So, I've recently been doing a playthrough of every campaign on hard, but with the twist of not being able to go above no upkeep, or 20/25 supply, if it was one of those missions where you can't build stuff. I'm on a bit of a Turnro campaign marathon right now, and this is the third one I've played. RotS has a bit of a special place in my heart, as I always really liked necromancy in games, the Dreadlord is basically my favorite strength hero, and I also kind of got a neat record that I just posted recently. Still, this is by far the worst performing Turnro campaign in terms of ratings, and just one more flaw would have made me give it a 4 star too (but I still gave 5, cus I had a lot of fun, and everything was quite well polished).
The story didn't exactly have the same charm that Rowan's or Malfurion's campaign did:
- I wouldn't really call it bad or anything, but it was kind of just a Path of the Damned without the fun of Arthas. What I mean is that the campaign was basically used to show how the evil guys got into a position where they're a threat to the good guys, so that the follow up campaign/campaigns can happen, rather than being a compelling and well rounded story on its own (like the campaigns of the other races). Unfortunately, this is kind of a necessary evil, and I'm not really sure if there's anything that could have been done to make the story more engaging.
- There were also a few questions that I couldn't really find an answer to. Maybe these are just be me not understanding the story well enough, instead of plotholes, but I can't remember a single campaign that made me ask this many questions (well... other than the Lonely Nightstar, but that was translated from a different language, so I'm not counting it)
- My questions are the following: Why did the dreadlords make a portal to Ashenvale, if it was a dangerous area that they needed to get away from? How did the illusionist guy not get hurt from the spell of Medivh's tome (Smolderas makes sense btw, cus he is an elemental), when he seems to be a demon himself? Why did the original Scourge just leave the insanely powerful tome in Dalaran? Why couldn't they just summon the Apocalypse eye thingy in a safe area, and then carry it to a good location? Why couldn't they just run away from Garithos and the Alliance, when it didn't appear that they were surrounded (maybe they were though)? How come Tichondrius "failed" his mission, when he had the tome and all he needed was another summoner to actually start off the invasion? If you ignore the human bases and just bolt straight for Dalvengy in CH9, shouldn't Garithos be able to just send the armies that are still in the town right at the characters, while they are leaving the prison?
- Though there were still things I really liked. For instance, seeing that mysterious voice is interesting, and I imagine it's connected to the one we see in Malfurion's Quest, though it's not clear how (it might be the same one, but we don't really know what it wanted from Magroth). Tichondrius is also a whole lot more relatable here, than in the original campaigns. He was definitely a jerk, but his luck was also extremely bad, and there was a lot of pressure that was put on him.
- Lovin the little comedy aspects too. Though my headcannon for the legion vote system is that every demon brings a different number of points based on their strength, so the more powerful a demon is, the more its vote matters. It just sounds like it fits them, since they're all about power and destruction.
The gameplay was alright, though it's definitely not the kind that everyone would like:
- The thing that really separates the gameplay of this campaign from the rest of the Turnro ones is just how punishing it is. Small mistakes will cost you a lot, and big mistakes will most likely result in a defeat or a situation where you must reload. The amount of times I had to retry things in different ways is insane, and almost every mission had at least one part that ate up a lot of reloads/resets. I personally am ok with this, and it didn't really ruin the campaign for me, but you need to have a lot of patience if you're looking to play it on hard.
- Having about half of the maps be macro missions with multiple enemy bases is a bit of a detriment to the campaign, as it's not exactly playing around the strengths of Turnro as a mapmaker (which are the big micro maps with a ton of quests and boss fights). The maps of this campaign aren't exactly bad or anything, but they're just simply not as memorable, plus the balance could feel a little off at times.
- One of the bigger complaints that I've seen with the gameplay is the lack of new features, and I kind of have to agree with that. The only new thing that the campaign offers are the three custom dreadlords with the necromancy spells, which definitely doesn't seem like a lot when you compare it to something like Malfurion's Quest (which has occasional player choices, and a new ability leveling setup, and the legendary items on hard, and the backpack, and the custom units along with a faction made entirely out of custom units and buildings, and the majority of the items are custom too).
- The thing that I would really like to see with the undead here, is how they expand their roster as the dreadlords are getting new races to mass raise. First we get some undead naga, then some nerubians, then the orcs, and we finish off with the three races of the Alliance. There are definitely a lot of unused opportunities that were opened up by making the characters travel around so much. (And even if we don't get all of that, then at least let us keep the units we got from the sidequest in CH3. Like, we already got to use them, so why not keep them as trainable units?)
Similarly to Malfurion's and Rowan's campaign, the hero cast wasn't exactly huge. But I think they were quite solid:
- The idea of the Dreadlord hero is that he's kind of a cruel jerk that just wants to make enemies suffer, and doesn't care about being the most powerful or about how his allies feel. The idea of having a strength, an agility and an intelligence Dreadlord in one crew is pretty interesting, and it's one of the few cases where it can actually work.
- Tichondrius being the intelligence Dreadlord makes a lot of sense, since he's the smartest one in the group. He is also supposed to be the most powerful one, which kind of comes across in his ultimate being the most game changing one, and his necromancy spell having the highest potential. (I do love raising those enemy mini bosses with it) His base kit is a bit dull, but the hero is still interesting, since I don't think I've ever seen a melee intelligence hero that is focused exclusively on damage and CC, with no utility whatsoever. I'd be down the seeing Firebolt changed, but otherwise, he's great.
- Varimathras is kind of a weird design for a melee agility hero. Melee agis usually have a very high damage output, either through spells or through auto attacks. They also usually have some mobility and/or extra survivability, but they lack CC and utility. Varimathras on the other hand is the exact opposite of everything I've just described, as he has no mobility, low survivability, and his damage is the lowest out of the 3 dreadlords, but he has a lot of CC and utility. His necromancy spell is also the most mana intensive, so the player is put in a weird spot where the agi hero needs the mana items while he's also using an int hero. He definitely does his job well, I just don't see the reason behind him being an agi hero (other than the group lacking one).
- Dalvengyr is the dumb showoff that is never willing to back down, and honestly, his kit really reflects that. He's very hard to take down due to his ability to constantly heal up, and Book of the Dead is simply the perfect necromancy skill for him, since he's the one who really fantasizes about summoning a giant army of undead to destroy everything. Death Curse is a very cool and unique, albeit situational ultimate, and I had some fun moments with during the 3 chapters where it was available (though it's quite annoying when you accidently kill the marked target too soon
).
- Araj is just a normal Lich, with the addition of the Tome of the Shadow Order, which actually makes him a really versatile hero that is kind of fun to play. I really like how basically all 3 of the spells from the tome cover up one of the weaknesses of the Lich, as Drain gives him health sustain, Finger of Pain gives him single target damage, and he now has the ability to summon stuff. Though it's a bit annoying that the fel beasts aren't undead, so they can't be Dark Ritual-ed.
- The Drow Ranger from the tavern is just a normal Drow Ranger. That hero is quite common in campaigns, and I would have liked to get a more underutilized hero like the Firelord. But I guess Turnro wanted to avoid an ability overlap between the heroes, and her Silence and Black Arrow abilities have helped a lot, so I'm not complaining. It's nice that she has an inventory too (it's pretty annoying when some side heroes don't have it).
Lastly, before we talk about the individual chapters, I wanna go over some of my general thoughts regarding the campaign and the feedback it received:
- This really felt like the kind of campaign that some people would really enjoy and give it 5 stars, while others might feel like they got basically nothing out of it and would give a 2 or a 3. I personally belong to the first group, as I generally like the kind of gameplay that this thing offers, but it's not like you're wrong if you don't.
- Though I do have to say that there's a ton of wasted potential here. Turnro's campaigns in 2022 are absolutely insane, but this one was kind of just left behind. (According to this page, it was last updated 9 years ago, in Jul 1, 2013, which was actually before mana bars were shown in-game)
- I've already mentioned the gameplay features before, but the other campaigns also have more "fluff" features. They have custom music, voice acted cinematics, new voice lines on some heroes, and warnings to save before bossfights or rough battles/instances. Though this campaign still has the neat difficulty selection system, and the terrain was decent with only a small amount of annoying tiny passageways.
- One thing that I really liked here were the secrets. Turnro is generally pretty good at hiding stuff, and while Rowan had a few tricky items to find, it really felt like this campaign had the highest amount of unconventionally hidden treasures.
And now, I'll be going over my thoughts regarding these interesting chapters:
CHAPTER 1 - This is a pretty interesting and unique first mission. Having only a few level 1-2 heroes is quite rough, but it adds an interesting strategic layer to the map, as the player can't just run into every encounter and win through good micro. So the map becomes a pseudo stealth mission where you have to be smart about choosing fights, which certainly isn't a common thing in first maps, but it kind of establishes how badly the dreadlords need the Scourge. I actually had a really hard time figuring out how to get all of the items behind the elf camps, and I feel like it would be fair to make the camp behind the southern base drop another Potion of Invisibility, as the player can't really get out after killing the murlocs. Oh, and it would be nice if the doom guard would be sent to literally any other location, where the distraction might actually be helpful.
CHAPTER 2 - A pretty normal map, where you're just running around with your heroes and killing stuff, with the twist that there's a naga base that sends decently strong attacks against you. This map was quite small, but I think it's quite enjoyable, and the shop definitely makes things a bit more interesting. It's pretty similar to the first one, in that the dreadlords are still kind of weak, since they haven't found the undead yet, so they have to avoid the enemy bases, and there are also more Potion of Invisibility secrets, though this time, you can easily just buy two to make the infiltration much safer. I was kind of surprised when I first saw that the dreadlords actually wanted to kill Arthas, since they're known to be quite manipulative, so I expected them to further use him for their own benefits. Oh well.
CHAPTER 3 - This is a level that is mostly just there for players to have some fun stomping through the naga bases after enduring constant attacks in the previous chapter, without actually advancing the plot in any meaningful way. And I think that's fine, as not every mission needs to be a gigantic battle with huge consequences, or an exploration of a mysterious place where you'll learn many many new things. Putting in orcs as the corpses was pretty smart, as the Turnro canon didn't really change anything about the history of Gul'dan and his followers. This map is quite small and quite easy, but I think that fits with the concept much better than map that is big and hard. I always appreciate those heavy armor buildings in micro maps too.
CHAPTER 4 - Yeah... and now the heavy armor is gone, even though the player gets no permanent siege or chaos damage units in the first section (while he actually does in CH3). You basically have to try to hit mortar teams with Animate Dead, in order to take out the buildings at a reasonable speed. Otherwise, dealing with the human base is a very slow grind, which makes me very thankful that they don't have a Town Hall. Or maybe I was supposed to just run though the base, but the game itself didn't really give any indications about that being the intended solution, so I'm assuming that it wasn't. The second section felt pretty reasonable, other than the fact that the path to the necromancers was designed to be a whole lot longer and more challenging than to path to the other units, for reasons that I couldn't quite figure out. The nerubian base was obviously very OP, but that made sense, since you aren't supposed to destroy it, and you can just rush through it to claim that troll camp right before ending the map.
CHAPTER 5 - Finally, the Scourge has been fully resurrected and the extremely rough missions can begin! And the very start of this level most certainly punches you in the gut with the difficulty when you have to siege that decently defended yellow base with very limited resources, only for brown to quickly show up out of nowhere with a sizeable army that will demolish you. This first section genuinely took me hours due to all the restarting and reloading I had to do, until I figured out that I can cheese them with battleships and gargoyles, killing most of their defenses while they can't fight back. If I'd have to pick one thing to change in this entire campaign, I would disable the brown AI until the first main quest is complete, because it honestly feels like the map was balanced around that, but Turnro simply forgot to actually turn them off. The rest of the map was fairly well done, though it's quite annoying that ships cost supply when they can only really support you in 3 small areas after you cleared the yellow base. Samuro and his base would be rough, but thankfully, the game gives the player a Potion of Invulnerability and a whole bunch of Goblin Land Mines, so we did a little Fortress sniping. And Samuro can just be lured out into the player's base, so that wasn't very difficult. Oh, and I found a weird bug where if you load a ghoul into a ship, it can still visually look like he's outside, but he is invulnerable, rooted in place, and if you select him, he immediately gets deselected (I don't remember what caused it, though).
CHAPTER 6 - I was actually expecting this one to be a monstrously hard mission too, but it was actually quite reasonable overall. Orgrimmar is indeed enormous, but its two red bases didn't feel undefeatable, and Drek'thar isn't exactly a scary hero. The tauren sidequest was a pretty annoying one, especially because I didn't really understand why Dalvengyr couldn't just destroy all of the bridges in one go, as it's not like he had to use mana, cooldowns, resources or items to do so. But it did add time and tension in an interesting way, where failing to complete the map in time won't just result in outright defeat, but you'll have one rough attack heading your way (and if you survive it, then you can just keep on playing like normal). Though weirdly enough, the tauren actually just stand there and keep on working for a few seconds after the timer reaches 0:00, so that helped me a bit. The book was actually a really well hidden secret that I only found thanks to some air units accidentally getting sent there, but that book has been an absolute life saver at times, so I'm thankful for my luck.
CHAPTER 7 - So, this is the one. The map where I actually went over 1000 with the amount of units I produced. This thing was one of the most challenging maps that I've had in my entire challenge run, which says a lot, since so far, I've played through
15 different campaigns. Having 5 powerful bases with around 100 supply defenses that will occasionally launch gigantic attacks may have been a little too much, and I was basically just base trading throughout the entire level. And for some reason, archers just absolutely annihilate anything they decide to hit. Seriously, just compare them to the crypt fiends and the riflemen, and just keep in mind that they cost less supply, less resources, have longer range, and most likely have a lower training time too.
And now, let's look at the how the archer is in every other campaign,
including The Adventures of Rowan the Wise:
And the funny thing is that 36-38 is their damage in normal difficulty too. I suppose it was buffed to make them much more of a priority target, while forcing the player to make use of necro wagon to avoid being completely demolished, but maybe, adding 20 damage to a 2 supply unit with long range and good attack speed, was a bit of an overkill (don't forget that they gain support from priests and spell breakers too).
...Anyways, stupidly overpowered archers aside, I've also had a weird bug with the colors of the enemies, as they're all supposed to be different from each other, yet I've had three of the enemies as light blue, as you can see in the screenshot of my previous post. There was also a bug with the elven and the southern human base that I mentioned in the previous post too. And there were a few neatly hidden things here too, including that murloc camp near the starting base, and this very weirdly positioned crate that dropped nothing. I wonder what that was for.
CHAPTER 8 - After the bloodbath of the previous mission, I was quite happy about finally getting a chill micro map where you mostly just use heroes. Having some enemies hidden behind trees is quite clever here, as Death and Decay's ability to destroy trees is not as much of a common knowledge as Flame Strike or Force of Nature. I really like the way Dalaran was designed in this mission, and I wish some of the ideas from this map would be used in the fifth chapter of Rowan's campaign (maybe the player could use the mana of their heroes and units to feed some generators, which turns on traps and obstacles, and there could be some rune puzzles that would release the experiments at the enemy, or would provide some other benefits). The way the fog of war worked in Dalaran was a little weird, and I didn't really understand why it was changed in the first place (Maybe it's because the magic is concealing vision?). A lot of the traps and secrets were really interesting, and the invisible Uther is one of my favorite easter eggs from the entire campaign. The thing that I would change, is that I'd increase the health of the melee skeletons so they don't die so fast, and I would give new abilities to some of the ghost archmages, while making all of the player's summoned disappear after their introduction cinematic, since raising that big zombie makes the fight extremely easy.
CHAPTER 9 - The micro section of this map felt pretty good. The fights were decently balanced, there were some neat secrets, and the general idea was quite interesting. The macro section felt a bit more meh. It was obviously designed to be difficult since it's the ninth chapter and all, but those 4 human bases are extremely tough to break, and I've been mostly just sniping off buildings from the outskirts with Death and Decay to make their defense structure weaker (I really didn't want to relive the craziness of CH7)... until I noticed something interesting. The marketplace inside the city apparently sells a consumable that gives you a 25 second Divine Shield, all the while the main quest was just to walk into Dalvengyr's cell, while I also had a Kelen's Dagger from a previous level. This resulted in the mission becoming one of the easiest to cheese out of every single playable campaign in Warcraft 3 (so much so that I'm actually wondering if "pressing bubble and running past everything" might have been the intended way to play this map). The Paladin fight is a bit tricky, but if you were good at finding items, and if you'll micro your heroes and summons well, then it's perfectly beatable. The only tricky part is that the human bases can easily destroy mine thanks to the heroes not being there to defend, but luckily, I had a Graveyard outside of the city to deal with some lumber issues, and the AI ignored it, so I just barely won. Afterwards, I quickly went back to check through the map with cheats
(I appreciate the absence of the anti cheat system btw, even if I understand why Turnro uses it in the other campaigns) to see if there's any unfound items that I might want to backtrack for, but honestly, most of the loot didn't feel worthwhile when my heroes are stacked with Unique/Artifact items, even though pretty much everything was at least decent.
CHAPTER 10 - Ah, the infamous tower defense map. This map was obviously inspired by The Crossing (the secret mission) from Curse of the Blood Elves, but with the twist that the enemy will actually fight you, which made it very unique and memorable. This also meant that people who sometimes struggle with Tower Defense (like me) can still use their micro and resource management skills to win the level. But basically, the key rules are that you mustn't place towers near the enemy base (it's hard to get acolytes up there, plus it's also inefficient, since you want to tower up spots that the enemy is guaranteed to travel through, and ones where you'll fight in), you shouldn't build too many towers near the obelisk, and banshees should absolutely be your go-to in the lategame, as possessing those 2K health knights does wonders (imagine if they would keep their damage upgrades too...). Completely filling up one side near the enemy base with Nerubian Towers could also be an interesting strategy, I suppose. Anyways, I do appreciate some of the little touches, like the Blight Staff and the Backpack upgrade on the units, as these make the map a lot less tedious to play. Though one thing I don't understand is why the purple gold mine runs out so fast, especially since the player will
really need gold once the towers become vulnerable (which is probably enough of a limitation if you ask me). But all in all, it was still a great a final mission.
So that's that for my Resurrection of the Scourge review. This campaign is definitely an amazing one, even despite all the flaws and mistakes I've just mentioned above. It is obviously the weakest campaign out of all the Turnro ones, but that's simply because it received the least attention from the developer. But it's undeniable that the foundation is still very solid, as the missions themselves are all quite fun and competently designed (for the most part -
*looks at archers with visible frustration). For me, this campaign was kind of in between 8/10 and 9/10, as I think it's very enjoyable, and I'd recommend it to anyone who either likes hero focused micro maps, or Blizzard style base building maps. Though do I have to mention that I only advise playing on hard difficulty if you're very patient and you can tolerate getting destroyed at times, because unless you're a complete god at this game, there will be at least 1 moment that will throw you off.
Thanks to everyone who actually read through this, and thanks to Turnro for making great campaigns like this one! It has been quite the blast, and I'm definitely looking forward to experiencing the update that Jeopardy for the Horde has received. Peace!
Approved
