Reviews | Superior Realities

I have never rushed to buy anything as fast as Warcraft III: Forsaken Kingdom. I can’t overstate how important of a game Warcraft III was in my life. It absolutely below me away when I played it at twelve years old, and it’s had an immeasurable impact on me as a gamer, a writer, and a person. Really the only reason I play World of Warcraft is just to spend more time in the universe of Warcraft III.

A full fledged new expansion with its own campaign is something I never imagined possible. We had some rumours of something big coming at BlizzCon, but “big” is a relative term for a twenty year old game. I expected a big multiplayer balance patch, maybe a new Tavern hero at most. When we learned it was an actual expansion pack, and that it was launching that day, I absolutely lost my mind.

I did quickly realize that nothing was likely to equal how special the game felt in my childhood, though. It’s probably a totally different group of people making Forsaken Kingdom, and I’m a different, more jaded person now. I never stopped being hyped, but I did simmer down as I refreshed the store page and then waited for the download.

That was for the best. I would definitely not go so far as to label Forsaken Kingdom a full blown disappointment, but it does leave me feeling a bit torn.

I dived in as quickly as I could, and thus had no information about the expansion beyond the story teases from the trailers. I knew it was an interquel set between The Frozen Throne and World of Warcraft, dealing with the rise of the Forsaken and the Undercity, but beyond that I knew nothing about what to expect.

As the early missions had me only commanding hero units, I thought to myself, “This is fun, but I really hope I get to some more traditional build and destroy missions soon.” Yeah… that never happened. It turns out that Forsaken Kingdom is a full blown RPG campaign, like The Founding of Durotar from Frozen Throne. There are very few missions where you get to train any units, and none where you have a fully unrestricted tech tree. 90% of the time, you’re just commanding a couple hero units and nothing else.

This kind of gameplay works a lot better in WC3 than in other RTS games because it was always designed to be a hybrid of RTS and RPG, but still, I did buy it because I wanted to play a strategy game. For me it is that hybridization of both genres that makes Warcraft III special, and neglecting either side sucks a lot of the fun out of the game.

I don’t think it was done maliciously, but the timing for this really couldn’t be worse. Fans of Blizzard-style RTS games have been absolutely starving for something new. The attempted StarCraft II successors have largely flopped, and the next StarCraft game is going to be a shooter that seems to want to bury its RTS roots. In this climate we get the miraculous news that one of Blizzard’s most beloved RTS games is releasing its first new campaign in over twenty years… but it has no RTS gameplay. Sike.

They added a lot of new mechanics this time to flesh out the RPG side, and I did appreciate that. There’s a full talent tree for each hero on top of their normal skill progression, and you now have a paper doll of gear slots just like in World of Warcraft. Some of the late game items are pretty nuts, too. My favourite was a legendary weapon that gave my hero’s auto-attacks a 1% chance to permanently increase his Strength by 1. That’s not a one-time effect; it just keeps going.

The push to deeper RPG mechanics has its downsides as well, though. The boss fights use a lot of telegraphed attacks like an MMO boss. They did this in StarCraft II’s RPG missions as well, and I liked it there, but Warcraft III is a much older game with slower gameplay and a much less responsive engine. The safety dance gameplay doesn’t work nearly as well here. I spent most fights feeling like I was fighting the aging engine more so than the boss.

The other big problem with Forsaken Kingdom is that it was extremely buggy during my playthrough. I had a truly gamebreaking issue where character models refused to load in on the Undercity map. I figured I would just power through to the next map, but it turns out you keep going back to the same Undercity map, so eventually I had to just restart the entire act, losing hours of progress. Should have tried that sooner, I guess.

That was the worst, but I did encounter other issues. All healing stopped working on my heroes for a while, making for a very rough boss fight. I have a very high tolerance for bugs, but the ones in Forsaken Kingdom were so gamebreaking and so frustrating that they did seriously hamper my enjoyment of it.

With a new release to such an old game, there’s always the concern it could just be a lazy piece of nostalgia bait. It is nostalgia bait a bit, but it’s anything but lazy, to a fault. I think a lot of its problems boil down to the developers being too ambitious and pushing the game beyond what it’s really capable of on a technical level.

On the plus side, the story was pretty good, all things considered. Being an interquel imposes some pretty severe limitations on what you can do, and it did spend a little too much time being a nostalgia tour of famous World of Warcraft bosses (that you know you won’t kill because they appear in WoW), but there’s a very strong character arc underlying the campaign, and the voice acting is excellent.

What I really appreciated is that Forsaken Kingdom does feel very in-keeping with the style of story-telling seen in Warcraft III. While it depends a bit on the expansion, WoW leans more toward a campier style of writing, but WC3 had a more mature tone that is once again on full display in Forsaken Kingdom. It’s very good at capturing the tragedy of Lordaeron’s fall, and the struggle of the Forsaken to find meaning in their horrific new existence.

I did enjoy the final segments of the campaign a lot more than the first two thirds or so (which is also kind of how Founding of Durotar went). They introduce a new hero who is probably my favourite character in the campaign, and having a third member of the party was the missing spice to make the gameplay sing. It’s just a shame it takes so long to get to that point.

There’s some great new soundtrack pieces, too. When I first loaded it up, I spent a while just on the main menu enjoying the new theme. Beautiful piece.

I’m glad Forsaken Kingdom exists. Despite my complaints, it was nice to get to revisit such a beloved game. I hope it sells well enough to justify more new content for Warcraft III. But I also really, really hope that any future content stays truer to its RTS roots.

Overall rating: 6.9/10

Continuing the efforts to do these more often and thus keep them to a manageable length. Let’s talk about what I’ve played lately.

Lost and Found: A This Bed We Made Story

In the “pleasant surprise” department, we have this standalone expansion to Canadian indie narrative game This Bed We Made, which I played and mostly enjoyed aways back.

Lost and Found is very short — I finished it in a single session that ran a bit under two hours — but entirely pleasant. It’s more of an extended epilogue than anything. While it still deals with some heavy topics, it’s overall much lighter than the original game. It feels like a bit of a response to how difficult it could be to get the best possible ending for the original game. The point of Lost and Found seems to be to let you know that no matter what, things worked out okay for Sophie in the end.

It’s almost a little too saccharine, but Sophie is such a lovable character I’m not going to complain about her getting the chance to sail off into the sunset. Especially with how bleak the world can be these days, a nice happily ever after felt like a lovely palate cleanser.

Despite this seeming like it’s intended as a conclusive end, there is also what seems like a teaser for another story at the end. That’s a bit of a confusing choice, especially as it’s a teaser that seems only relevant for one romance choice (is it a different teaser if you romanced someone else?), but at the same time I can’t say I’d be sorry to continue Sophie’s adventures in the future.

World of Warcraft

I’ve just re-upped my subscription to play through the new Curse of Ula’tek patch. I’ll probably write up some detailed impressions of the new stuff for Massively once I’ve played more. So far, I’m finding the amount of stuff to catch up on after just a two month break absolutely exhausting, which is the subject of another Massively column I just finished writing.

The first few days back in WoW are always the least fun, though. It always takes a couple days for the Stockholm Syndrome to reassert itself. I imagine I’ll feel better about it in a few days.

Not planning any big changes to my roster or approach this time around. No plans to level any new alts or otherwise shake things up majorly. I plan to back burner the demon hunter a little, and I may not play the death knight at all.

Since farming transmog is my main longterm goal these days, a lot of what I focus on is determined by which tier sets I best like the look of. This tier, that’s monk and warlock. I wanted to show my monk some love anyway; haven’t played her that much so far this expac. She’s been my choice to play through the new campaign.

StarCraft II

Honestly I’m surprised I didn’t already have this achievement, but then I did play mainly on hard for the first year or two.

Even with my growing burnout with co-op described in my last round-up, I did end up getting good use out of that co-op XP booster. I finished re-leveling Alarak and Zagara, finally got Swann to cap, and prestiged and releveled Fenix to try out his Ahkundelar talent.

It did feel a bit like a chore at times, though. It remains true that my passion for co-op is flagging after all this time. I did have a little more fun with Fenix. Partly he’s just generally more enjoyable than the others, partly it’s that Ahkundelar turns out to be a pretty fun talent.

It does feel a bit cheesy because it’s one of those prestiges that’s pretty much just the base commander but better. Even with the longer cooldowns, you’ve still got Fenix available for pretty much every major fight, so you’re just playing with a super buffed hero with no real downside. Fun power trip, though.

I remain hungry for a new Blizzard style RTS. I’m a bit fatigued of the breakneck pace of SC2, but I still want something faster and flashier to balance out the slower pace of Age of Empires. Even with the news it’s supposedly funded to 1.0, I’m not super optimistic about ZeroSpace’s longterm prospects. There’s a rumour of a new Warcraft RTS in production, but I’ll believe it when I see it, and I’m not sure Blizzard can equal the greatness of its past efforts in that genre these days. Godsworn is great, and I’m impatient for it to finally leave early access, but it is built more as a one and done campaign experience.

I increasingly fear we’ll never see the likes of StarCraft II again.

Overwatch

Despite my rage over Stadium’s abandonment, I still play it, though less often than I did. I don’t know if you’d call this a silver lining or salt in the wound, but I figured I had nothing left to lose and made one last attempt at learning D.Va, and, well…

Don’t want to jinx it, but it’s been a couple weeks of (admittedly light) play, and my overall career winrate on her went from about 45% to around 55%. That’s a pretty decisive turnaround.

I’m not even sure what’s making the difference. I changed up my build some, but it’s hard to believe that would make such a difference. I’ve been using the new options to buff her in pilot mode so I’m not a free kill when de-meched, and I’m abusing Three Tap Tommy Gun, which seems pretty good even after its nerf. Don’t think it’s really securing any kills for me, but it’s good at applying pressure and farming ult charge and Stadium cash. I also find Martian Mender has been helping a lot in the late game; D.Va moves around so much it’s hard for her healers to keep up, so the self-sufficiency is welcome.

The Division: Resurgence

Not much to say about this, but I’ll include a note of it for the record. Usually after I write an impressions piece for Massively, I stop playing once I’ve got enough thoughts for a column, but I liked this one enough to keep playing for a week or two. It’s very much a mindless time-waster, but it serves that function well.

I probably would have played more, but the story is clearly just there to tick a box on a features list, and as always I struggle with motivation to keep going when I’m not invested in a game’s story. Still might go back and finish it at some point, though.

The First Descendant

Not actually playing this right now, but I did want to make mention of it. They’ve just released their new season with the final showdown with Karel. It’s pretty clear by now that the developers don’t know what they’re doing and aren’t likely to improve, but even with the story as bad as it is, I still kind of feel like I should see the Karel arc to its end and get some closure.

Not sure when I’ll get around to it, though. Between Curse of Ula’tek, upcoming Age of Empires DLC, and the impending Western release of Aion 2, my dance card is looking pretty full for the next month or two.

Superior Realities

Category Archives: Reviews

Warcraft III: Forsaken Kingdom Review

Gaming Round Up: Lost and Found, Blizzard Games, and More

Share this:

Share this: