onsdag 21 september 2016

Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal

How cheap, they used almost the same picture

The follow up and here we starts to see the really good ideas for the campaign. Actual hero units that are a bit better than normal troops and if you can manage the troops alright, you have a great time. Basic story is that the orcs back on Draenor (their home world) under the guidance of Ner'Zhul tries to open the portal again, succeed and starts raids in Azeroth. Here we are introduced to the greatest warrior that the orcs have, the leader of the Warsong Clan: Grommash "Grom" Hellscream.

Grom and Friends

Mostly the orcs fight some different clans to gather artefacts to open a portal and then more artefacts to open other portals... I honestly can't see the main goal of the plan really. I know the consequences, but beyond that I would say demonic influences like everything else in this series. The human campaigns starts with the arch-wizard Khadgar (the one closing the portal at the end of the main game) sensing a disturbance so he sends Aleria Windrunner, an elven ranger and her scouts to gather an expedition force to fight of these orcs. You gather Danath Trollbane and the paladin Turalyon, second in command of lord Lothar and probably the supposed main character of Tides of Darkness. It really ads up as a second in command, watching the death of Lothar and assuming his position afterwards. They push back a couple of raids and then follows the orcs back to Draenor and tries to retake the artefacts that was stolen from them to stop Ner'Zhul to activate some demonic plan.

Danath and Friends

Still can't get the controls working and here it would be pretty much necessary since this game is hard. First campaign of orcs I finished with just Hellscream still standing. Basically I did the first two missions of each campaign and then cheated to the end ("it is a good day to die"). The cheat isn't perfect though since you still take damage from magic attacks or friendly fire and with cannons and all destroying fire attacks you know the damn death knights or wizards will wreck you. So you still have to keep your guard up. Still, the human expedition push in and grabs the artefacts, especially the book of Medivh, but it's to late. Ner'Zhul have already mastered the spells and prepares to open several other portals. Basically he tries to escape Draenor and the demons that are hunting him and this causes the planet to be broken up. The expedition force sees this and must destroy the portal to Azeroth so the cataclysm won't reach their home as well and then they escape into the nearest portal to avoid being destroyed. Meanwhile some of the orchis hordes escaped to Azeroth before the fall of the portal since they also realised their world was doomed, and of course one of them was Grom Hellscream.

This game is much more fun to play the campaign since you got some actual characters to interact with instead of hearing about all these people in the mission briefings. You still exist as some unknown commander for either side, but this will be for the last time. And even though it isn't much about these proto-hero units since they just upgraded normal troops that either are fully upgraded with better stats or as in Alerias case longer range on her bow. The problem with these troops are that they must often survive the mission and with limited healing possibilities (at least humans got the holy light of the paladins), meaning every death knight is a gamble if you survive or not (since both sides fight the orcs in the beginning). And of course the orc have the best champion since who doesn't like references to Black Sabbath's Iron Man or Alice Cooper's Welcome to My Nightmare? I didn't get it when first playing, I might known who the bands were, but I didn't know their songs until almost 10 years later. Still, replaying it was pretty much a short stop for the next game Warcraft III which is why I cheated my way through since I'm not that good and the game is to archaic in play for my taste when I can't quickly change between troops or quickly get the spell I need in a certain situation. Everything changed with the next game.

He IS Iron Man

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