I picked up my copy on Tuesday, and I’m about halfway through the Undead campaign so far.
Likes: It’s pretty interesting to see where the Blizzard guys got their inspiration from. For example, those in-game cutscenes are straight out of Sacrifice, and I’m pretty sure there’s a little bit of Dungeon Keeper style thrown in there too. It plays just like their traditional games, but I really like the addition of autocast and easy unit management. As always, the voice acting is top-notch and both the humor and the drama are done well.
Dislikes: I’m beginning to think that Blizzard only has two plots. I mean, the heroes are basically ripped right from Diablo, and so is a lot of the demonic corruption / undead business. And so far the story of Arthas is awfully reminiscent of some minor character from StarCraft . . . maybe she was in a mission or two, might have got corrupted by an evil influence . . . nah, perhaps my memory’s bad :). What’s really getting on my nerves is this infernal unit cap. It’s too low, which makes adequate base defense difficult. You have serious incentive to keep your number of units in normal or low maintenance, so by the time you’ve got a reasonable strike force going, they’ve all got to go or you won’t punch through.
Well, I need to get some more play time in. What does everyone else think?
i think the unit cap is so low because blizzard wanted to stress the importance of single units, and didn’t want people winning by shear numbers, but i digress…
I finished it yesterday, and ya, its seems that blizzard has a particular formula for desiging game plots, like how there is always unfinished busness at the end so they can make an expansion pack....don't want to give spoilers, but the ending leaves lots for a expansion.
but over all, i liked it, and when you get to it, the orc’s end cinamatic is really awsome.
By far the best cinematic endings were the human and orc campaigns. I agree that when Arthas went bad it reminded me a lot of Starcraft, but while she was left to rot as the Zergs swarmed over the base, Arthas turned evil because of his obessive drive to free his people and his willingness to do whatever it took. It’s ironic that the very thing that drove him to destroy the undead is what made him join them.
The ending, IMHO, sucked. Bad. The movie was great, but it was terribly anti-climactic, especially when compared to the orc end campaign. It was just a really terrible way to end the game.
The hardest mission for me hands down was the last mission of the undead campaign. I had a pretty large army, tons of shooting ziggurats on each side and at the end they just plowed through me like I wasn’t even there. About 6 times I finished the mission with 2 seconds left when the lich died. Once I lost with 1 second remaining.
Absolutley! That mission was a bitch! I came SO close to using a cheat code on the mission because I kept on dieing with under 10 secs left. I ended up not needing to cheat, but just barely. Arthas was dead and I had luckily just healed kel thuzad and only had 3 secs left. Everyone lese was dead though.
That was the only mission I ever just flat out failed on. I had to start the half hour over at least 4 times, and that doesnt include my mid mission saves either.
I died the first time when playing that last Undead mission as well. But then I remembered the health and mana wells. I layed the dwarf mines around Kel and then built (throughout the scenario) about 6 necromancers and two catapults that I put up on the altar with Kel. When the big onslaught came, I pulled everyone back to the altar, let them rub out my boat load of ziggaurats and stood around to heal Kel if an errant explosion hit him.
One thing that the scenario taught me was, Steam Tanks are bad assed. They’re tough to kill and level buildings lickety split. Makes me wish I’d used them more often in the Human campaign. (I didn’t really use them at all). Three of them ran amok on my left flank and it almost killed me halfway through the game.