RoC is your typical Blizzard RTS, as in it's dumbed down and has little to no strategy whatsoever. The most strategy you can get out of this game is to learn your enemy's units, learn their weaknesses, and build the units that can work against those. Same as Starcraft, same as all Blizzard cr*p, there is nothing "strategic" in this; We are lightyears away from a decent strategy principleRoC is your typical Blizzard RTS, as in it's dumbed down and has little to no strategy whatsoever. The most strategy you can get out of this game is to learn your enemy's units, learn their weaknesses, and build the units that can work against those. Same as Starcraft, same as all Blizzard cr*p, there is nothing "strategic" in this; We are lightyears away from a decent strategy principle where it's about the wits, brains and ability to surprise, trap or force your enemy. Games like Command and Conquer series or the Total War games are what I'd consider strategy, my victory and defeat are decided upon my decisions and tactics, not my ability to fast-click my units' different spells and powers faster than the AI or foe can.
But beyond the classic complaint about Blizzard making big public "RTSes" with an obsession with speed that dumbs down all their games, RoC didn't age too well.
Graphically it's fine, the cartoon appearance of all still holds up well today even if it's old now.
The real reasons of aging show up in the storyline and the controls.
For controls it's fairly simple, I feel like I'm always trying to click that one unit I need to click on in a melee of 25 units. It's extremely unpleasant to want to simply throw a spell and lose time because there is no simple way to throw it at the touch of a key. Later Blizz games did better.
The limitation to 12 units in a group is so ridiculous I can't believe people don't give Blizzard a hard time over it. Even for when the game came out, that was ridiculous. You have to constantly save your groups in slots 1-9, call them, tab through them to get the unit you want or need, and then do it again and again and again at every battle. This game considers that micromanaging is gameplay, it's not. It's lack of good gameplay that demands the player to micromanage, and this game has such a lack. I could say the exact same thing for SC2, but at the very least SC2 didn't give me nearly as hard a time to use my units because I wasn't limited to 12 of them. Same gameplay, but younger game, and it shows. A lot.
With the controls aside, the storyline has very poorly aged I think. Writing and general cutscene directing is earnest and truly tries to give a grand epic but falls as hard as the Red Alert 1 cutscenes fell-probably harder even. The number of reasons why is too big to count, but I'll just give two, one is that the writing feels like it has about 10 holes per cutscenes, characters either aren't well established, either are going from subject to subject at a crazy pace, either are just throwing one pompous cliche line that ends up falling flat as soon as it's spoken. Secondarily, the general cutscene direction seldom ever makes good use of the environment, you almost always just have your common units looking at each other and no interaction with the environment and extremely little animation. Nothing wrong for 2002 of course, but today, the age shows painfully.
Lastly the storyline could be considered a grand epic if it was better written(Starcraft2 WoL did a gorgeous writing job and cutscene directing), but I don't think any of the characters could ever be used again, save maybe Thrall and Malfurion Stormrage.
This may be ranting, but Arthas is a massive tool that is neither likable nor entertaining at all. As a human, he's stupid, arrogant, makes no intelligent decisions ever, falls into obvious traps, and is at best a selfish a*s, at worst a complete tool that literally offers himself to his enemies on a plate repeatedly. As an undead, he's exactly what a villain shouldn't be, he's not admirable, he just obeys his command like a good tool, he's not grand, he comes off like a petty brawler, he's not entertaining, he has neither wits nor style, he doesn't even have the courtesy of being a character because "his soul was stolen". Well, Frostmourne didn't steal just his soul, it took the whole value of Arthas as a villain with it.
Thrall is better, but he's also surrounded by tools such as Grom Hellscream. As for the night elves, Tyrande is a selfish one who's as pompous as she is brainless, Malfurion is alright, nothing fancy though, and the rest of the side characters like King Terenas, Antonidas or Uther are just skippable. Medivh is better than the rest but since he's also a tool with cliche lines, I really can't call him a good character.
So the game didn't age well, the control especially didn't age well, and in general even when it came out the game was still a Blizzard "RTS", tons of clicking, little thinking. Still a 6 because despite the age and repulsive gameplay, I found and find this game to be quite entertaining in its own way, even though I can't play it as "strategy".… Expand
Warcraft III: Reign of ChaosYour Score0 out of 10User Score
