This is the best strategy game I have ever seen, maybe even the best game I have ever seen. It has got humour, a good and serious story, best graphics I have ever seen in a strategy game and a great game-play.
Instead of the two races, Orcs and Humans, which the previous games, to which this one is a sequel, there are now four races, which you can control. Next to the Human alliance and the Orcisch horde there are the Undead scourge and the Night elves sentinels to control. In the single player game you can not choose with which race you want to play, you will have to play them in a pre set order. The reason for that is that the story line unfolds through the four campaigns.
The story is great. It is told by in-game cinematics and pre rendered cinematics. The last are really great, you will find yourself watching them over and over again because of all the detail there can be found. These cinematics really bring the characters to life, which is something really special for a RTS.
Unlike many other strategy games it has got something completely new: they combined RTS with RPG. The player has control over one to three so-called heroes. In the beginning of the game these heroes are not very powerful but during the game get experience through fighting and will get stronger and get powerful spells which the player can choose and upgrade according to what he think is best. Also the player will find magical items through the game which the hero can use to become even more powerful.
This is also the first RTS that I play where I don't get the idea I'm playing on a map instead of in a world in Warcraft III the world is really amazing. In the world you can find beautiful city's, dark forests, thundering waterfalls, exotic wildlife and small villages of a lot of different strange and mysterious races, rain and snow pour down from the sky and day turns in to night along with all the consequences involved. This gives the feeling you are really fighting for a land instead of for a map.
There is another thing that is different from other RTS games and that is that the building has many units and overwhelm the enemy strategy is no longer possible because the amount of units you can build is reduced alot. So you have to really care about every single unit and make sure that no one dies.
My conclusion is that this is one of the best game ever made and I can't wait until the expansion set and the new Warcraft game (The World of Warcraft). I only want to advise players to set the difficulty level of the game on hard, this will make some of the levels really hard but else it is to easy and you will have finished the single player campaign before you are aware of it.
