Warcraft 3 is one of my favorite games ever. I spent many sweaty summers locked up in my room as a kid, chaining match after match until I could see moon wells in my dreams. So when I heard it's getting a remaster, I was bouncing off the walls with excitement. I mean, StarCraft: Remastered turned out fantastic, so what could possibly go wrong?

Sigh... as it turns out, one really shouldn't ask rhetorical questions like that. Because Warcraft 3 Reforged's launch was... rough. The new graphics were weird and uncanny for a lot of units, looking more like their World of Warcraft counterparts than anything from Warcraft 3. The sound design was somehow way less clear than the original's, and to top it all off, the game was less stable than a gyroscope I once accidentally put through a spin-dryer.

Video version of this retrospective (~21 minutes)

It got so bad that even a full year after launch I couldn't get the darn thing to run at a stable framerate. Which is pretty impressive for a 23-year-old game! And as the updates slowed down and Blizzard seemingly went out to grab some milk and cigarettes, I eventually gave up hope and accepted the new reality: one of my favorite games ever... now sucks.

Which is why I'm genuinely still in disbelief that Blizzard, well over a year since the last major update, just casually dropped a brand new expansion, a much more faithful set of unit models, and a ton of other fixes. Like... what?

So naturally, I had to find out if Warcraft 3 Reforged finally managed to redeem itself. And so I ponied up 30 bucks and dove into the Forsaken Kingdom expansion. And now that I've come out of the other end, I can say one thing for certain: it was a weird and... very unexpected journey.

A Strange Start

And it all started in a... less than ideal way. By giving me a headache. No, seriously. The intro cinematic is so aggressively zoomed in on these low-quality textures, and everything is so blurry and wibbly-wobbly, that I genuinely started going cross-eyed as my brain desperately tried to focus on something... anything!

I can only imagine this was some sort of test to see if your soul is pure and worthy enough to see the rest of the campaign, because all of the other cinematics were completely fine. I mean sure, they still zoomed in a bit too close for comfort, but thanks to the new Definitive Edition visuals, it wasn't that big of a problem for me. In fact, I found it quite charming. It reminded me of some of the ambitious custom campaigns I played back in the day... and the horribly embarrassing ones I built myself. Don't worry, they've been scoured from the Internet. You're safe.

You can feel the wrongness even in a static image

A New Coat of Paint

Instead of going all-in on that semi-realistic, World of Warcraft look like the Reforged visuals, the Definitive Edition mostly sticks to the classic Warcraft 3 designs. And honestly, some of these units look exactly how I remembered them looking all those years ago. Man... nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

But it's not just about nostalgia. The new models are much easier to read during gameplay. And when you're staring at a giant moshpit of Orcs and Night Elves from orbit, it's really handy to be able to tell who's who at a glance. So as far as remastered visuals go, the Definitive Edition is... well, the definitive edition.

The thing that bongles my dongles, however, is why the Definitive Edition isn't available everywhere. You can use it in multiplayer and the Forsaken Kingdom campaign, but not the original Warcraft 3 ones.

Surely it wouldn't have been that hard to spruce up the original campaigns as well? Because even though the ghouls there look like they have rice for teeth, those campaigns are still well worth playing, even decades later.

The new unit models are just wonderful

Nostalgic Story

And a big reason for that is the story. I mean, Arthas is such an iconic character that Blizzard managed to build an entire World of Warcraft expansion on his back. So how does Forsaken Kingdom compare?

Well, it's definitely a Blizzard story. By which I mean it's a tale of ambition, corruption and redemption, which I suppose makes it an interesting parallel to Warcraft 3 Reforged itself.

The story follows Garek Bandarion, a Lordaeron guard that died during the initial Scourge invasion, only to be awakened as one of the Forsaken - the sentient undead led by everyone's favorite dead elf waifu Sylvanas. From there we get to see the founding of the Undercity - which I must admit was really cool to visit in Warcraft 3 - while Garek gets to deal with some... complicated emotions about being an undead murder-machine that can tank a sword to the face and just kinda go "huh, so that just happened".

And if you've played a Blizzard game recently, you can probably guess exactly where all of this is going. It's a fairly cliche story, but honestly? I had a good time with it. There are some fun characters like the lovably snarky sidekick Anya, and the campaign gives you an excuse to visit all sorts of bizarre locations. You've got everything from a wizard's puzzle-vault to an ancient chamber containing one of the most dangerous artifacts known to mankind... a Vampire Survivors clone! I spent way, waaaaaay too much time on this.

But honestly, the thing I was most excited to see was Sylvanas. The actual Sylvanas. Not that weird simulacrum that stole her face and made her do stupid shit in World of Warcraft. No, no, no. This is the classic "I'll spread the plague and murder everyone, but it's okay because I'm protecting my people" Sylvanas. The kind of villain you can really get behind... because she'd otherwise shoot you in the back.

Garek is a bit generic, but he's fairly loveable regardless

It's a Big World Out There

And as you would expect from an expansion arriving 23 years later, Forsaken Kingdom has gone all-in on nostalgia. Though strangely enough, most of that nostalgia comes from World of Warcraft Classic. The campaign really took an effort to bring some of those fan-favorite locations to life... or, well, undeath. And I have to give credit where credit is due, it's pretty impressive what they've done with the place, especially the Undercity.

Blizzard actually went and painstakingly recreated the absolutely insane design that made the city both iconic... and almost completely deserted. The Undercity is essentially two enormous circles connected with elevators, and so it's about as pleasant to navigate as two enormous circles connected with elevators. There is... a lot of running.

And this is one of my biggest problems with the campaign. Sylvanas has apparently decided that everyone needs to work on their cardio. There are very few fast travel points, which means that once you start backtracking - and you'll be doing a lot of that if you want to explore and complete the side quests - you're going to spend a lot of time just... running. And by running, I mean clicking once and then alt-tabbing to watch funny cat videos.

Which is a real shame, because these are some of the best maps Blizzard has ever created, and I'm not saying that lightly. Every single corner of every single map is full to the brim with tiny details. The Undercity didn't need dozens of NPCs doing boat rides in the disgusting sludge lake. You barely even get to see them. And yet, they're there, because someone truly cared.

And once I found out that Forsaken Kingdom was primarily built by a bunch of modders, it suddenly all made sense. These are people that have spend years, if not decades trying to squeeze every ounce of fun out of this ancient game, so having them in the driving seat feels... just right. There really is a ton of passion packed into these maps.

They certainly weren't lazy when creating these maps

An Actual Challenge?

And do you know who also got packed into these maps? Me! Usually at very high speed. Since I'm a big, burly, manly man, I decided to play Forsaken Kingdom on hard difficulty, which turned out to be horrifying... and also the best decision ever!

Forsaken Kingdom does not mess around. Even the very first mission, where you're running around with two old geezers and a couple of footmen, throws dozens of enemies at you. Attack-moving into them might as well be delivering food to the ghouls. There is no mercy here.

You actually have to watch your positioning, pull enemies in small groups, and make good use of your new abilities like the rain of arrows, or my personal favorite - the charge that pumps you up while giving your enemies severe brain damage.

But you know what the most shocking thing is? Forsaken Kingdom was actually difficult enough to make me use my potions - regularly - instead of saving them for the post-game party like I usually do.

And speaking of parties, Forsaken Kingdom also lets you throw some pretty big ones, because unit groups have been increased from 12 units to 24. That might not sound like much, but when your brain is already running at 99% capacity trying to track everything on screen, it's a lifesaver.

Which is why I was genuinely shocked when I realized that Forsaken Kingdom... doesn't have any actual base-building. There's one mission where the game teases you with the idea, but instead you're forced to buy towers from a shop like some kind of peasant-less loser.

Because of this, Forsaken Kingdom feels very similar to Rexxar's campaign, where you're mostly using a handful of heroes to pillage and depopulate the entire world. And honestly? Rexxar's campaign was great, so I don't really mind doing it again, but I would've still preferred to have a little bit of RTS in my RTS, you know?

It's the fun kind of challenging

This is an RPG?

One three letter acronym Forsaken Kingdom does have, however, is RPG. Not satisfied with the heroes simply having six inventory slots, the expansion has... well, expanded their inventory so it now looks suspiciously like the World of Warcraft character screen.

But wait, there's more! There's a ton of new stats to play around with, including things like spell lifesteal and mana efficiency. They're fun to min-max in the campaign, but what really excites me is what they could do for custom maps, especially with the newly upgraded World Editor. Because Warcraft 3 already has some crazy user-created RPGs, and this new inventory is basically like handing them a giant bundle of fireworks and saying "go nuts!".

And speaking of new toys, we also got a brand new hero: the Forsaken Paladin. Which, I must admit, is an odd choice given that Warcraft 3 already has two different flavors of Paladin - vanilla and chocolate. But, to make him stand out, Blizzard made him a... contradiction - a chocolate and blue cheese flavored ice cream.

He's an undead Paladin who primarily buffs and supports living units, while also happily setting fire to any undead he finds. He's one of the few support-focused neutral heroes, so despite being just one dude, I can definitely see him getting a fair bit of use even in serious games.

Welcome to World of Warcraft

Bigger Than You'd Expect

But the RPG influence doesn't stop with the heroes. I mentioned earlier how the Forsaken Kingdom's maps are so full of details it's bonkers, but what I didn't mention is that the bonkitude extends to the stuff you can play around with as well. Because this is an RTS campaign that is almost as explorable and adventurous as an RPG. And honestly? That's kind of wild.

Pretty much every map has a spiderweb of branching paths for you to murder your way through, enough loot to give your heroes a hernia, and a truly ridiculous number of secrets tucked away in places you might not even consider looking at.

While this might be novel for a Warcraft 3 campaign, none of this is particularly revolutionary for a modern game. But even so, I was still impressed by how much effort has gone into some of these side-areas, because the developers could've absolutely quarter-assed it and nobody would've said a thing. But instead, they made it a personal challenge to see just how much insane stuff they can stuff in there.

For goodness sake, there's an actual racing game! And yes, I'm serious. You literally race a car through a surprisingly accurate recreation of Silverpine Forest from World of Warcraft. And while I might blow at it more than an industrial fan... the whole thing works waaaaaaay better than it has any right to. This is a 23 year old RTS. How in the world is the racing mini-game fun?

But do you know why I never got addicted to racing? Because I could hardly find the time to practice in between my Vampire Survivors runs. Because that's also in the game, just kinda crammed in there... in a secret area... in a far-away corner... of a side quest.

It's so ridiculously out of the way you'd think the developers were ashamed of it, but nope. They just made a really fun Vampire Survivors clone and stuffed it behind some random rocks. OK, to be fair it's a little bit janky as you're still dealing with Warcraft 3's pathfinding, but once you start spraying axe and ice out of every orifice, all of that just kind of fades away.

And that's Forsaken Kingdom in a nutshell, really. There's a lot of stuff in here. Some of it's important, some of it's just cool, and some of it's suuuuper janky, but you can't deny that some serious passion went into it.

How is this possible in an RTS game this ancient!?

Bugs & Gaslighting

But unfortunately, there are some issues where pooping ice simply isn't going to help the situation - and that's the bugs. Despite going through multiple patches, Forsaken Kingdom is still buggier than a bug batch in a buggy.

Now maybe I've just been really unlucky, but I've had quests stall out, NPCs completely freeze, and most worryingly of all - the game gaslight me! On a couple of occasions, all of my healing would just... go poof. So I'd then stroll into a boss fight feeling like the king of the world... and then proceed to have my bones used as a xylophone.

And since the bosses can be quite challenging as is, it took me quite a while to figure out something was even wrong. And if you're wondering why, it's because this bugbear doesn't go away on death or reload. Oh no, no, no. You have to go on a five minute spiritual journey to change the map to fix it... and then do the embarrassing run back. Only then will your heroes finally remember that yes, not getting your teeth rearranged is a good thing.

Thankfully, there's some good news too. All of the performance problems I had with Reforged before have now also gone poof. No stutters, no random frame drops, just hordes of half-naked lunatics punching each other - just like Thrall intended.

So for the first time in years, I can actually play this game without constantly wondering if my computer is about to explode.

Textures? Don't need 'em!

The Big Question

And that brings us back to the big question: has Warcraft 3 Reforged finally redeemed itself? And the answer is... kind of.

Forsaken Kingdom is genuinely good. The Definitive Edition models have finally made the game into Warcraft 3 HD rather than World of Warcraft 0.5. And the sheer amount of new stuff you can muck around with in the new campaign is crazy, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what custom maps do with all that stuff. Especially the wacky racers!

Now, is it perfect? No. The campaign is still missing those RTS elements that made me fall in love with Warcraft 3 in the first place. The bugs can be genuinely frustrating, doubly so when you don't even notice they're there until they bite you on the booty cheeks. And I'm still not a fan of Warcraft 3 Reforged's revival coming with an additional €30 price tag.

I don't know where Warcraft 3 will go from here, but I do know that I want to see more of it. More campaigns, more heroes, more maps - more everything. Just, you know - add a little bit more RTS in my RTS please. StarCraft 2 already proved you can have massive armies, base-building and a kick-ass campaign all at the same time, so just... anything other than towers in a can.

But... I'm excited again.

And I think that's the key, really. Reforged originally tried to fix and reinvent Warcraft 3, and because of that it lost sight of what made the game special to begin with. But Forsaken Kingdom feels like a love-letter. It understands what people love about the game, and more importantly, why.

So while there's plenty I'd like to see fixed, for the first time in years I'm actually excited to play Warcraft 3. So as far as I'm concerned, Warcraft 3 Reforged is finally on the road to redemption.

[Note]: If you're planning to dive into Forsaken Kingdom yourself, consider giving my Beginner's Guide a look. It'll give you a quick rundown of everything you need to know, but without telling you exactly how to play the game.