It's a pretty solid campaign. I came across this one randomly, and decided to try it out, but haven't finished it yet due to a brutal difficulty spike that I'm still trying to work around on Hard.
I'm mainly looking at the gameplay, as I found everything else relatively well done. The terrain work is gorgeous, detailed and comprehensive, and the story is serviceable, if not for some instances of odd phrasing.
One big downside, however, is that you can't skip cinematics.
Chapter 1
The map in this mission is massive, and you really only have two objectives that don't require you to explore the map. It almost feels like Act 1 of The Founding of Durotar, where you're free to explore the map. You'll find a lot of enemy camps, some items, but it'll take a lot of time to clear it out. Solid beginning, but 12 units in total feels a bit like overkill.
Chapter 2
A nice RPG-style dungeon crawler, although the "don't kill humans" objective can lead to instances where carelessness can get you trapped.
Once you're outside of the main dungeon area, some of the creeps will really beat you down if you're not careful. I think more runes of healing can be added to the creeps, or potions of healing to allow Rexxar to keep up the fight without running back to the fountain (especially with the elder Wildkin camp). A few hidden items which are nice to find.
Chapter 3
The pig mission.
There should be cues (whether audio or visual) as to where the pigs are, as you can spend a lot of time looking. There's also the chance that you might accidentally kill one and screw yourself over.
The second half of the mission isn't really anything, you can entirely avoid the human troops by immediately running back to the ships, so there isn't really any urgency. I feel like it would be better to have some human units spawned in to prevent you from reaching the ships while a smaller trickle of units attack from behind (like in UDX01).
Chapter 4
This mission feels a lot like ORC01 in design. Another instance of the map being relatively massive, although it's not as bad to explore and you have a stronger roster of units.
It was a bit disappointing to see how small the undead base was, as I assumed it would be a smaller fortification you would have to power through for the optional quest, but a nice mission overall to set the stage for Kalimdor.
Chapter 5
This is a difficult mission to fail, as the centaur attacks are easily repelled by towers and the Tauren base can't really lose (their defensive towers regenerate enough health to keep them alive indefinitely). A nice introduction to the centaur race and as a major antagonist.
BE AWARE: If you destroy any of the centaur bases before you reach the Tauren base, you won't be able to complete the mission. Leave them alone until you have updated the main quest to destroy the centaur bases.
Chapter 6
This mission is where the difficulty ramps up significantly. Losing the support heroes makes it so that you have to rely on master Witch Doctors and healing salves, and the centaur press you hard with their Khans.
You can protect either side completely by building a few reinforced watch towers, as when the centaur units are injured, they will flee, meaning you can ignore one side while focusing on destroying the other. This is easier said than done, however massing a grunt frontline and a spearthrower backline is usually more than enough to take out the bases with demolisher support.
One of the big things here is that Cairne doesn't have Reincarnate, so you can't let him take the brunt of the assault. This is a mission where you hard focus one side and chip the bases down.
My one complaint is the boss fight at the end. Making the boss magic immune seems unintuitive, and he's loaded with enough spells that he can easily wipe your army. You're already reeling from taking out the main base, and with a 5 minute timer, it makes the mission more of a pain than anything. Making him somewhat weaker and only resistant to spells would be better.
Chapter 7
The first truly hard mission based on a technicality. The murloc units are strong, yes; however, the reason the mission is so difficult is because they attack simultaneously. The different bases will
veryoften send their waves out, and suddenly you'll have to fight 3 attack waves in the beginning of the mission.
The way to beat the murloc bases is to utilize Thrall and Rokhan's incredible healing utility while building up a sizable army of spearthrowers. The two heroes can absolutely tank one or more attack waves on their own, as Thrall's healing ward will keep you alive. From there you can focus fire the Orange base (preferably with a catapult) to destroy them quickly, as the attack waves often attack your army instead of your base, and once Orange is down, it's simply a matter of destroying Dark Green and then Green.
The beginning of the mission is brutal, and there's 0 indication that the barrel beside the Voodoo Lounge contains a Tiny Great Hall. The Mur'gul "Military Governors" are a bit too powerful for standard melee units, as are the Feathered Serpents (1400 HP flying units). The murloc race seems like a stronger naga race in general, so stabilizing in the early game feels impossible unless you kite and stall with your heroes.
The boss fight at the end is similarly unenjoyable as the last one, as it's another case of "bullet sponge AoEs your army down". There's no timer, however, so it's much better than the last, and a nice nod to previously established storylines.
The attack waves either need to be trimmed, less coordinated, or upgrades reduced for the murloc teams, as the start of the mission is insanely difficult to progress.
Chapter 8
This is unfortunately where I stopped due to the difficulty. I sincerely believe that this map was balanced with whosyourdaddy on, as it's simply ridiculous.
The main issue with this mission is that you're pitted against 4 enemies with no support whatsoever. You only have
1 gold mine through the entire mission, and the enemy is loaded with level 10 heroes and full armies.
Not only does your gold mine start with 11,300 gold, capturing the outposts doesn't even give you an additional mine.
The 4 other gold mines are in the Alliance base.
To add to this, Aiden Perenolde has two AoE attacks that will completely wipe your army clean when he attacks, draining your resources and making it impossible to even consider a counterattack. The only way this mission could be possible would be to distract their armies with one hero while the remaining 3 slowly chip away at the bases (which is hard because they still have defending units, 3/3 Fortification and peasants will rebuild).
To add further insult to injury, the human bases will often coordinate their attacks, beating you down with 4 giant armies in a single assault. Essentially, it feels impossible to defend, attack them head-on, or chip at their base, especially when 4 level 10 heroes are running your troops down.
I stopped playing after a 2 hour back-and-forth during this mission as I figured anything beyond would be similarly difficult (and from what it seems, yes, the mission after is the same but a naval assault on 4 bases). Aiden is too strong for his own good, able to single-handedly wipe your army, and the attack forces and units are too overwhelming to expect a single goldmine and basic orc units to contend with.
(yellow, blue and brown about to completely level my base)
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Ultimately, it's still a good campaign with great design. It just gets caught in the pitfall that a lot of custom campaigns do, where the later missions are balanced in such a way that it's a giant middle finger to the player, where you're expected to "figure it out" with nothing but scraps, and boss fights that ruin the enjoyment of the journey to get to them.