Warcraft II: The Tides of Darkness is the game I remember the most from the series. It is a vast improvement on the first game in nearly every area. This is also where many of the races from World of Warcraft would appear.
This is a game that I associate with winter. Specifically with Christmas or Holiday break. I didn’t have school to worry about, and there was too much snow to go anywhere. So, I played Warcraft II and tried to beat the game as many times as possible. I’m unsure when we got the expansion pack, but I’ll talk about that later.
The second game is fantastic! It still holds up today in a way that the first one doesn’t. There is very little to complain about with this game. Let’s get into it!
TLDR: An Improvement Over the First Game in Every Way.
Narrative
The Orcs won the war in the first game. The second game picks up a few years later with the invasion of the northern kingdom. This draws the other races into the conflict. The Gnomes, Elves, and Dwarfs join the Humans. The Orcs are joined by the Trolls, Ogres, Goblins, and some undead creatures.
You follow the course of the war, and it plays out similarly to the first game. You’ll start with a more local conflict where you go through a tutorial. The game slowly throws more at you as the game goes on.
At some point, you will have to fight a traitor faction. There are also missions where you’ll have to protect important units and escort them to specific locations. These build up some characters as heroes, but they don’t matter much.
The Human/Alliance campaign is considered canon for the series. In that campaign, you drive the Orcs through the portal and attempt to destroy it. The Orc ending has you overrun the human and elf kingdoms, and your character gains control of their own clan.
Warcraft II has an expansion pack, which I’ll review separately. It picks up right after the events of this game. It also sets up the landscape for the third game.
Gameplay
If you’ve played any Blizzard RTS games, you should know what to expect. Depending on your chosen side, you have to gather resources with a Peasant or Peon and use those resources to train military units and build buildings. Unlike the first game, you don’t have to deal with building roads, so the city-building aspect of the game has been downplayed.
For the most part, buildings stayed the same in the second game. The names have changed, but the basic buildings are all here. The advanced buildings are a little different, as well as adding sea and air units.
I’ll go over the military units in a bit, but let’s talk about the building first. Here is a list, along with their upgrades if they have them:
- Farm (Pig Farm)
- Town Hall (Great Hall), which can be upgraded to a Keep and then a Castle, or a Stronghold and then a fortress for the Orcs.
- Scout Tower (Watch Tower) can be upgraded to a Guard Tower that fires arrows or a Canon Tower. This applies to both factions.
- Barracks
- Elven Lumber Mill (Troll Lumber Mill)
- Blacksmith
- Shipyard
- Foundry
- Oil Refinery
- Oil Rig
- Stables (Ogre Mound)
- Gnomish Inventor (Goblin Alchemist)
- Gryphon Aviary (Dragon Roost)
- Mage Tower (Temple of the Damned)
- Church (Altar of Storms)
One huge improvement from the first game is the elimination of roads. Thankfully, you don’t have to build these, which lets you put buildings wherever you want, as long as there is space. This helps immensely when building more farms to increase your unit limit. Now, you don’t have to waste time and money building roads.
Ground units are essentially the same. You have two infantry units, one ranged soldier, and a catapult or ballista. Here is a list:
- Peasant (Peon)
- Footman (Grunt)
- Elven Archer (Troll Axe Thrower)
- Knight (Ogre)
- Ballista (Catapult)
The naval units are a welcome addition to the game. It was something that was missing from the previous game, and it makes this better. It also adds another resource to keep track of as you need oil to recruit units. Here is a list of the naval vessels:
- Oil Tanker
- Transport
- Elvish Destroyer (Troll Destroyer)
- Battleship (Juggernaut)
- Gnomish Submarine (Giant Turtle)
The game has air units, but this is one of the weaker areas. There is one offensive unit and one scout unit for each side. Both sides also have demolition units, but I never found these to be as useful as they could be. I’m probably just not using them wisely. Here are the air units in the game:
- Gnomish Flying Machine (Goblin Zeplin) Scout units who can see submarines and turtles. They cannot attack.
- Gryphon Riders (Dragons) Can see submarines and turtles. They can also attack friendly units by mistake. Be careful with them.
Magic has been reworked in this game. I wouldn’t say I like it as much, but I like the focus on spells instead of summoning monsters. The number of spell casters has been reduced, with the Clerics being rolled into the Knights and the Necrophytes being combined with the Death Knights.
Here are the spells in the game and which units can use them:
- Fireball (Mage)
- Flame Sheild (Mage)
- Slow (Mage)
- Invisibility (Mage)
- Polymorph (Mage)
- Blizzard (Mage)
- Death Coil (Death Knight)
- Haste (Death Knight)
- Unholy Armor (Death Knight)
- Death and Decay (Death Knight)
- Whirlwind (Death Knight)
- Raise Dead (Death Knight)
I’m not sure why the Warlocks were dropped in favor of the Death Knights. This feels like a bad change from the first game. Having a Warlock would’ve been a nice foil to the Mage and would make more sense. The Death Knight feels like it would’ve been a better foil to the Knights and Paladins. Here are the Paladin and Ogre-Mage spells:
- Holy Vision (Paladin)
- Healing (Paladin)
- Exorcism (Paladin)
- Eye of Kilrogg (Ogre-Mage)
- Bloodlust (Ogre-Mage)
- Runes (Ogre-Mage)
This is a good time to talk about upgrades. There are a lot of them in this game! You can upgrade weapons and armor for land and sea units. The town hall can be upgraded, and two of your units can be upgraded.
I’ve already mentioned the Paladin and Ogre-Mage upgrades, but you can also upgrade the Archer to a Ranger and the Axe Thrower to a Berserker. The other units stay the same throughout the game.
I mentioned oil earlier, and I should mention the other resources. Like the first game, you have to gather wood and gold. These are the other two resources you’ll need to construct buildings and recruit units.
All three resources (Oil, Wood, and Gold) are in limited supply on each map. This encourages you to explore the map. You’ll also have to do this to find the enemy base or the key units.
This leads us to the mission objectives. Like other RTS games, you’ll have a few different goals, but most of them have you destroying all the enemies on the map. You’ll also have escort missions and guide a key unit to a specific location. There is some variety here that helps to break the game up a bit.
I should talk about the cheat codes a bit. I’m not sure how I learned about these back in the 90s. It must have been in class when I should’ve been paying attention, or it might have been during lunchtime. I was in high school, so there was no recess. Anyway, here is a list of the cheat codes:
- Deck me out – Upgrades weapons and armor
- Every little thing she does – Gives you all spell upgrades and infinite mana
- Glittering Prizes – Gives you and your opponent 10k gold, 5k wood, and 5k oil
- Hatchet – cuts down trees faster
- It is a good day to die – invincibility to most attacks and increases attack power
- Make it so – speeds up build time
- Never a winner – Disables victory conditions
- Noglues – disables mission briefings and victory/defeat scenes
- On screen – reveals the map
- Show path – reveals the map but leaves fog of war on
- There can be only one – takes you to the campaign victory scene
- Tigerlily – enables level skip. Use human x or orc x where x = the level you want to skip to
- Unite the clans – instantly win a scenario
- Valdez – gain 5k oil
- You pitiful worm – lose the scenario instantly
There are a few more “cheat” codes. I’m not going to include them because they’re jokes. I don’t think they add anything to the game aside from being funny at times.
Overall, I like the gameplay in Warcraft II. While it still has some minor issues, it is much better than the first game. It is an enjoyable game to play.
Visuals
The visuals are overall better than the first game. Everything looks smoother and less pixelated. The only thing I don’t like as much would have to be the fire animation. I think they looked better in the first game.
For example, when you destroy buildings in the first game, they get set on fire. The fire grows as they get closer to being destroyed. It is a terrific way to visually show how much damage a building has received without clicking on it to see how many hit points it has left.
In both games, the fire looks like it was just slapped on the structure. It looks good for the time, and I’m not criticizing the developers for it. The fire effects are one of the better parts of the game’s visual style. However, the explosion effects looked better in the first game. It is the only thing in the first game that I like more than the sequel.
This game’s character animations, buildings, and environment look better. Warcraft II is a beautiful game that still looks good to this day.
9/10. This is one of my favorite RTS games. It has great graphics, and the gameplay is well-balanced. While I still like the Command & Conquer games more than this, Warcraft II is an excellent game.
Pros
- Easy to Play
- Well Balanced Combat
- Great Graphics
- Great Gameplay
Cons
- Limited Air Units
- Can only select nine units at a time
- Short Campaign
Conclusion
Warcraft II is one of those games that pulled me away from the late 90s and early 2000s RPGs. It is a fun game that set up much of what I would see when I picked up World of Warcraft. It was a big part of my Christmas breaks while I was in high school.
While I still like the Command & Conquer series more than this, I eagerly awaited the third game. I didn’t know how long it took to make a game back then. Unfortunately, when the third game came out, I was in the Navy and completely missed it.
This is one of my favorite RTS games. It wouldn’t make it on a list of my favorite games, but it is a product of too many choices. You might have noticed that I haven’t talked about the expansion pack yet.
The reason for that has to do with a few things. The big one is that the expansion pack feels like a game, not a set of missions. It adds a lot to the story and sets up much of what would come later. I’ll cover the expansion pack at a later date.