Well, that was quite a gaming weekend! I had an incredibly productive weekend in terms of backlog, clearing out 3 separate titles. I played this game for probably ten hours over the weekend to wrap up the bonus campaign, and then was able to crack through two other games as well.
The Frozen Throne is an add-on to Reign of Chaos, but to call it an add-on makes you realize what a pittance we get as "DLC" these days. Holy cow, did they ever pack this expansion full of an incredible amount of content! The game features four entirely new campaigns, dozens of new multiplayer maps, an entirely new playable race (single-player only), an improved map editor, a slew of new heroes and units, and ample balance changes. All of these changes result on infinite possible hours of exploration, particularly due to the map editor, and provide a tremendous amount of value to the player.
The game is still, nominally, Warcraft III, but it's definitely on steroids. The basic mechanics, thus, don't need to be delved into here, so I'll just focus on the changes.
The campaign is extremely good, and leans strongly into the alternative mission styles popularized by Command & Conquer. Sometimes, these can be a bit derivative and hokey, like the DoTA style mission in the Night Elf campaign, but the missions themselves deliver a lot of diversity and challenge. They made some weird decisions with races, however. These decisions seem to be made primarily to increase exposure to the new heroes included in the pack and to advance the story rather than keep adherence to the traditional four race, four campaign model, which is fair enough. The three traditional campaigns are a Night Elf campaign, an Alliance campaign, which focuses on the new hero the Blood Mage and his weird mashup of human/night elf units, and an Undead campaign concluding the story of Arthas that under-girded the narrative framework of Reign of Chaos. I will say, without spoiling anything, that the ending of the story felt very odd for me, and seemed more like a midpoint for a story than an ending.
There is then a separate, bonus campaign, which plays more like a traditional RPG, in which you control a handful of heroes with no base building capacity completing quests on a single map. This is the "Orc" campaign, and while it does advance the Orcs' story, it doesn't feel like a true campaign. This is better than you can say for the Humans, however, which were almost completely ignored in the story. The bonus campaign begins as a fresh an unique experience, but definitely tends to grow tiresome by the end. I probably spent 10-15 hours on the this campaign alone, and while I explored almost everything, this was too long for a single campaign, especially as most of the missions felt very homogenous.
The multiplayer is back and better than ever, and the new map editor allowed existing map archetypes in custom games to go to even higher heights. The map editor, and Blizzard's official allowing of these types of games within their client, completely makes this game for me, despite other flaws in it. It was kind of weird that you couldn't use the Naga, the new race that features heavily in the single player campaign, in multiplayer. But I suppose that this race did feel thin and pretty poorly balanced, with only one hero, so I don't necessarily mind it. The race would have needed some significant fleshing out in order to be balanced and competitive, and they definitely already delivered plenty of value in the box here.
This game's single player doesn't shine quite as brightly as the campaign from Reign of Chaos, but the meat of the game is in online multiplayer and the creativity of the community, and here The Frozen Throne stands supreme. If there's an online community, aside from Minecraft, that achieved more with the tools granted them, I'm not aware of it. This game is incredible today, and is a testament to the greatness that can result when developers trust their community to play around in their game's sandbox, and give them the keys to share those creations with the rest of the community.
I really have no choice but the give this a 10/10. It's a flawed package that nevertheless rises to tremendous levels due to Blizzard's open framework and commitment to excellent online experience. This game is one of my biggest nostalgic weaknesses, and will always be a personal favorite. Be sure to check out the remake coming out soon, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
I've already finished up this game, but I'll tease it here anyway. Check back in tomorrow (probably) for another reTROview.
-TRO
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