Warcraft 1 & 2 Remastered Review

Pretty much every ancient PC gamer has played Warcraft 3 at some point. But what about the two games that started everything and often feel a bit overlooked? Warcraft 1 & 2 Remastered are out now and aim to remind us of a critical part of Blizzard’s early history in Azeroth.

Both games have their legions of fans, but let’s be honest here: they’re rather hard sells nowadays. Still, Blizzard has surprised everyone with two HD remasters in the vein of StarCraft’s. Are they worth your time and money, or are they mishandled flops such as Warcraft 3: Reforged’s 2020 launch (which is now fixed)?

The short answer is: Yes, they’re worth your time and money, but mainly because they’re quite cheap ($9.99 for WC1 and $14.99 for WC2) and, warts and all, they represent the most painless way to experience them today. They work fine and come with several QoL upgrades and tweaks that make the overall flow of campaign missions and skirmishes much more pleasant. This doesn’t mean that Blizzard has learned all the lessons it needed to though.

While some innovations are well-studied improvements that make admittedly rusty and flawed RTS classics much more welcoming, there are others that directly run into a wall called ‘game design’ (as in 1990s RTS game design). Both WC1: Orcs & Humans and WC2: Tides of Darkness represent a slightly different approach to real-time strategy in the mid-90s.

For starters, there was a bigger focus on individual units and carefully placed buildings over bloated armies and ever-expanding towns. This directly affected map sizes, game speed, and even AI pathfinding. WC1 & 2 Remastered ups the unit limits for groups in both games by quite a bit. As a result, larger assaults and defenses are much easier to orchestrate (especially when coupled with the new zoom options). On the other hand, this is a bit of an issue while navigating crowded areas and when things get truly hectic, as the games weren’t built with bigger groups in mind.

Similarly, there are clunky bits of user interface and critical information that have been left as they were beyond the visual refresh. It’s an odd approach to a (very late) remaster that permeates all the work done on both games: While Blizzard has clearly pushed for modern tweaks and QoL changes in some aspects (sometimes even if they don’t work well with the original design philosophy), other sides of both games remain as dusty as you remember them. It often feels like the powers that be couldn’t quite figure out what sort of remaster they wanted to tackle, thus making the end result okay but also a giant missed opportunity.

On the visual presentation front, there’s quite a glow-up, as both games have gone from chunky pixel art to hand-drawn (hopefully) art that’s crisp and clear. Some might enjoy the work done across the board, as effort clearly was put into it, but at the same time, I think the new art style robs the games of a lot of their personality. I’m not sure what the ‘perfect’ approach would’ve been here, but Warcraft 1 & 2 ultimately look like free mobile or flash games when using the Remastered visuals. As good as the art itself is, it ‘cheapens’ the overall feel of these classics. The option to switch between both styles at will and without reloading the levels/matches is great though.

I’m more positive about the new music tracks. They also can feel out of place at times, but the more high-quality musical score isn’t as jarring and breathes new life into the games. It’s not an upgrade, but a ‘good to have’ that’s been carefully handled. As for sound effects, I’d say they’ve been cleaned up across the board, but there aren’t many changes, and that’s okay.

So far, you can tell these remasters sound perfectly fine, if a bit confused about their nature and goals. Well, that’s because the worst parts are external to the core experiences. I’ll keep things simple, as there isn’t much to say or explain here: As far as I can tell, cutscenes (at least Warcraft 1’s) are noticeably AI-upscaled and look straight-up terrible. There should be a pushback against this sort of stuff, especially when these are supposed to be simple remasters. Even leaving the original videos in would’ve been a better choice here.

There’s also the matter of Warcraft 1 entirely missing an online component. You just can’t set up multiplayer matches in this release of the game. Mind you, WC1 isn’t the most exciting RTS around for MP gaming, but not having the option to at least host LAN or peer-to-peer games in 2024 is frankly embarrassing. As for Warcraft 2, while the online does what it says on the cover well enough, it’s shockingly barebones and misses elements like ladders and stat-tracking that were present in older releases. At least the map editor is the same instead of a downgraded version. Those looking for more feature-complete releases should head over to GOG before they’re gone.

Fans of all things Warcraft and those casual RTS players who are curious about the simpler days of the franchise should still have a blast with these remasters, as they get the basics right and remove much of the jank and dust from the equation. You can just jump in and get those Human warriors and Orc grunts to smoothly battle it out while pleasantly expanding tile-based towns. That said, these mark yet another half-baked, slightly confused remastered release from Blizzard. People just won’t make as much noise about it because they aren’t as popular as the threequel.

GameWatcher’s review was conducted using a PC code provided by the publisher, Blizzard.

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