Warcraft III Reforged Review: A mediocre remaster
"Warcraft III: Reforged is a much-needed remaster that is not entirely complete."
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Preserve the best parts of the original game
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Accessibility added in campaign
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Custom cards are still glowing
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Detailed new pictures
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Missing key features
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Frustrating mistakes
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Outdated interface
Imagine a world without Warcraft III for a moment. In this reality, nobody uses the game's World Editor tool to create Defense of the Ancients. In return, Valve never acquired the rights to the mod and developed DOTA 2, a game that created the conditions for the modern esport boom. Similarly, the commercial success of Warcraft III World of Warcraft would not have given it an early dynamic. Without a leg up, will the latter become a massive mainstream success that will forever change the industry’s approach to games-as-a-service?
It's impossible to guess the storyline when it comes to hypotheses, but we rarely think about how very old favorites shaped the future of the gaming industry. With this in mind, Warcraft III: Reforged, Blizzard's new remaster of the 18-year-old strategy classic, comes at a fascinating time. Reforged lands in the modern landscape that accidentally shaped the original, giving us a rare moment to think about the legacy of Warcraft III.
While Warcraft III: Reforged isn't the full remake that some fans had hoped for, it's an effective, unfinished remaster that highlights the strengths of the original game with welcome graphical updates.
Relive a classic
Reforged doesn't change anything fundamentally about Warcraft III, and that's its greatest strength. If anything, the new version only reinforces what is so sustainable about the classic strategy. It's a fast paced game in which players have to beat their opponents in an arms race that rewards efficient multitasking and careful planning.
In the game, players collect resources to build structures, win new troops, and receive upgrades to help them fight. It's simple on the surface, but slowly getting more complex as players dive deeper into its hybrid strategy RPG systems.
Reforged doesn't change anything fundamentally about Warcraft III, and that's its greatest strength.
Mastering the game is a tripartite approach. It starts with the game's massive campaign, in which each mission is collected by both Reign of Chaos and the Frozen Throne expansion. The story still serves as an excellent fantasy adventure, but is also a useful tutorial in retrospect. The missions guide players through a number of different scenarios, from wave defense to targeted exploration, and introduce every playable race along the way.
Here you can slowly gather skills and see how the game can be played. Blizzard has skilfully strengthened this idea by making it more accessible in Reforged. Adding a story difficulty level helps shorten the game's learning curve and make it friendlier for new players.
Versus multiplayer remains the core of the game for seasoned fans, and Blizzard is careful not to rock the boat. While the mode offers a number of balance optimizations, the overall flow remains unchanged. It's easy to understand why people still play the game 18 years later. This is a well-matched competitive experience that can take a lifetime to master.
Finally, there's the custom element of the game that allows players to create their own maps and modes through an extremely powerful (and complicated) level editor tool. After almost two decades, custom content still remains the heart and soul of the game. The players pump out wildly different creations that are a joy. At some point, I opened a Star Wars mode and had to laugh when a huge Death Star swept across a chaotic battle scene.
Funnily enough, in addition to the tool, Blizzard has released a new policy for acceptable use that this card is now technically violating. Stricter politics has stirred up the game's community, worried about how this could limit the creative freedom that led to DOTA. It's too early to say whether Reforged has lost the 2002 freewheeling feel, but according to the list of currently available wild maps, it seems that the Blizzard community is not going to let their creativity stand in the way.
Warcraft III is still exactly what you make of it, and that's proof of the robust content suite of the original game, all of which are well preserved here.
A fresh coat of paint
The real selling point of Reforged is its aesthetic updates that modernize the outdated graphics of the original game. Gone are the days of flat textures, which are becoming increasingly difficult to recognize over time. Instead, Reforged's visual style brings the game closer to World of Warcraft and makes it more familiar to new players.
The characters are more detailed and expressive than ever, and even subtle changes bring new life to the game. The Warcraft series is full of personality, and the updated art style only underlines this strength. Falling back on one of the game's classic meta-easter eggs, the little animal explodes in a blood and bone well, leaving a big crack in the ground where it once stood.
The point of a remaster is not to turn a game completely upside down. It is a matter of healthy game conservation. A good remaster makes players feel like they did when they first played the game, and the recent high-resolution upgrade from Shadow of the Colossus is a prime example of this. The original game was absolutely impressive in 2005, but will feel comparatively boring in 2020. The newer version communicates its early visualization excellently, without indulging in revisionist history to update the core experience.
Reforged takes a similarly effective approach, and it's a change that didn't feel very convincing at first until I switched the game to Classic View and found out how much detail my brain had filled in then.
The Warcraft series is full of personality, and the updated art style only underlines this strength.
The visual upgrade is effective, but it leads to another problem. The user interface feels prehistoric when placed next to the more modern look. So there is a strange tension between modern looks and modern looks.
In addition, story points feel flat due to the lack of dynamic camera work during the cut scenes in the game. Blizzard had originally planned to update them in Reforged, but that was scrapped somewhere along the way.
Warcraft III is fun, but cannot cross the line between a successful remaster and a full remake. The graphics are pimped, but the game's general approach may be too valuable in some places, causing some of the game's less flattering elements to surface.
The almost final edition
While Reforged forms the basis for the ultimate edition of Warcraft III, the current version of the game still feels like beta at times. With most new games, this wouldn't be a big problem. It has become the standard for service-style games to start with a reduced functionality and build slowly over time. Players spend their first months with a new game that learns its systems and finds the loops as improvements occur.
But reforged is a more difficult situation. Not only is it a remaster of an 18 year old game, it is also one that is built right into the 2002 release. This means that the classic edition inherits changes such as balance optimizations to enable cross-play between games, similar to what Blizzard does with Overwatch 2. It's an ambitious strategy that has given Blizzard a shorter grace period than the players you expect from modern games.
Clans, automated tournaments, custom campaigns, ladder functions and more are missing from the current build.
Unfortunately, the release on the first day doesn't quite stand the landing. Reforged has a fair share of errors that vary in size. The successful connection to custom games is a game in itself at the moment. There was an issue on several occasions when I loaded a campaign mission and was directed straight to a defeat screen, forcing me to restart the game.
The stranger thing about Reforged is Blizzard's decision to launch the game without certain features, some of which were available on the very first day of 2002. Clans, automated tournaments, custom campaigns, managerial functions and more are missing in the current build. The release feels particularly premature.
Missing features aren't a deal-breaker for the game in the long run, but they take some of the air out of a triumphant return to the past. A remaster should be an exclamation mark; a ceremonial punctuation mark for the performance of a game. Reforged is more of an ellipse where players have to ask: "and …?"
Instead of having a moment to think about Warcraft III, fans are now focusing on Reforged's shortcomings, which are more distracting than outdated graphics.
Our opinion
The highest praise I can give Reforged is that it is still Warcraft III. The outstanding single player campaign and the strategic multiplayer action are well preserved here. The updated graphics are a welcome addition, replacing the outdated graphics of the original game with an expressive new look.
Unfortunately, the launch version of the game is far from complete, as bugs and important missing features prevent the current build from being the final version of Warcraft III. It'll probably get there sometime, but it's strange that a remaster feels like it starts over and doesn't present an end point.
Is there a better alternative?
I would say classic Warcraft III, but this game has now inherited many of the problems that plague Reforged. At the moment, Starcraft II: Remastered is scratching a similar itch while Blizzard smoothes things out.
How long it will take?
Overall, the campaign will take 30 to 40 hours, but the Versus multiplayer and custom maps make it a truly endless experience spanning 18 years.
Should you buy it
Yes, if you liked the original. It's still one of the best strategy games of all time, though it's still a long way to go before it's a final version of Warcraft III.
Editor's recommendations