Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Warcraft III: Reforged - now with lowest user metacritic score of all time

Joined
Feb 28, 2011
Messages
4,099
Location
Chicago, IL, Kwa
Otherwise just off the top of my head we’ve had Dishonored 1/2, Prey, Alien Isolation, Arkham games, XCom1/2 -all of which are, even on the Codex, largely considered to be pretty good to great, and I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.
None of these are ...great, though. At least uncompromisingly good. I haven't played Prey, but Dishonored 1 and 2 suffer from story issues and badly balanced playstyles (I applaud their level design though, truly great), Alien Isolation also doesn't have a compelling narrative and I found it rather boring tbh, the Arkham games are severely overrated, the X-Coms are but a pale imitation of the originals and they introduced the silly cover mechanics that plague us still. Dishonored 1 and 2 are the best of these.

You should play Prey, which is easily the best of the games I listed imo, especially if your favorites of the ones you've played were the Dishonoreds. Prey does pretty much everything the Dishonored games did better, with the notable exception of level design, which as you noted is pretty sublime at parts in Dishonored 1/2. That's not to say it's bad in Prey, but it's not up to the standard set by Dishonored. If you do play Prey, I would recommend using RoSoDude's mod, which significantly increases the challenges of resource management and the tradeoffs of character development (and, incidentally, I believe brings it much closer in line with Raph Colantonio's original vision for the game before the Zenimax suits got their hands on it).

As for the rest of your post... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ de gustibus I guess. I like the Arkham games well enough and think they're popamole done right, but I have always been surprised how well-liked they are on the Codex. I also agree that XCOM is inferior to X-Com as a series, but I find the implication that X-Com qualifies as AAA dubious; it was certainly fairly high-profile for the time, but the team-sizes, budgets, and the market in general was a lot smaller back then. There's no way X-Com would have been profitable if it had been given the budget of XCOM, even accounting for inflation. I would argue the idea of AAA games didn't really exist until the late 90s; 3d tech was becoming more commonplace and bigger companies like Microsoft, Sony,and Warner Brothers were starting to take note of the success of franchises from Blizzard, Valve, and EA Sports, and those new players pumped a huge amount of cash into the industry and ballooned budgets up to what we know think of as AAA.

Hmm, sort of lost my train of thought there. Oh well. I guess what I'm getting at is that when you say "none of those games are great" (which, ah, *pedant alert* I do feel compelled to point out that your initial claim was that there have been no "good" AAA games) my response is sort of just... Well... yeah? They're AAA games. They've always been "good" at best. They're designed to appeal to the broadest possible base, and are always going to compromise on vision and design in some way. Prey's difficulty and balance got completely gutted. Dishonored 1 and 2 have, as evidenced by the world-building and lorebooks, pretty competent writers forced to write the most banal boring plots ever. This is nothing new though. Call of Duty single-handedly dumbed down the FPS genre, and before that Half-Life single-handedly erased the run'n'gun shooter for the next decade and a half. None of that isn't to say that there aren't occasional "good" AAA games put out.
 

Preben

Arcane
Patron
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Jan 18, 2017
Messages
3,821
Location
Failsaw, Failand
So my friend just got this add
AaOVfpY.png

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I never heard of this happening before. Talk about sinking lower and lower into desperation to fleece your customers if this is some new shit they are pulling off.

Imagine that there are people sheepish enough to buy tickets for an event which serves as a platform for corporate rats to tell you how much they despise you.
 

Harthwain

Magister
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
4,688
the Arkham games are severely overrated [...] Dishonored 1 and 2 are the best of these.
I found Dishonored to be overrated. Arkham games were good in my opinion. They had decent, cohesive storyline - for a superhero game - and the action/stealth elements were well done. They really made you feel like you're playing Batman. But they should've stopped on Batman: Arkham City.
 

madbringer

Arcane
Joined
Apr 22, 2010
Messages
1,880
Location
the vast
Can we just agree that Blizzard is a steaming pile of shit at this point? I'm getting tired of arguing with nostalgiafags still clinging to decade old memories of a company long gone.
 

catfood

AGAIN
Joined
Aug 28, 2008
Messages
9,313
Location
Nirvana for mice
Talking about the human campaign... I need to try and replay the campaign on hard again. Now I want to download the classic game from alternative means. Did that two years ago. Every time I try to replay the campaign on hard, I get rekt in March of the Scourge. Do I suck or is that mission just super-hard?
It's the second toughest mission after the last NE one. The only way I could beat it on hard was to set the game speed to slow so I could micro my units better.
 

Olinser

Savant
Joined
Nov 1, 2018
Messages
977
Location
Denial
Talking about the human campaign... I need to try and replay the campaign on hard again. Now I want to download the classic game from alternative means. Did that two years ago. Every time I try to replay the campaign on hard, I get rekt in March of the Scourge. Do I suck or is that mission just super-hard?

Beat it this time without even losing the Human base

What in the fuck, that's broken. You can't NOT lose the human base, its pretty much scripted because Archimonde shows up, and he is basically invincible and even if you somehow managed to beat his ridiculously broken Divine Armor ass, he has a ankh of ressurection so he is going to re-spawn in like five seconds flat and stomp you good.

I mean... its decently tough on Hard but not honestly that hard. Arthas is quite strong at this point and as long as you've got Devotion Aura and Holy Light leveled up its not particularly tough. Just set up a cluster of guard towers and keep your whole force on standby behind them. Use holy light for healing not damage. Not really sure what I can say there's honestly not that much strategy variety you can use because you only have a handful of units at that point. A handful of footmen with riflemen backing them up and about 4 priests for healing shouldn't have a lot of trouble holding. I can't remember if they have them but in campaign sorceresses suck ass, don't use them. Simply too many enemies for Slow to be useful (they're awesome in MP though).
 

Olinser

Savant
Joined
Nov 1, 2018
Messages
977
Location
Denial
Talking about the human campaign... I need to try and replay the campaign on hard again. Now I want to download the classic game from alternative means. Did that two years ago. Every time I try to replay the campaign on hard, I get rekt in March of the Scourge. Do I suck or is that mission just super-hard?
It's the second toughest mission after the last NE one. The only way I could beat it on hard was to set the game speed to slow so I could micro my units better.

Negative. The 2nd toughest on Hard (hardest now that last NE one got nerfed/broken) is the one before you get Malfurion where the undead are chopping the trees. The timer is fucking FAST on Hard.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
I have never managed to destroy the orc base in the mission where you have to get Malfurion's horn on hard, I always killed as many of the orcs in there as possible and ran through the base. As for March of the Scourge, the problem is really only the meat wagons and the 6th level liches. The trick is to stay outside of the base with a decently sized force and ambush them from behind. Sorceresses and priests are invaluable too, you micro slow on the abominations and dispel skeletons.

While havin devo aura is ...nice, Holy Light and Divine Shield are much more useful, especially when going for optional quests (Arthas can solo the orange meat wagons in the March of the Scourge).
 

cocorulverde

Educated
Joined
Aug 10, 2009
Messages
57
At least now they can release Starcraft Ghost and Warcraft Adventures (with triple A price) and several other alphas they cancelled because they were not "up to standards".
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
Talking about the human campaign... I need to try and replay the campaign on hard again. Now I want to download the classic game from alternative means. Did that two years ago. Every time I try to replay the campaign on hard, I get rekt in March of the Scourge. Do I suck or is that mission just super-hard?

I'd say you kind of suck. Its fairly normal to lose most of your army and defenses to the final wave but the reinforcements should arrive before your base is destroyed.

Make sure to
- Take the expansion early
- Use dispel on skeletons
- Use mortars on necromancers, then on ghouls
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
It's basically impossible getting the expansion on March of the Scourge and keeping it. It's easy to get it, but the undead attack it relentlessly and you have to split your forces, something you can't really afford on hard.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
pfay22w.jpg

EqHQ8c2.jpg


Went immediately for the murlocs with the boots, came back to fight off waves from both enemies, went north to attack the towers and slipped a peasant through to build the town hall. Attacked purple base with a group of footmen/riflemen/priests/mortars @ about 65-70ish supply, took out most of it before I had to come back to defend (though peasants did pretty good as militia against one weak wave). Keep in mind that if you get attacked you can draw the aggro of the attacking force with a single rifleman or something and then just run around a bit.

Sadly I was not able to beat the green base. It has a level 10 lich (2 frost novas will essentially destroy an entire army) and a lot faster production (3 crypts 2 temples 2 slaughterhouses vs. 2 crypts 1 temple 2 slaughterhouses). I suspect it might also be getting some cheats in the final minutes to turn up the pressure. The rate that it can churn out units and re-summon their hero is very hard to press through. I killed the lich while attacking the base, killed a few structures, kill the Lich AGAIN, then as I was barely able to keep up with the production from the green base he came back again and just raped me. Just to give you an idea of my army composition the final group I used for the attack had 8 footmen, 8 riflemen, 8 priests and 7 mortars. Not because I was fixated on the number 8 but just because that was what I ended up with.

In retrospect:
- Arthas not having level 3 holy light was a mistake, you really want that to kill those liches. I was level 2 holy light level 3 devotion + resurrect, but honestly resurrect is useless since you'll generally get only 2-3 units out of it (if that, necromancers tend to steal your corpses especially with how many the 2nd base has), and a level 2 or 3 holy light is basically a full heal anyway. Load up Arthas with 1-2 potions of mana and take them out quick. Level 3 would also one-shot necromancers which would be a pretty good deal, get more mana potions.
- Priests are kind of crap for their healing once you run into the disease from the abominations, considering they can't get master rank training to improve their mana gain and there's no good mana fountain (and the healing fountain is far enough away as to be useless). Just having 2-3 priests mainly for dispel (keep healing disabled until you need it) rather than 6+ and a ton more riflemen in their place is probably better, at least if you want to take out the green base and try to keep up with the rate it spams units. I did forget that riflemen countered heavy armor in original WC3 until I was done with the mission.
- Similarly I forgot that mortars actually do reduced damage to casters in WC3 rather than increased like in TFT. Its still kind of fine though, they tend to be the only units that can reach necromancers and they'll take them out in 1-2 volleys, and since AI necromancers always clump up for your AoE you'll be able to kill them pretty quickly. Its also useful for skeletons/ghouls/meat wagons. It's also notable that they'll clean up the liches pretty well, despite only doing 50% damage that's 50% of a fuck ton vs. the absolute shit damage footmen output. With 6 mortars you should be able to take him out quite quickly in conjunction with level 3 holy light.

It's basically impossible getting the expansion on March of the Scourge and keeping it. It's easy to get it, but the undead attack it relentlessly and you have to split your forces, something you can't really afford on hard.

lolok. But seriously, if you aren't taking out purple like I did then just station your army around where the purple towers were, you can basically zone out attacks to the expansion while quickly responding to attacks in the south. I didn't build any towers, I just scattered some farms on the southern entrance to the main base (DON'T put them right next to each other or the AoE from wagons will take them out much quicker). Sure you might lose a farm or two before getting back to defend but that's trivial compared to having a whole second base.
 
Last edited:

J1M

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
14,616
Remember that if you are playing the RoC campaign you are doing so with the unit types and balance changes from TFT because Blizzard didn't care enough to convert that properly.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
Nah, this was in non-updated WC3, so RoC uses original RoC armor types.

TFT balance would make it much easier since it'd take like 3-4 mortar hits to wipe out a whole AoE of necromancers rather than a dozen. And the liches wouldn't have Normal damage that has a huge bonus vs. all of my units other than footmen and Arthas.
 

catfood

AGAIN
Joined
Aug 28, 2008
Messages
9,313
Location
Nirvana for mice
Nah, this was in non-updated WC3, so RoC uses original RoC armor types.

TFT balance would make it much easier since it'd take like 3-4 mortar hits to wipe out a whole AoE of necromancers rather than a dozen. And the liches wouldn't have Normal damage that has a huge bonus vs. all of my units other than footmen and Arthas.
What version are you using? I have a 1.31 build and all the tooltips in ROC are gone. As a result I can't even use hotkeys to build anymore.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
Average Manatee if you cheat the AI or try to destroy the bases, sure, but I meant playing normally. Destroying the bases can be done on hard, see here -


At least I think it's on hard, the green lich is lvl 10.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
Average Manatee if you cheat the AI or try to destroy the bases, sure, but I meant playing normally.
I described how to do it playing normally. Just guard around where the purple towers were.

Destroying the bases can be done on hard, see here -


At least I think it's on hard, the green lich is lvl 10.


I mean, I was sure it was possible to destroy green. I almost did it on my first try playing the game after probably 5 years of not touching it, and identified several changes I would have made to make it much easier. It looks like your video basically does the same: no priests, way more riflemen. The divine shield usage is kind of cheesy though.

Nah, this was in non-updated WC3, so RoC uses original RoC armor types.

TFT balance would make it much easier since it'd take like 3-4 mortar hits to wipe out a whole AoE of necromancers rather than a dozen. And the liches wouldn't have Normal damage that has a huge bonus vs. all of my units other than footmen and Arthas.
What version are you using? I have a 1.31 build and all the tooltips in ROC are gone. As a result I can't even use hotkeys to build anymore.

This is the PTR version of 1.31.
 

Dakka

Savant
Joined
Oct 3, 2017
Messages
216
Location
Hell
Everyone seems to be talking about the visuals, but what I remember about the old Blizzard more than anything else was music. My god, the music. Warcraft 2 and Starcraft had some of the best music I've ever heard in video games. As far as I know, Blizzard has never achieved anything comparable since. Starcraft 2 was such a letdown in that regard. I have no idea how well the refunded edition treats the music because I have completely forgotten the music of the original Warcraft 3.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom