Warcraft 2’s menu music will live in my head rent free until the end of time. The pure nostalgia I have for this game may just border on unhealthy. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t very good at it when it released and I had basically no clue the first game existed at the time, despite the pretty obvious two sitting right there in the title. I sure as hell played the everliving shit out of it anyway. Back in the day I had a book of cheat codes, aptly named ‘cheap codes’ in my terrible handwriting, it basically lived next to the family computer. My spelling clearly wasn’t much chop back then, so I’d get my Mum to type them in for me. She still brings it up to this day: “what was that one you had me type in ‘glittering prizes’ for over and over again?” Thanks, Mum. Warcraft 2, along with Command and Conquer, Red Alert, Red Alert 2 and Warcraft 3 were staples in our household for decades. It comes as no surprise that I’m here in 2026 dedicating an entire month to the genre and STILL having an absolute blast doing it. This is the game that really kickstarted my interest in the real-time strategy genre. We never had the Beyond the Dark Portal expansion growing up so once I’d knocked through both campaigns, cheating my ass off, I’d run through skirmish after skirmish after skirmish until I’d basically worn a hole in the disc. All these years later, I still love a good run through Warcraft 2. I went with the Orc campaign and the remastered version this time around. Let’s see how it holds up.
Warcraft 2 was released by Blizzard Entertainment in 1995, with the remaster arriving in 2024. Warcraft 2’s story directly follows the events of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans with the surviving Human forces led by commander Anduin Lothar across the sea to the kingdom of Lordaeron. King Terenas manages to unite the human kingdoms, the elves, dwarves and gnomes forming the Alliance of Lordaeron to fight their sworn enemy, the Orcish Horde. The new Horde Warchief, Orgrim Doomhammer amasses a huge naval fleet and launches an attack on the Human’s homeland. While launching their attack, the Horde had their own internal tension with the power-hungry Orc warlock Gul’dan abandoning the Horde to seek the tomb of Sargeras. The Alliance managed to hold on to push the Horde back to Blackrock Spire with Anduin Lothar falling during battle. The Alliance pushed on and managed to crush the remaining Horde forces and destroy the Dark Portal, the gateway to the Orcish homeland of Draenor. That’s a lot of story for a 1995 RTS and the low-fi cutscenes and detailed briefings present it incredibly well. The problem is, the gameplay never really lives up to the grand scale of the story and if you’re not actively paying attention you could miss it entirely. Every mission plays fairly similarly regardless of the stakes, you’re building a base and sending Orcs to fight humans either on land or at sea. It doesn’t ruin the game, the gameplay is genuinely fun, but it does feel like the story and gameplay are running on different tracks.
The core gameplay loop is pretty great once you figure out the bare minimum amount of Peons and Oil Tankers you’ll need to run for your economy. As you move through the campaign, those resources gradually unlock new units and upgrades, which helps to keep you honest rather than just allowing you to brute force your way through from the get-go. Base building can feel a bit tedious at times given resource constraints, you can also only build singular structures at a time per Peon. It’s just how it worked back then, returning to it now will require some patience. It holds up just fine, you can also only train a single unit at a time which is a little slow going but you’ll soon get used to building a heap of barracks’. The campaign ramps up at the right points and gradually eases you into new mechanics, rather than expecting perfection off the bat. The Orc roster feels strong and once you’ve unlocked the Ogre-Mage the campaign nearly breaks in your favour. Bloodlusted Ogres can tear through almost anything in their path, but you’ll still need a few Troll Axethrowers around to deal with those pesky late game air units. My only real issue is with the remaster itself. It’s pretty barebones in terms of a remaster, we’re still left with the same 1995 issues but with a new coat of paint and overall pretty lazy widescreen support. The visual upgrades are… fine, but the whole remaster feels like a missed opportunity and comes off feeling more like a money making exercise than bringing the old games into the next generation.
Combat is still a lot of fun, but the engine is fairly rigid which means you can wipe pretty fast if you’re not paying attention. If you try to push units through anything resembling a narrow space, they may opt for the scenic route directly into the enemy’s base. Save early, save often. Units and structures are largely mirrored between the Orcs and Humans, you’ll pick up on that quickly if you play through both campaigns. While the Orcs are often praised as the superior faction, if you look at a rundown of the unit stats they’re nearly identical. One campaign is probably enough for most people. Especially these days, I hate to say it but Warcraft 2 is dated. Still, it’s worth considering just how far it pushed things forward over the original, because the leap in quality is staggering. They pumped the unit selection cap up from four to nine (twelve in the remaster), implemented context-sensitive right-clicking and introduced naval and aerial combat which fundamentally changed the tactical landscape. Fog of war was also modernised, ensuring that previously explored areas re-conceal once your units leave the area. Add in the visual jump and it’s clear why this sequel was such a revelation. These improvements helped cement Blizzard right next to Westwood as one of the studios that helped build the genre in the early days. It paved the way for StarCraft and Warcraft 3 and its fingerprints are all over the RTS games that came after it. If you’re like me and you’ve got nostalgia for this one, you’re still going to enjoy the fuck out of it. But coming straight from something modern like StarCraft 2, I won’t lie to you, you’ll find it pretty rough pretty quickly.
Warcraft 2 more than earns its place as one of the genre’s foundational classics and ripping through the Orc campaign again only reinforces why I’ve held it in such high regard for so long. The story is probably a bit more ambitious than you’d expect from a 1995 real-time strategy game and the gameplay never quite lives up to that grand nature. Once you settle into the resource loop it still remains satisfying, bloodlusting an army of Ogre-Mages to steamroll through the Human base with little resistance never really gets old. Where Warcraft 2 falls short really just comes down to its age and missed remaster opportunities. The game engine is rigid and clunky by today’s standards, unit pathfinding tends to fight you at every turn and your basic RTS tasks require a bit more babysitting than you might be used to. Both factions and campaigns are also essentially mirrored, with little differences between the two. Blizzard had every opportunity to give this a proper, modernised experience with real quality-of-life upgrades and they largely chose not to. What we’re left with is a visual upgrade which still carries all of that 1995 baggage. That missed potential isn’t enough to ruin what’s here, but going in with the right expectations is key. Nostalgia or not, Warcraft 2 is still a deadset banger.
Verdict:
Warcraft 2’s Orc campaign remains a satisfying piece of real-time strategy history. It’s backed by an ambitious story, a strong roster of units and a familiar resource loop that still holds up. It shows its age through a rigid game engine and mirrored factions that limit replayability. The remaster had every chance to fix some of these issues, but, uh… didn’t. Still, for anyone with even a shred of nostalgia, or just an appreciation for the genre’s roots, it’s a deadset classic that’s well worth revisiting.
Deck Compatibility: 9/10
Overall Game Rating: 7.5/10 – Joo Want Axe?
Leave a Reply