years and still play it every now and then. It's not the same great game as it used to be and since you need a CD key to get online, you really aren't going to see to many new players. It's still a great game and much better than the newer Warcraft games Blizzard has put out lately.

You really should get this game. This is on my top five games of all-time and I wish more people were playing it. But since it is old, copies are scarce; your best bet would be online or you might just get lucky and find it new in some department store, probably only for $10. Check it out!

….As you wish….

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/07/04, Updated 08/01/06