Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
I've had a great time with the FT (don't want to wear out the 'z' key, do we?) campaigns. In fact, I rank them well above the original campaigns in all aspects. Of course, it was much longer since I played through the old missions, but I still feel safe in saying that these are all of a higher quality. Mind you, I'm also sure they are of higher difficulty, I don't remember any old mission feeling as challenging as a few FT ones did.
Design-wise the campaigns are a nice evolutionary step forward. The designers have learned their lessons from the original game and applied it all in full to make the new missions bigger, more varied, more original feeling and more challenging. There are more optional quests and some nice bonuses to find. I'm a big fan of little touches and jokes in hidden corners, and FT seems to do it more than the original campaigns did. Even the credits sequence (at least the bonus one, I don't know what the "normal" one is like) has been improved on. I feel like the in-game storytelling has improved as well, but I can't define just what the change there might be. Maybe there's just more of it as well.
The bonus "RPG" campaign with the orcs is of course quite different in design to the other missions. Compare it to other hack-and-slash-RPGs though, and it's pretty normal. Fun while it lasts anyway, especially before you run into the level cap and stop gaining experience.
The story of the game is pretty nice too. Nothing earth shattering perhaps, it carries on all the usual infighting and odd alliances, and some characters do break the world record in short-sightedness and strange naivity. It bothers me that Loarderon is left at the mercy of evil, ravaged of all life, as well, but that's just me :-) ... Could it be a setup for World of Warcraft? All the "good" civilizations are now on one continent, and then there are varying amounts of evil on the others. Seems convenient to me ... To counter that I do like the fact that the "larger" evils in the gameworld seem to get crushed by the "smaller" ones. It just makes the world more interesting. I didn't much like the burning legion popping out of space to enslave the world, the world is a nicer place without them (duh ...).
Graphics haven't much changed since last time of course, if you liked the style last time you will now too. Moving right along ...
The sounds are great this time around too, no big changes here either. I was delighted to hear some more revamped Warcraft II music in the cutscenes of the Orc campaign, I always miss those tracks whenever I play. The orcs themselves still don't sound like the guttural creatures they were back in Warcraft II, but I'm getting over that ... I have to agree with others that making the whole troll race sound Jamaican is a slight mood-breaker. I haven't clicked units to find all their funny lines, but I mean to eventually.