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. Now, I did play Curse of the Forsaken before this, and I honestly feel like RotBE is a little bit lower in quality. Don't get me wrong, it's still an excellent 9/10 campaign, but there are a few minor issues that are spread throughout it, and while none of them really
ruin the campaign, they still kind of add up. Though an update or two could easily fix most of them (let's hope Tomoraider comes back to do it). I do have to make a disclaimer that I played this thing on patch 1.30, and I'm aware that the campaign wasn't intended for that version of the game, but I doubt there were many patch related issues, and even if there were, they were most likely inconsequential.
The story and music was pretty enjoyable.
- I know that a lot of people had complaints about the story not following the WoW canon perfectly, leading to people getting misinformed or just annoyed. I personally don't mind it, especially because in the campaign page (in the features section), it says "A storyline with its roots in WoW: The Burning Crusade, along with some unique new stories.", so if you were caught by surprise, then I recommend you read more before you download.
- Kael's character arc was a little weird to say the least. He was definitely acting a little out of character once Kil'jaeden showed up, just straight up joining him with no reluctance or self doubt whatsoever. But that's more on Blizzard, not the creator of the campaign.
- Other than that, I enjoyed what was happening throughout the campaign, especially with how all the conflicts were changing and building up.
- The blood elven music was pretty nice and fitting, showing both their graceful magical nature, but also their unhinged personality, something that the original human theme just simply didn't portray.
The gameplay is a really strong element here, even if it fell behind CotF in that regard, due to a couple of issues:
- The blood elven techtree is neat, but Tomoraider made some weird choices with it for sure. Having no less than 5 frontline units on an elven race feels strange, though I still prefer that over having only spell breakers and swordsmen (which happened because originally, the Blood Elves had support from humans and then the naga, and they even had dedicated lieutenants in one mission). Cannon towers are also pretty strange, because Blood Elves don't exactly use explosive materials.
- I feel like the cleave of the hawkstrider knights is bugged. I've tried to make them fight grouped enemies, but noticed that only the main target takes damage. Would like to have other people proof testing this though.
- Both the forsaken and the demons should get updated to how they are in Curse of the Forsaken. I understand why the Royal Laboratory isn't added, but the gargoyles should be replaced by vampire bats, dark rangers should get bonus range from the arrow upgrades, workers should build like humans, and so on. Draenei vindicators should also be changed to match the CotF ones.
- Despite how many maps this campaign has, I still found most of them at least somewhat memorable, as they all had an idea unique to them, which is how campaign maps should be designed. And just like CotF, this also felt very close to how Blizzard tends to design maps. The AI somehow felt a lot different than the one we have in CotF, as they try to kite pretty frequently (haven't really seen that in other campaigns), but they aren't nearly as oppressive in the early game, but that's probably due to lack of hard difficulty.
- One thing that I gotta give this campaign credit for is how it managed to do ramping difficulty successfully (which Curse of the Forsaken kind of fails at, though that was worse before its update). The first few missions start off easy and it gets more and more intense as you go on. Surprisingly, not a lot of campaigns succeed at pulling this off, which makes me appreciate it even more.
The hero design felt a lot like how it was in Curse of the Forsaken. With a lot of great new ideas but nothing too crazy.
- Kael is of course a hero from the default campaigns, and you've approached him exactly like the default heroes used in CotF, reworking his weird or inconsistent abilities. Putting the phoenix as a basic ability is a cool idea, and his new ult is one satisfying ability (even if it basically serves the same purpose as Flame Strike).
- Aewynne is a pretty normal ranged damage dealer that also has a little utility, but with a neat custom kit to make her feel distinct from Priestess of the Moon. She didn't really feel that powerful, but I'd be lying if I said that she was completely useless. Evergreen is a pretty neat ability, and is shockingly useful even outside of chapters 3 and 10 (and I imagine it would be pretty unfun to deal with in PvP Warcraft xd)
- Alessandra is honestly a mess, and I kind of like it. Her Q and W have extreme anti-synergy (you basically to to choose between chaining an enemy or dealing huge DPS, you can't have both), though the theme of both hindering her mobility is pretty fitting and forces the player to be careful. Her E is a little disappointing, especially because her mana costs are low, so she doesn't even need it. I'd like to her third ability reworked into something more interesting.
- Liadrin is a pretty neat paladin type character, still having 4 abilities that help with survivability (which is an absolute blessing in a campaign, no pun intended). Her E should probably not have the word "aura" in its name when it only buffs her, and maybe her aoe sustain should get a little nerfed, but other than that, she's great.
- I've already talked about Lor'themar in my CotF review. He's a neat hero, but I don't like his E, though I understand the reasoning behind it replacing the wind ability.
- Sylvanas is alright. Her new ult is much more reasonable for the chapter that she's in (though I would have liked to charm those frost ghosts
), but her icons should definitely be updated to match the new ones in CotF. Having Banshee Queen would also make sense, but the two missions with her are already easy, so it's not really necessary.
- Kalecgos doesn't really have the most exciting kit, but I'm ok with it since the player doesn't really get to use him much. Though I think it's a pretty neat touch that all of his spells are blue/blue with a purple flavor, since he's from the Blue Dragonflight. I don't get why Anveena is like that though. I guess she doesn't really know how to use her powers...? (Sorry, the campaign didn't really establish why she has no auto attacks and only one spell, which is a heal with no mana cost. Other than her being a simple girl before)
- Lady Vashj, Maiev and Akama are exactly the same as they were originally, which I don't mind since they're original heroes with very little screentime, so giving them interesting new kits is quite unnecessary. Though Maiev's Blink cooldown no longer being on 1 second is an annoying surprise.
As for a few minor good and bad details:
- The terraining is rock solid, as always. Tempest Keep and Silvermoon are not even close to Karahzan from The Last Guardian, but they're pretty well made, and I'm ok with having multiple missions/cinematics in those areas. The way they change based on events happening in the story is lovely as well.
- The new WoW voice sets are obviously great. As a long time Warcraft player, it gets pretty annoying having to listen to the same voicelines over and over and over again, so this is a nice breath of fresh air.
- One random issue that I had was that the blood knights had the face of the night elf sentry/runner, and they also had the original glaive thingy placed on top of the sword, which looked pretty funny. I have no idea why this bug happened, especially because the model looked just fine in Curse of the Forsaken, on the same Warcraft 3 version at that.
- Aewynne's Evergreen doesn't work if I input a movement command during the animation. The buff is still visually there, but nobody actually becomes invisible. This is especially bad because the ability has a long cooldown, it forced a lot of reloads in situations where I tried using it as an escape tool.
So now with all of these out of the way, it's time to cover the chapters. And there's quite a lot of em (though it's kinda baffling that 13 isn't the highest that we have here with campaigns, not that I'm complaining):
CHAPTER 1 - This is basically the Landfall, the Rise of the Naga or The Defense of Strahnbrad of this campaign. It's a short and easy micro mission where you rescue some units and find out that something messed up is happening in the location that you're in, setting up the story. The idea of escorting Illidan's wagon is good, but to me, it just feels like a random thing that you could remove, and nothing would change. I would try to either increase the threat that the wagon is facing (decaying health that can be healed by runes, flank attacks, stc), or I would allow it to actually help the player somehow, with auras or something, but at the cost of reduced survivability. Another thing is that the early encounter with the orc hero is much harder than any other encounters on the map, so I would nerf that group, while buffing most other groups by a little. Other than that, this is a neat starter.
CHAPTER 2 - Ok, I'm not sure if this level was intentionally designed to be this easy, but I'm pretty sure I could just start this up, clear the orcs in my base, and then leave the PC for hours, and then still be just fine by the time I return. I understand why this mission is supposed to be easy, but Tomoraider simply overdid it, especially for a campaign that people play after finishing Legacy of the Damned. One change that I would put in, is that I would make the rebel naga base (the one near the sewer entrance) actually attack Vashj, rather than just being a bunch of irrelevant preplaced buildings and units. The attacks wouldn't be that strong, but maybe it shouldn't be literally nothing, even despite the whole two base thing. The clan annexing mini game is awesome though, but I did kind of regret choosing the two smaller ones, as I've realized that I lost a Cloak of Flames to make an already easy mission even easier (learn from my mistake and ally with the yellow clan, you'll get melee heroes for the cloak soon). Oh, and the naga probably shouldn't have access to tier 3 upgrades, while the blood elves only have tier 1. The chapter didn't establish that there was a major difference in their equipment, so it doesn't really make sense that the naga are just randomly better equipped.
CHAPTER 3 - Ah, Through Fire, the mission where you completely abandon Illidan and the naga, while starting the conquest of Quel'Thalas. I have some fond memories of this mission, as I lured the creeps to kill the enemy elves for me, while sneaking around, and baiting Liadrin into being stuck in a position where she can't bother me. Though something should probably be done about the last one, maybe giving her more TP scrolls, or letting her start start running at you if you attack Kael's forces in another area (which would really increase the tension, though in an annoying way). "Trapping" Liadrin also makes the sidequest laughably easy, as you can probably kill everyone after the first mana dome, without reaching the threshold of the quest. Speaking of the quest, the reward should also be written out, cus I have no idea what I've gained for completing it, and the description doesn't help. Oh, and in the last section (the one where you defend Alessandra), the enemies kind of just stopped attacking me after the first wave, so I just stood there for a few minutes, waiting for the mission to end.
CHAPTER 4 - This level is... fine. It's not really one where I look back at all the fun moments I've had in it, but it's also not one that makes me go "Oh good lord, not that chapter!". The difficulty in this one comes from the section where you have to go south to save Lor'themar, while Dar'khan is pressuring you from the north, which makes the mission fairly tough (and annoying) before you set up a solid amount of towers or base guard units. But the pressure on Lor'themar's base is so low (I'm not even 100% sure if he can actually die here), that the player can kind of just chill until he's confident that the base won't be in danger. The golem part collecting quest that you get after saving Lor'themar is fine, and my favorite was the one that I had to sneak behind Dar'khan's base for (maybe some of you could destroy it, though surely not with a 50 supply army). Overall, this is a solid mission, and I don't exactly blame it for not being as great as some of the other ones, as you're bound to have forgettable missions when you put in 12 to your campaign (which applies to Curse of the Forsaken as well, due to its second chapter).
CHAPTER 5 - This is one rollercoaster of a mission. First the player has to stall and defend 3 different sides from constant attacks for 25 minutes, and when the defense is complete, you get to obliterate everything with your 3 high damage heroes and your new golems, and I find that amazing. Though I do feel like the defense part should be a bit more balanced out, with weaker early attacks and stronger late ones, as the mission starts off as extremely oppressive, only to them become a walk in the park on the last 5. It would also make the Arcane Golems much more of a relief, as you'd actually need them a lot more to survive. It's interesting that this mission had 2 easter eggs, because they're mostly absent from this campaign. Though I should be thankful for that, as without the banshee one, I wouldn't know who GlaDOS is, and I kinda like that character now, even though I've never played Portal. Though the quote is kind of fitting, especially the "because you'll be dead", which is true for Kael and Alessandra. But now, after this and the Tracer easter egg in CotF, I'm kind of curious about how many games Tomoraider has played, and if he could do a League of Legends easter egg in a future update 
CHAPTER 6 - So, there's something I genuinely don't understand here. Why do I need to clear the island myself when Sylvanas has a giant fleet and a sizeable army? This is something I genuinely couldn't think of an explanation for, even though I'm pretty good at making up explanations for plotholes on my favorite movies/series/games. Anyhow, despite the weird early section that you have to speedrun with your heroes, I kind of dig this mission. It's pretty easy, but I think that's basically the point, since you're using the blood elves at their full might with all of their people, while being accompanied by Sylvanas and the forsaken, against just a portion of the scourge that Dar'khan got to keep. And having 5 high level heroes in a map that isn't a dungeon filled with bosses (like the 6 hero final map in CotF) goes an absolute long way, and let's not mention the fact that Sylvanas here is one of the most competent Ai allies I've seen in a while. (Almost too competent, as she even steals items and tomes. Please disable that. Thank you) The only thing that feels a little iffy to me are the ships, as they aren't that useful other than for helping with the first section... which is just a few pre placed units with inactive buildings that your heroes can easily clear. If this is supposed to be
the water mission like CH7 in CotF, then I think Tomoraider should expand on what's accessible by water, as right now, the ships are only good for transporting you into the forsaken base, or defending the shipyards themselves.
CHAPTER 7 - I do love a micro mission with a neat new theme that isn't explored in any other campaign. The idea of making a map based on horror and mystery is pretty cool, and there are a lot of things on this map that reinforce this theme (the darkness, the music, the creepy voice with the charging attacks, the riddle ghosts, and so on). It felt kind of weird that the riddle ghosts weren't really explained, but I guess you can't find an answer for everything in life (I'm just happy they weren't so powerful that a wrong answer would force a reload). One thing I would have added here are a few flank attacks with a twist that some of them are fake units that can't actually kill you, despite looking exactly like the normal units. This would make the idea a lot less oppressive, while still putting the player on the edge of his seat as he always has to figure out which enemy is real or not. Overall, I think this is a great mission, and I really liked how you changed the Dar'khan boss fight, allowing the player to personally take out that guy who has been annoying him for the last 3 chapters, rather than his death happening in a cutscene as all of your heroes and units seemingly lie dead on the floor. Giving the torch back to the player from Sylvanas after the escape section is nice, though putting a second one further up ahead is a bit of an overkill. Oh, and please change all the light based abilities to produce light, like they do in the Azjol-Nerub mission in CotF, which was really cool, and it sucks that it's missing here.
CHAPTER 8 - It's kinda funny how rare these "defend the gigantic city" missions are, while the "destroy the gigantic city" missions are fairly common. This one is pretty ok, giving you a run for your money in the early game, but once you stabilized stuff, the rest of the mission should go fairly smoothly. The Periapt of Vitality is pretty cleverly hidden, but the fact that this is the
only item you can get here is a little disappointing, even if clearing camps gets a little rough in defense missions. I know that this chapter can get pretty annoying when you're playing it for the first time and have no idea how the forsaken race works, but I personally don't mind it, as the player can just read everything and then restart with more knowledge (though Tomoraider should probably replace a priest with an apothecary in CH7, so people get more familiar with them). Oh, and please increase the amount of lumber that the forsaken have. The naga have it pretty bad in CH2 as well, but at least that wasn't a defense mission where you have to sit in a base with very limited lumber supply.
CHAPTER 9 - A pretty simple mission, mainly there for story purposes. I really don't have much to say about this one, other than that maybe the number of enemy groups should be increased by a tad bit, as this chapter probably has less encounters with enemy groups than The Defense of Strahnbrad, the first mission of this game (this is just an assumption, feel free to fact check it if you want to, without counting the enemy blood elves ofc). I did find it neat how basically your entire squad, with the exception of a ranger and a blood knight, ends up joining Kael. He has a higher rank than Liadrin, so it only makes sense that most of the player's units will side with him, even despite the demon alliance.
CHAPTER 10 - This is the one mission that was added with the 3.0 update, and it's definitely an annoying, but also a pretty good and necessary one. Previously, the player couldn't get Kael, one of the main characters up to level 10, while we also had all 4 of the other main characters immediately agreeing (which was a lil strange, not gonna lie), and we also didn't really have the whole plot with Illidan resolved. And then this thing comes out, solving all 3 of these issues. Other than these things, I found it to be a really neat siege mission, at least for the most part. Making the player work towards gaining extra support is a continuous theme in this campaign (seriously, it happens in chapters 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 12), but this one executes it pretty interestingly, giving the player a rough early game, but a huge powerhouse of an army once all 3 of the are settled. (Plus you'll get to see demons working
together with night elves. There's just something funny about two of the biggest enemies in Warcraft history cooperating to kill someone who is biologically between the two groups.) Though I do wish that the enemy blood elf and naga bases inside the citadel would actually activate and start attacking at some point, cus things get a little too easy once all your allies are out, and only Kar'gath's base is really fighting you. Oh, and I noticed some weird and inconsistent numbers, like how the building survivability upgrade was extra cheap but the scout towers were also extra squishy, and I didn't really understand why that was happening. The boss fight was really good, though the emotions with Maiev, Illidan and Akama didn't hit as a strong because they had very little screentime here (which is not Tomoraider's fault, this is Rise of the
Blood Elves and not Shadows of Hatred after all).
CHAPTER 11 - This chapter had mostly lore related changes, as Aewynne was now with Kael, and Vashj was no longer alive to support Illidan's forces (...that are still well and alive, apparently? Though I do understand that they're here for gameplay reasons). Aurora and Vesper being added here (and in the next chapter) is quite sweet, even if they're just buffed up Arcane Golems. The level was pretty solid, with gameplay that felt well balanced, and not one sided towards the player like when he had access to 4 heroes. Though Kar'gath's Ai felt a little janky, as they would always attack with a a huge (and I mean
huge) army, taking out a some units and a building or two, only to immediately leave despite loosing almost nothing, and then attacking my base with air units on the way back. I should probably be happy about this, since it gave me more time, but it didn't do it in a way that felt fair. The main yellow blood elf base is absolutely monstrous though, and I'm almost completely sure that Tomoraider forgot to nerf it when he added in Aewynne. It could just be the 50 supply limit, but it genuinely felt like a harder Legends of Arkain enemy base.
CHAPTER 12 - As a final mission, I'd say this works pretty well, as there's loads of tension all around. The Kalecgos and Anveena part was a little bit too easy, as having a spammable 50 HP with no mana cost might be
really strong in a micro section where you use only heroes, so I'd definitely look into changing Anveena into something more fun instead of a unit disguised as a hero, going "yeah, you're not dying" (Tomoraider could also just put a timer on the first section, but that's not really a fun way to change it). The second part (where you're trying to stop Kael before the time runs out) is pretty interesting. At first, I thought it was going to be extremely close, and I kind of rushed the sidequest, only for Alessandra to show up and become an unsung hero yet again (seriously, she kinda carries the blood elves in this campaign). That's a genuinely cool twist that caught me completely by surprise. Though I'd probably lower the extra time by like 5 minutes, it was kind of overkill for the size of the map and the number of the enemies. The portal hunt is neat, and Aewynne's W is an absolute MVP when it comes to helping me complete it. (
What do you mean Magic Sentry should give true sight along with the mana regen aura? How about no?) The demons guardians after the purple base were pretty easy to kill, but they weren't the main boss, so it's fine. Kael was definitely done dirty at the end, but it would be pretty dumb to make him an actually tough boss fight, only to have Kil'jaeden show up
seconds after you kill Kael, so his death feeling so unimpactful can only be fixed by doing a major redesign on the map and the boss fights themselves. The Kil'jaeden fight didn't feel as great as the Lich King one from CotF, but it still beats all of the boss fights that you have in the default campaigns, so it's a success in my book. My only complaint is that him constantly healing to full felt a little cheap, and I would rather give him something like 200K HP, and once the orbs go off, he gets chunked down to 5K. Kalecgos' and Anveena's emotional moments weren't as great as what we've had in the final fight of CotF, simply because the former happened with characters we've just met, while Arthas, Sylvanas, Terenas and Jaina are well known long time characters (but just like with the Illidan fight in CH10, this isn't really Tomoraider's fault).
CHAPTER 13 - For those of you who are confused, this is the map where you walk around with Lor'themar on Silvermoon and talk to a bunch of people. This makes me nostalgic about the old Curse of the Forsaken, which had a pretty similar map, but was ultimately split into the prologue and the epilogue (which I think was ultimately a good choice). This map hasn't been removed with the 3.0 update though, and I don't mind it. This new Silvermoon looks quite lovely, and we're exploring the characters and all their dynamics that we haven't really seen before, while also setting up Curse of the Forsaken. We get to see how Lor'themar is struggling with his new position, and we also see Rommath, the one who replaced Alessandra (and I kinda like his character, despite how little sceentime/development he got)
So, that's that for my Rise of the Blood Elves review. Overall, I think this campaign is wonderful. As I said before, I think it still falls below Curse of the Forsaken (which is reflected through statistics like the download number pretty well), and it has a lot of weird stuff that should probably get fixed with updates, which makes it a 9/10. I'm aware that Tomoraider will most likely not come back to update this for a while, but if he ever does, then I'm sure as hell looking forward to it. If someone was to complete all of the vanilla campaigns, this would probably be the thing I'd tell him to play first, as it offers a decent amount of challenge and fun, while continuing the story exactly from where Legacy of the Damned ended. But you can enjoy this even if it isn't your first custom campaign (it sure as hell wasn't for me, I started out with Rise of the Lich King).
Thanks to everyone who was willing to read through my rambles, and thanks to Tomoraider and everyone who puts out great work that we can enjoy and be nostalgic about. Wish you all a good day and night!
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