RETRO REBOOT!! Warcraft II Tides of Darkness (Windows PC)

Before World of Warcraft drained hours out of my days and atrophying any potential social interaction, a decade earlier the Warcraft real-time strategy game drained hours out of my days and atrophied all of my social interactions. The first Warcraft I played on MS-DOS, and it was an incredibly different kind of beast compared to the heavy rotation of fighting games and platform titles I indulged on console. Between that and Westwood Studios' Command & Conquer, I got hooked on the genre. The array of infantry units with the various classes, feats, and structures, this felt combining my love of fantasy warfare and chess play in one neat bundle. 

Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness retained the gameplay, but the graphics, music, speed, and features are enhanced and expanded upon. The core game is split into two campaigns, the humans and the orcs. You begin with your objectives, meticulously building your army and resources as you prepare to launch an offensive or fortify defenses in wake of any attacks. The area you begin is shrouded and traversing the surroundings exposes more of the map. New to Tides of Darkness were the inclusion of naval and airborne units like dragons and large battleships. 

Since this also predates my D&D and European designer table-top days, I like to think of Warcraft as an introduction into resource management and tile placement. I recall putting a great emphasis on how and where I placed my structures. High tier classes like dragons launched fireballs that traveled in a brief trail, causing damage to anything in its path, pretty common with casting fireball in a campaign while you and the party are in a narrow or small room. Not that I've ever done that during one of my first plays. We were attacked by skeletons, and I thought that I could block the hallway with a wall of flame, but I forgot to take into account radius and the spreading of the flames...the party wasn't too happy about that. It seemed like a cool idea in my head. That's the caveat of being a video gamer doing neat moves, you throw them into a layout where you're capable of crit fumbling, suddenly that slick action star aura fades quickly.

Resources are finite (unless you had access to cheats), so efficient battle planning while maintaining a healthy supply of gold and oil are essential to keeping you in the game. It's fun to plunder the enemies' factions and mines by absolutely swarming their outposts with some of your stronger infantry. 

As mentioned, the addition of aerial units adds some variables. Ranged soldiers like Archers can take down Dragons and are adequate for playing defensively. If there's an amassed legion of ships, best to keep one's foot soldiers away from firing range. Those boats can do massive damage. 

Longtime composer Glenn Stafford lends his talents to Warcraft II, and provides some fantastic, memorable scores. While I enjoy the ambiance of Starcraft a little more, Warcraft music is great BGM and almost a soundtrack that'd I'd play as standard music when I'm entertaining guests. Speaking of the audio, it wouldn't be Warcraft without those amazing battle quotes

After the Sega Saturn was phased out in the US, I kinda gave most console games a break and played a lot of PC. Starcraft and Warcraft II were among the game that ate up a great deal of my time for a few years until the Dreamcast was released. While I had experienced an RTS styled tower defense game with The Horde on the Saturn and 3DO, I found Warcraft II Tides of darkness to be a fun title to venture. At least until Command & Conquer Red Alert was released. A part of me would still like to see Blizzard Entertainment take one more shot at an RTS-styled Warcraft, but rationally thinking, it's not necessary. Especially when these are more than quality and just as fun to play today as the Battle.net Editions on GOG.

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