WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos Collector's Edition

Blizzard has a reputation for making games which, while not innovative, are well-polished and well-executed takes on an existing concept. Warcraft I was an excellent RTS that followed in the footsteps of Command and Conquer and Dune 2, and Warcraft 3 follows in that tradition.

Warcraft 3 is a very good RTS. Its graphics are very good for 3D ones, although personally I think the 2D sprites of Starcraft were actually better-looking. They can be a resource hog though, and I upgraded to a 64 MB Geforce 3 from a 32 MB Geforce 2 because the game was still a little sluggish on my machine (an Athlon 1700 XP with 512 MB RAM). Once I upgraded though, I was able to run at 1280x1024 with most of the effects turned on without trouble, even in heavy melees.

The gameplay is nothing new, and people familiar with the usual RTS theme of harvest resources/build units will not have much trouble getting into the game. The addition of hero units to the game adds an interesting spin to the game, but I didn't find that it made the game all that much different from the last ones (but I do not play multiplayer, so that may be where heroes change things more). Blizzard has also made it a bit easier to get your spellcasters to work on their own, allowing you to set one spell to be autocast, but this doesn't help micromanagement as much as I would really like. One unit type does not really dominate the game either, and forces which are not at least a little diversified will probably fare poorly in battle. The four different races all have different playing styles, which should give players plenty of chances to find a playing style that suits them.

The music and cutscenes in the game are also well done -- anyone who was impressed with the cutscenes in Starcraft will also appreciate the ones with Warcraft 3. The story is well done for a RTS game, at least as good as the one in Starcraft.

I would recommend Warcraft 3 to anyone who likes RTS games, or who has a passing interest in them and likes fantasy games. The collector's edition was only 5 dollars more than the regular version when I bought it, and personally I think the collector's edition was well worth it. However, if you don't want the soundtrack CD (which, as I said above, is very good), the art book (which is pretty neat), or the DVD of the cutscenes, I would suggest just getting the normal version. Any one of those, however, I think, would have been worth the price difference to me, and the fact that I got all three was an added bonus.

To start off, the game is bitchin'. I've always been a fan of the Blizzard game universes and a Warcraft fan in particular. When I first heard of the game about 2 years ago I was very excited, because of Warcraft 2. When I finally checked out the game on-line at Blizzard.com, I wanted the game more and more. Of course it was hard for meto find a game with a story line since playing Half-Life. And thank fully Warcraft 3 had what I wanted.
When first began playing it, it was hard to play because of the 3D engine, I've been playing 2D game graphics before (with the exception of Dune 3D). When I played Warcraft 2 for the first time I thought it couldn't get any better than this. Then it did.
The game would have taken 2-3 weeks to finish without cheat codes. But unfortunatly I played all through the of the game just before the end of the Undead campaign.
Which I will add severly hamper the game's fun. I'll also add the the cenematics are great. I never saw such great detail on characters before. However, along with cheat codes, I also looked through The Art of Warcraft, which explained certain story elements at a time they shouldn't have been. Also I new so much about the story line that the game didn't capture the same excitment when I played it again.
Over all it is a good game, and package. Unfortunately The Art of Warcraft book came apart for some reason. But as I said before, the game is wonderfull in all parts. I hope to seen an expansion pack sooner or later.

I love this! This has a deeper story line than the past WC games, great graphics, and a much easier control configuration than the past WC.I dont think blizzards upcoming starcraft 2 can top this.

About the only thing that disappointed me about this game were the cartoonish graphics. It's not that they were bad because they were actually pretty good, but other RTS (or whatever you consider this game to be) have better graphics and after having played Diablo II, I guess I was expecting a little more eye candy. The single player mission was very long, so there is definitely alot game time to spent here. The story was solid, you get to play about every side of the battle, and challenge was pretty tough for the most part (especially at the end of a chapter). The cutscenes (which usually happened at the beginning or end of a new chapter) were absolutely amazing (as good or better than Diablo II). I felt complete satisfaction to having beat this game. You also have the option of playing 1 on 1 against the computer which to me was extremely tough (was I the only one wondering how the computer gets so much gold when there were only 2 gold mines and you controlled 2 of them?). Seemed like as soon as I got 10 or 15 units done (no upgrades and no specialty units), the computer would attack with 20 or 30 units, then attack again 5 minutes later. It was very tough to beat these. As for the on-line play, I quit that pretty early on when it became obvious that most the players on there just wanted to cheat. That turned me off real quick. But the single player mission is definitely worth the money plus you get a DVD with the cinematics from the game, the soundtrack (which is quite awesome), and a complete book with Warcraft artwork which was pretty cool also. Well worth the money. PLus it has the Blizzard name on it and they have never dissappointed me.

Blizzard Entertainment has always been known for its high quality games. It takes a long time for them to make a new one- the art, the story, and the game itself has alot of effort put into it. In fact, Blizzard has been around for about 9 years but they've only made 9 games! But once again, Blizzard demonstrates the quality and effort put into their masterpieces.
Blizzard really stands behind their products as shown in this item- blizzard even makes DVD's based on their games. No other developing company I've seen goes into this much depth: a Warcraft art book, a DVD with all the cinematics and trailers, four lithographic prints of characters of each race, a soundtrack, a collector's manual, and the game- everything in this collector's edition is amazing.
Features of the game:

1. Completely changed and improved Battle.Net for online gamers.
2. Two new races: Undead and Night Elves.
3. If your a hardcore fan: a completely new story that has plot twists and grabbing details.
4. New 3-D graphics engine- although a little cartoony. Even allows you to zoom in and out!!
5. New ping feature that shows where things are happening on your mini map such as when a peasant finishes building a structure.
6. New Hero RPG elements where heroes can level up and learn new spells. (I personally don't like rpg's and their elements but some people do.)

Blizzard is a great company and I have always loved their games, unfortunately, there are some vexing problems with Warcraft III that doesnt go "exactly on par."
The 90 food population max is very annoying. There simply isnt enough food for you to build a big enough army and Blizzard's trying to make the enemy armies proportional to yours, but now they've made it too easy. On normal difficulty, the game is a piece of cake, on hard, the game is completely ridiculous. Not an exactly perfect experience.
Also most importantly, Blizzard claims they have made two new races with many new units, which is sort of a lie. If you are a hardcore fan of Warcraft II, you may have noticed some old orc and human units shifted to the new races; such as the death knight. That used to be on ord unit and now its part of the Undead! Also, what happened to the elven units for the humans from Warcraft II!! Claiming the high elves left the Human Alliance in the story so you can make less units doesnt cut it. These is just two examples of the many discrepancies hardcore fans will notice.
Overall, Blizzard's new game is a masterpiece for many years to come*- and I especially recommend Warcraft III: Collector's Edition. It's a excellent value and the merchandise is fantastic!! This game is exceptional. Two thumbs up!

Note: I'd put 4 1/2 out of 5 but Amazon.com doesnt permit that.
* I don't think it'll be as popular as Starcraft was because the lack of the Sci-Fi adventure.