Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos Demo

Blizzard Entertainment is a very respected studio that has released many great games over the course of the years, starting from classic platformers such as Blackthorne, all the way to genre-definers such as Starcraft and World of Warcraft. They are also very well-known for the fact that they put a tremendous amount of work into the story and its cinematic presentation, through the use of high-quality cutscenes and short pre-rendered movies.

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is the third and final installment in the insanely popular Warcraft franchise, not counting the expansion pack released a year after. In essence, the game pushed the boundaries of the fantasy real-time strategy genre and it still stands as one of the best examples on how to make a proper video game, given the fact that everything about it shines in comparison with other attempts. However, it also has a few small mistakes here and there, most of which were later solved through patches, or through the Frozen Throne expansion pack.

Story-wise, it all starts with a rather short prologue showing a very troubled orcish chieftain who must rally his horde out of its ancestral grounds, due to a grim warning about impending doom. After that, the real campaign starts and you get to play with Arthas, a human prince who must deal with the orcish threat before it goes any further. However, the undead suddenly make an appearance and everything goes south pretty quickly, swallowing Arthas whole along the way.

Just like in Starcraft or Warcraft II, the developers put a great deal of effort into making sure that the game is both fun and balanced, not to mention suitable to be played at a professional level. On the other hand, the four available races - Human, Night-Elf, Undead and Orc - make things a tad more complicated to so, since the number of variables is pretty great. The end product is almost flawless, though, albeit many of the balancing issues were still being resolved even ten years after the release.

Since this is Blizzard we’re talking about, it should be no wonder that the cinematic cutscenes in-between the campaign chapters are absolutely mesmerizing. The graphic detail in them is amazing and they really manage to convey the story in a very atmospheric manner. Inside the game, the graphics are almost just as good, not to mention fully three-dimensional. Plenty of work went into the soundtrack as well, since an entire orchestra was requisitioned in order to record it.

In the end, when it comes to orcs, elves and demons, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is the go-to example for everyone, regardless of what came before or after it. The story is intricate and very well told, the gameplay is balanced, fun and addictive, while the technical aspects have been extensively polished to look and feel as nice as possible. Thanks to all of these elements, the game can still hold its own against today’s releases and even surpass most of them, which is about as much as you can ask for from a game that’s over one decade old at this point.