7/18/2003 1:12:28 AM
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne PC ReviewBy gameinfowire.com Staff
Fans of Blizzard games have come to expect a lot from the studio that delivers one hit after another, taking their time to finish their work, and landing support long after retail release. Blizzards expansion packs in the past always featured plenty of content for the discount price, and Frozen Throne, will certainly raise the bar even higher when it comes to bang-for-the-buck ratio.
For starters, the game contains an incredible single player campaign. The story fits in nicely with the original game and completes whatever loose ends were with the help of in-game cut scenes, great voice acting and two awesome pre-rendered videos. In many ways, Frozen Throne (FT) single player campaign is more interesting to play than the original. Missions often have multiple objectives, characters speak out revealing details about particular task and so on. The difficulty has also been raised just a notch, and learning to use the new units and heroes just becomes so much more interesting. The story in the campaign revolves around Elves, Humans and the Undead factions. While playing the story based campaign, you will come across two new races, complete with unique heroes, units and structures. An incredible feat by all gaming standards. Altho the two new factions are pretty balanced in the single player mode, they are not available in the multiplayer portion of the game. Altho with such an active and supportive community its almost certain that new campaigns and modded maps will come out featuring those two new races and their heroes. After all is said and done, or rather played and enjoyed, single player portion of the expansion pack easily rivals that of the original game.
Orcs have their own separate campaign, which is also vastly different. Orc campaign has been setup to demonstrate new scripting features and other new goodies in the game editor. In the end, the orc campaign is heavily RPG like, almost taking on the feel of a stand alone RPG title.
One of the most prominent new features are the new heroes. Each side gets one new hero and two new units. Elves get a new hero called Warden, a assassin type hero who specializes at taking out key units, including other heroes. Her "blink" ability allows her to quickly teleport short distances to catch up to fleeing heroes or getting out of sticky situation. Her ultimate is a new summonable unit, called Vengeance, which can summon units of his own. Mountain Giant is a much needed heavy melee unit, incredibly strong and has special abilities of his own. Mountain Giant can grab trees and use them to quickly demolish buildings and can taunt surrounding enemy units, forcing them to fire on him. Faerie Dragon is an aerial unit, immune to magic and basically acts as an anti magic unit. It can damage magic casting units with its Mana Flare ability. It can also shift out of phase with its Phase Shift ability. While phased, the unit will not take damage, but will not be able to fight or move.
New Human hero is the Blood Mage. He is a pure caster, with some truly incredible spells. For example, Flame Strike, will deliver hundreds of points of damage in a very concentrated area with several seconds. His ultimate is rather weak, but will last indefinitely, respawning from the magic egg if its kept alive. Spell Breaker is the new human anti-caster, immune to magic and with two very tricky spells at his disposal they are sure to be popular in online games. Spell Breaker can take control of summoned enemy units, and can switch buffs and debuffs on friendly and enemy units. Dragonhawk Rider is a new flying unit. They can use Cloud ability to temporarily disable base defenses and Aerial Shackles ability to disable air units.
Crypt Lord is the new Undead hero. Heavy melee hero that can absorb incredible amounts of damage and with the right hero combo can be extremely powerful. His passive Spiked Carapace ability, will give him 7 bonus armor and return 35% damage to attacking units. His Locust Swarm ultimate can severely weaken opposing army while healing the hero at the same time. Obsidian Statue is a new unit that can regenerate health or mana of other, nearby units. It can also morph into another new unit. Destroyer is an anti-caster, that is immune to magic. He can be effectively used to fight mass casters, debuffing friendly and enemy units and dealing good damage to summoned units.
Shadow Hunter is the new Orc hero. Shadow Hunter is a caster type hero, that can heal and transform enemy units into neutral critters for a short time. His ultimate, Big Bad Voodoo turns all friendly nearby units invincible, while immobilizing the hero. Spirit Walker is new Orcish caster. He can remove spells with an are type of effect spell, and also has the phase ability. Troll Batrider is new flying unit specializing in destroying buildings and suicide runs against enemy air units.
Other new heroes are also available, and can be purchased in a special neutral buildings on many multiplayer maps. Those new neutral heroes range from casters, to melee type tanking units, ranged and summoners. Other new neutral buildings offer new units that can be bought. There are also tons of new items and power-ups. On top of all this, Blizzard added tons of new multiplayer maps, including maps with new tile sets and even maps featuring the new naval transports.
With the release of FT, Blizzard released several patches to bring the original game on par with the expansion, in those new patches, namely 1.10, the damage types and armor were radically different. Basically, the release of FT has changed the way people play WarCraft online. Some older strategies were no longer feasible, while new strategies were instantly developed by the burgeoning community. Many people dislike the changes that were made with the 1.10 patch and FT in general, but over all people seem to be switching to the new system and slowly accepting new rules of combat. One thing that was always true about WC3 and now with the release of the FT is much more prominent is the use of magic. Many people refer to WarCraft as SpellCraft, because the game is so heavily magic based. Love it or hate it, but its different, and its here to stay.
Ratings (1-10):
Graphics: 8. No changes from the original, clean, detailed and well animated units. New tile sets are a welcome addition.
Sound: 10. Great voice acting and nice sound effects.
Gameplay: 9. Solid balanced gameplay, but heavily based on magic.
Story: 10. Awesome single player campaign, and continuation of the original story.
Replayability: 10. Amazing replayability with online modes. Large and supportive community.
Overall: 9.5 Simply put, for an estimated $30 bucks you get almost more than what you had with the original game. If you are a fan of RTS games, and especially WarCraft fan, this expansion pack is a must have.
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne PC Review
