While Blizzard have made their indelible mark on the game industry with the MMO powerhouse World of Warcraft for over 20 years now, it's always worth remembering that the universe that that game enjoys as a setting was created for a series of real-time strategy (RTS) games between 1994 and 2002.
I only very briefly played the original
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans on a friends laptop in early 1995, and it paled in comparison to the significant upgrade of
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness which became the first (of very few) RTS games I played. Blizzard's development style, humour and flair for interesting gameplay carried over into the superior
Starcraft and
Diablo later but it was
Warcraft II which first peaked my interest and I enjoyed crating obedient armies of overwhelming force to crush my enemies after an hour of meticulous planning.
In November 2004 Blizzard shadow-dropped Warcraft Battlechest - remasters of both Warcraft and Warcraft II on Battle.net to both offer an upgrade to fans of the original games for modern PCs and to provide a way for newer fans introduced to Azeroth through World of Warcraft a way to experience the roots of the setting.
My nostalgia wasn't triggered by Warcraft Remastered but it certainly was by Warcraft II Remastered so that soon found its way into my library. I enjoyed the game for it's relative simplicity, shallow learning curve and logicial approach to creating building and combat units as well as their upgrades by funnelling more and more resources into your base.
Warcraft II, much like Starcraft later were games that I could never finish because playing as the enemy never really interested me. While Starcraft's three factions had some unique abilities that kind of prompted you to play them so you could learn to be better at your chosen faction, Warcraft II's two factions were basically identical only with different names, sounds and skins. So sure if you wanted the whole story you'd have to play the game from both sides but for these games the plot was little more than filler every few levels and quite unimportant to the game as a while in my opinion.
I will say for all their recent faults (Overwatch 2, WoW: Shadowlands ahem) Blizzard did a great job of modernising Warcraft II without actually changing it. There are some quality of life features, resolution upgrades and most notably a sweet graphs pass that looks great on a modern monitor now. The gameplay however I from my perspective pretty untouched. And I was left wondering if perhaps they should have? I didn't finish the Alliance campaign but I played it for long enough to notice that the strategies I used to use to win, still worked flawlessly. That's an issue of course for a 3-star general and an actual master of combat strategy as I can't feel challenged if I know I can't lose.
Final Verdict: It was nice nostalgic diversion to replay one of the very first PC games I ever played. The technical and graphical upgrades are worth it it you want to play the game on modern hardware but be warned that it is the same game, nothing of substance was changed which might be a good or a bad thing. You decide.
Technicals: 12 hours through Battle.net on Windows 11 with an RTX4070Ti. Game limits to 16:9 ratio.
Availability: Warcraft II Remastered is available from Battle.net for €14.99. Review copy obtained through Battle.net in April 2025 for €7.49.
Warcraft series (excluding expansions):
- Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (1994)
- Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (1995)
- Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (2002)
- World of Warcraft (2004)
- Hearthstone (2014)
- World of Warcraft Classic (2019)
- Warcraft III: Reforged (2020)
- Warcraft Rumble (2023)
- Warcraft Remastered / Warcraft II Remastered (2024)
