Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
Released, almost to the day, one year after Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Blizzard Entertainment’s follow-up expansion set, The Frozen Throne continues the single player narrative where it left off in the previous game, while adding a plethora of new units, abilities, items and maps to eke more life out of the multiplayer and skirmish scene. The basic mechanics of Reign of Chaos, referred to from hereon in as RoC, are covered in my review of that game.
Beginning with 1996’s expansion set to Warcraft II, Beyond the Dark Portal, Blizzard have proven beyond any doubt that they take their expansion sets as seriously as their stand-alone games. Not content to merely throw in a handful of new units and some additional multiplayer maps, they have a track record for improving and expanding the universe of the original without betraying its essence. Starcraft: Brood War in 1998 showed how this could be done, continuing the epic storyline of the original game and branching off in new and unexpected directions, while the inclusion of two new units for each of the three races, far from unbalancing the game, fit snugly into its mechanics to the extent that it became difficult to imagine a time when they weren’t there. The Frozen Throne (TFT) is cut from very much the same mould, with the single player campaign picking up immediately after the Night Elves’ great sacrifice to defeat the demon-lord Tychondrius. The new campaign once again finds us with the Night Elves, and, over the course of 22 missions spread across three campaigns, players also re-encounter the Humans and the Undead.
Conspicuously absent are the Orcs, always one of the backbones of the series and one of the two races present since the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. This dramatic change came about as a result of Blizzard not being able to satisfyingly shoehorn the Orcs into the events of the storyline as told in TFT’s campaign, and, as a result, instead giving them their own “bonus” campaign: The Founding of Durotar, more than anything else, serves as a demonstration of the power of the World Editor which comes bundled with the game, allowing users to create their own maps and interconnected campaigns. Playing less like a strategy game and more like an RPG, it seems in spirit far closer to the original “role-playing strategy” premise upon which Warcraft III was founded before they developers brought it back to its RTS roots.
Even within the regular campaign, there is a considerable amount of change. Perhaps to help alleviate the tedium present in RoC’s single player missions, where the same familiar units and objectives were present throughout, Blizzard have thrown a monkey wrench or two into the mix. Often, certain units or buildings will be unavailable, and there is an increased emphasis on using non-standard strategies and units. For instance, threaded throughout the campaign are encounters with a race of sea-creatures called the Naga, and, on a number of occasions, they can be used to augment your forces. Some missions even allow access to their buildings, making them an almost fully-fledged faction in their own right. The Naga, sadly, are not available to play in multiplayer and skirmish games, which is a shame, but it’s fairly clear that they are not as fully realised or balanced as the four main races. Likewise, the Human campaign, which is actually more concerned with the Blood Elves, a group of survivors of Prince Arthas’ destruction of Dalaran in RoC, than the Humans themselves, often allows access to units not normally available, such as elven archers. As a downside, the single player campaign is marred by some rather tedious dungeon crawl levels, which do little other than highlight the often ineffective pathing, as units bump into each other and generally end up in traffic jams as they attempt to negotiate the often narrow corridors.
On a more long-term basis, meanwhile, each race gains two new units and a new hero. Most of these seem designed to offset perceived imbalances in RoC: for example, the Night Elves, who previously lacked a heavy-duty melee unit, gain the Mountain Giant, a huge, hulking stone contraption that can uproot a tree and use it as a club. The Humans, meanwhile, receiver the Spellbreaker, a magic-immune melee unit that can steal enchantments from enemy units and apply them to allies, or likewise remove negative spell effects from allies and apply them to enemies. Each race additionally gains a new building, a shop, from which a variety of race-dependent weapons can be bought: the Night Elves, for instance, can purchase a Moonstone, which immediately sets the time of day to night for a brief period, allowing them to recharge their Moon Wells or hide their forces in the shadows; the Undead, meanwhile, can buy an Orb of Corruption, which allows them to instantly generate an area of Blight on the ground upon which to construct buildings. Finally, a new neutral outpost, the Tavern, is included on many maps, allowing players to recruit neutral heroes instead of being restricted to their own race’s choice of four. This allows for more varied and less predictable strategies, and Blizzard’s inclusion of new heroes with many of their patches has kept the game and its play-styles continually evolving.
Naval transports and combat ships, last seen in Warcraft II, also make a welcome reappearance, although they are, for the most part, restricted to two or three levels in the single player campaign.
The Frozen Throne carries on Warcraft III in fine tradition. It may not do much to alleviate some of the game’s inherent flaws, such as the small-scale nature of the battles and at times derivative nature of the plot, but, if you enjoyed Warcraft III, then you will probably have come to accept these or at least take them in their stride. In any event, the additions help to expand the scope of the game and fill out some of the weaker elements of the various races. As strategy games go, you can definitely do a lot worse than Warcraft III, and this expansion proves that there is not necessarily anything wrong with more of the same.
8/10.
|
