Warcraft I tells the story of the war between the Orcs known as the Horde, and Humans. The horde clans fought against each other for power in their lands. Until a warlock in one of the clans found a portal to another world, the human world. The clans went through this portal to the human realm and attempted to overthrow the human race over the course of fifteen years.
Warcraft II continues the story of Warcraft I with the narrative being that the human land and kingdom of Azeroth fell to The Horde and this was the conclusion of The First War. The survivors of Azeroth fled to the kingdom of Lordaeron. The Horde turned their forces to to Lordaeron in an attempt to take the kingdom. This is what is known as the Second War.
With their new alliances and capabilities, the Humans and their allies were able to destroy the Dark Portal. This was in part thanks to an Orcish rebellion when one of the Orcish clans attempted to raise the sunken Tomb of Sargeras.
Beyond the Dark Portal, the expansion to Warcraft II, expands this narrative.
Now with the orcs under new leadership, stage a new invasion of Azeroth. This was thwarted and eventually the Human Alliance and their allies were able to destroy the Dark Portal. In destroying the Dark Portal, their were parts of The Alliance that were trapped in the dying lands beyond the Dark Portal.
After the Second War, the Alliance lost the allegiance of the elves. The elves accused the Alliance of not doing enough to defend their homeland and losing the allegiance of two of the Human kingdoms.
Warcraft III continues the narrative of the previous two games in which the Humans attempt to purge their lands of a plague. A plague that turns it’s victims into The Undead. After successfully ridding a couple of villages of the plague, a Human regiment travels to the icy continent of Northrend. They are there in search of a mighty sword called Frostmourne. Once Frostmourne is released, a rogue leader within the Human alliance hunts down and slays his father, as well as the leader of the high elves.
This rogue becomes one of The Undead and is told about the Burning Legion, by the leader of the Dreadlords and a Lich. The Burning Legion is a horrid race of beings that are determined to destroy the world and everything in it. The Dreadlords, what’s left of the Human alliance and the Orc Horde, come together to rid the world of The Burning Legion. This narrative is told between the base game and the expansion. The bonus campaign expands on the narrative a bit more.
With all of the lore that these three games offer, it’s really a good story that is worth playing through.
The Warcraft Battle Chest comes with Warcraft, Warcraft II Battle.net Edition, Warcraft Remastered, Warcraft II Remastered, and Warcraft III Reforged. The Warcraft games are a series of high fantasy RTS games that have become a staple of PC gaming. If you’ve ever played a PC game, you have either heard of or played one of the games in the Warcraft series.
The games featured here play very similar with the exception of Warcraft III Reforged. So all of these games are played in a top down, nearly isometric view. With only the third game being in full 3D which you can transition into with the scroll of the mouse wheel. The game is primarily played with the mouse, but you can use keyboard hot keys to perform unit actions if you don’t want to rely solely on the mouse. This is handy when it comes to attacking, defending, and building up your forces.
All but the third game in the series has you playing through either the Orc or Human Campaigns. Once you select a campaign, you select a mission to start. Each mission has a set of objectives that once completed net you a victory and you can move onto the next mission. To complete these objectives, you have to build units and buildings to re-enforce your base as well as gather resources from forests you chop down and gold mines you raid. The gold from the mines and wood from the forests are used as the primary resource for building up your forces. Aside from these resources, you must build farms which are used as a food source. The amount of food you have will determine the max number of units you can have at once.
Warcraft III Reforged plays very similar to the previous games in the series with the exception of adding an RPG element to the game. You have heroes that act as generals. These can boost the units that travel with them. They can hold items which can aid you as your work to complete objectives or take on the enemy armies. In addition to aiding units with it and holding onto items, they can also level up which helps to increase their overall stats. That is really the only RPG element of the game. As the units level up, the stats increase based on the level at a set amount. So you can’t choose how the stats are increased, they just are increased rather generically without user input.
Another difference with Warcraft III Reforged is that you not only play through the Orc and Human campaigns, but you also play through the Night Elves, and The Undead. The campaigns for the Night Elves and the Undead are not any different than those of the Orcs and the Humans, but the story line of all four are in fact very different.
Warcraft II Battle.net Edition, Warcraft II Remastered, and Warcraft III Reforged all contain both the original game as well as the expansions. With Warcraft III Reforged having an additional bonus campaign that is exclusive to the Reforged version of the game.
Warcraft I and Warcraft II Battle.net Edition are the same games from the 90’s. As much as I have enjoyed playing them over the years, they definitely show their age. Warcraft I plays using a built-in Dos Box emulator and plays in an extremely small window, with no means to make the window larger. This makes the game impossible to play and makes me wonder why it was ever included in this collection. Warcraft II Battle.net Edition is very pixelated looking. Though thankfully you can play this in full screen, you may want to consider playing it in windowed mode so that it looks a little better.
The only reason I could see including these original releases would be to either appeal to those looking for a classic experience on modern systems, or to potentially play with those that have the original releases online with other players for multiplayer games.
This brings me to Warcraft I and Warcraft II Remastered. Both of these games have updated visuals and sound and play in full screen without issue. In addition to the updated visuals and audio, the games also have updated the way they control, and the UI has also gotten an overhaul and looks great.
Warcraft III Reforged has also gotten updated visuals, but it doesn’t look nearly as good as the first two games. Everything in the game has a bit of pixelation and makes it look worse than the first two remastered titles. This isn’t just in the in-game models, but also in the cut-scenes as well. I was hoping for HD footage of the cut-scenes instead of the blurry mess that they are. This was an issue when it was originally released on it’s own years ago and I wish it would have been addressed in this collection. I think it would have done a lot to have Warcraft III Reforged get the same attention as Warcraft I and II Remastered.
Performance wise, all of the games run very well once you’re actually in the games themselves and playing them. I found no issues with how the game played, with no slow down, stuttering, or any issues at all really. The exception being the load times. The load times of Warcraft I and II Remastered can be a bit on the long side. This is likely due to more with my computer than the game itself, so depending on your specs, you may have slower load times and an overall better experience.
As for the sound in these games, there really isn’t much to say. I mean the music is iconic and sounds like it got a bit of an overhaul, but nothing too mind blowing. It sounds like it’s crisper which is really nice. I wasn’t expecting the in game music to have like a full blown orchestra, but the fact that the music doesn’t sound muted, flat, or like it’s coming out of an alarm clock radio, is definitely appreciated.
The Warcraft Battle Chest is a really great way to play these classic Warcraft titles. I am very glad I can play the first two games and have them feel much more modern than they did back in the day. Aside from what I mentioned above, there is one thing that’s missing from both Warcraft II Battle.net Edition and Warcraft II Remastered which is the map editor.
The original release of Warcraft II and the Warcraft II Battle.net edition had map editors. You could create maps to play in the custom games section of the game. I remember spending hours building maps and playing them. It was one of the highlights of the game for me. To not have this come back with the Battle Chest was really disappointing. Now to be fair, Warcraft III Reforged does include it’s world editor from it’s original release, but for me, it’s just not the same.
As much of a bummer as it is to not have the map editor for Warcraft II, at least we still have a means to create custom maps in the Warcraft III Reforged.
Fans of Warcraft and RTS games should definitely pick up this collection. With hours of content across all of the games featured here, you will most definitely get your money’s worth!
As a huge fan of Warcraft, I highly recommend picking up the Warcraft Battle Chest collection!
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.