So, I've recently been doing a playthrough of every campaign on hard (or very hard, in the case of this campaign), 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've decided to start doing all the Turnro campaigns, since in essence, they're very similar to the original ones, but with a bunch of new fun ideas all around. I also do like campaigns with a neat mix of challenge and fun.
I really enjoyed playing through this thing, and it's undoubtedly the best campaign out of the 4 that Turnro has created (though they're all extremely close). It just simply felt like the one with the highest overall quality, and it had a very clear idea of what it wanted to be. Malfurion's quest
could beat it, but I'd say we should wait and see how the Sentinel path holds up.
The story of this campaign probably got the most amount of discussion out of all campaigns, beaten only by Legends of Arkain (which is obviously a great thing, if the discussion isn't all negative, of course). I have a few things to say about it myself:
- It has a pretty smart strategy of how it wants to hook in players. It basically puts up questions for the player over and over again, and it makes sure to answer them thoroughly every time. This makes the story quite engaging, which works especially well here since the campaign is kind of a weird take on the hero's journey.
- There are a few tiny issues too, though. One of them is that the campaign is kind of disconnected from the rest. We never see the characters in the other campaigns, and it's just mostly used to show why Maiev or the Undead Scourge isn't there. And I guess you could say that most of the characters have died of old age,
but you can't really make the same excuse for Bevan, Logan and all the Blood Elves, who just disappeared off the face of Azeroth (my memory kind of blacked out on that one, as I didn't quite remember the end of Malfurion's Quest... whoopsie 
).
- It's definitely rushing a little bit. Most campaigns tent to settle down in certain places for a while, but this one goes to 5 very different locations throughout 10 chapters (you also go from Arthas being normal to Silvermoon being destroyed in a span of 2 chapters). It definitely makes for a rollercoaster of a campaign, which can be fun for some, but annoying for others.
- The characters are extremely cartoony. Basically they all got a core personality trait, and then had it multiplied by an insane amount. This might annoy some people, but personally, I'm fine with it, as it's kind of what makes this campaign stand out (even Joe's Quest doesn't do this with the original characters). Though the fact that some characters (like Jaina) just straight up don't exist was a tad weird.
- Now, this might sound weird, but I actually feel like the campaign is kind of a commentary on leaders. Basically, there wasn't a single person in power here that actually cared for their people, and every single one of them represented a shitty trait that lots of real rulers had (Admiral Proudmoore was dishonest, Arthas was power hungry, Antonidas was selfish, Nathan was overly paranoid to the point where it harmed him, and so on). The only leader that had nothing but good traits while also caring about his people was Rowan himself, and yet despite that he just follows along with everything while expressing no desires to get into a position of power himself. And the ending encapsulates everything perfectly, as we had Nathan and Proudmoore having absolutely no care for Terenas, while Rowan had the position of king offered to him on a silver platter, and was like "nah, I'd rather try and save him". And this really shows why it's so rare to see actually good people in a position of power. With all that being said, I highly doubt that this was intended. Turnro probably just wanted to give a different, more fun spin to the story of Warcraft 3, and all of this was most likely just a happy accident (also, story interpretation is subjective and all).
The gameplay is absolutely the strongest point of this campaign. It's just brilliant:
- The balancing is absolutely top notch. Neither the player, nor the enemy gets something dumb that feels completely unfair. Your enemies can hit you hard at times, but if you fail, it's most likely on you.
- The difficulty was also ramping pretty smoothly. Every mission was a bit harder than the last, and there wasn't a random mission that came out of nowhere with an extremely easy or a nightmarishly hard difficulty.
- The way I feel about the tech trees is a little... mixed. I do get that the idea was to make all 3 of the alliance races really bad on their own to show that they can only match the undead if they team up, which definitely works. But it's a little disappointing that the Blood Elves are exactly the same as in the default campaigns (but without nagas or humans to tank for them), and the Silver Hand should probably be a pure human faction. Shield breakers are awesome though, I'll give you that.
- I find it interesting how the campaign balances the time that the maps take to complete. Most of them have that perfect length where completing them will feel make you feel satisfied, but not exhausted (the only ones that were too short are chapters 1 and 3, though it's ok for the early missions to be like that). Lots of campaigns can be inconsistent with this, and some can definitely be too short or too grindy, but this campaign suffers from none of these issues.
The heroes of this campaign are quite refreshing:
- Most of them are changed to work like a DotA Allstars hero with the 4/4/4/3 max levels on their spells and the bonus all stats that you can level, but they also have a touch of League of Legends with an extra skill that they have from level 1 and they can't level up.
- Rowan basically fixes everything people hate about the Paladin. He isn't boring anymore thanks to his aura switching, which is a mechanic I really liked. (But shouldn't his Retribution Aura return 60% damage at level 4 instead of 45%?) He can now reliably damage non undead enemies much easier thanks to Command and Retribution Aura. And Divine Shield isn't an absolute trainwreck of an ability design anymore.
- Bevan is a tad weird. He reminds me a bit of the Shadow Hunter, but that hero is more of a utility caster who happens to be an agility hero, while Bevan is a DPS with a giant AOE heal. Ranged agility heroes always have some form of utility (but less than intelligence heroes), and this guy fits in perfectly while being a little unique.
- Tara is an Archmage, but simply better. Mage Armor is one of the strongest hero basic abilities I've seen, and giving her a stun makes her have literally everything that you'd want in an intelligence hero. She's just awesome.
- Logan was a little disappointing compared to the rest. Banish having a cooldown is very annoying, as it stopped me from doing my multi-Banish animation cancel trick, though I definitely see how level 1 Banish having a 0 second cooldown might have been a little stupid. The lifesteal passive doesn't feel fitting though. Sure, it makes sense cus he's taking the enemy's blood, but it just doesn't match with his gameplay. Maybe he should have something like "Logan marks enemies affected by his basic abilities for 6 seconds. When a marked enemy dies, he heals for 5% of the target's maximum health" or "Logan heals for 10% of damage done by Flame Strike and 20% of mana stolen by Siphon Mana" or anything that fits a spellcaster.
- Nathan was just a Mountain King with Demolish. The new passive was extremely helpful in chapters 8 and 10 and he fit nicely into the group, though he wasn't the most exciting hero out there.
- Tek and Razzil are two default Tavern heroes, which I don't mind because they have very little screentime (and because there aren't many campaigns where you can play Tinker or Alchemist). Though they should get an extra ability, for the sake of consistency.
This campaign has a lot of extra things to spice it up, and I really liked all of 'em:
- The legendary items are a lovely addition and they make me feel great for all the potential suffering I had to endure for doing a challenge run on hard. They remind me a lot of the Day of the Dragon artifact items, as these are also a lot stronger than normal items, but they won't really carry you singlehandedly (unless you find a lot of them, at which point, you will really feel them).
- The difference between them and the DotD items is that these ones are extremely well hidden, and some of them frustrated me a little. It's still worth it in the end though, as I do love being rewarded for looking everywhere like a madman.
- The fact that this campaign is voice acted is awesome. It does a lot, especially for the comedy. It would be nice if the other campaigns could be voice acted too, but I guess it isn't that easy to voice a full campaign, otherwise we'd see a lot more voice acted projects. There weren't many characters that sounded bad or out of character, and I imagine the recording must have been quite fun, especially when Nathan and Uther was being done.
- The music was awesome. Instead of having a default theme for a race like usual, this campaign has music that is switching based on the maps and the situations. It really helps establish the general mood, and I found it quite fitting how the background music starts off peaceful, and then it becomes creepier but also more heroic, and by the end, the heroic tracks completely take over the eerie ones.
- Difficulty that can be selected at the start of each map is a blessing for sure. I guess the anti cheat system on hard was added to prevent people from taking legendaries for free (to normal difficulty too, potentially), which I suppose I can accept. It's nice that every cheat other than whosyourdaddy is allowed, as they might help, but they won't grant you a win for free (and a lot of them affect enemies too, like thereisnospoon or warpten)
- The little changes made to the maps on the loading screens are a nice touch (like Dalaran being removed in the epilogue's loading screen, or "Arthas' Landing Site" being renamed to "Landing Site". I didn't even know that this was possible, since I don't think I've ever seen Blizzard do it.
So without further ado, let's move onto my thoughts regarding the 10 lovely chapters of this campaign:
CHAPTER 1 - This is a pretty interesting way to start the campaign for sure. I imagine that the campaign was intended for people that are already knowledgeable with Warcraft 3, so it's kind of strange that you would do a tutorial style mission about Paladins and footmen (which would have been perfect as the first mission of The Scourge of Lordaeron tbh). The idea is pretty cool though, and the only thing I'd really change is that I would make Holy Light an actually important spell in the first section (similarly to Divine Shield in the second one). Maybe the villagers could punch the bandits, and your quest would be to keep them alive while they're being focused. The rest of the map was quite solid, and thank you for giving the enemy buildings heavy armor in a lot of these micro missions. Most campaigns keep it fortified which makes destroying buildings very annoying due to the player being unable to train siege weapons. And by the way, is Nicholas Buzan secretly evil? It's certainly implied by him constantly sending recruits to die in the forest, but was never really elaborated upon. (Or I guess it was a lesson about "seeking help at every chance you get"?)
CHAPTER 2 - If I have to name the mission that really slaps you in the face with the cartoony nature of this campaign, then it's this one. The sheer absurdity of Uther got everyone (including myself) completely off guard, but it's always important to establish the tone of a story very early on, so I see why Turnro did this. Though the whole Uther situation has some very weird implications. (we either have A - the Silver Hand was led by a complete idiot for multiple years, but they were taught to not question anything so they were ok with it, B - Arthas was already evil and he set this whole thing up, which would also explain why he destroyed Silvermoon so fast, or C - Uther simply got dementia. I'll let you guys decide the correct one.) So remember how I said that the first mission could easily replace the first one in the Scourge of Lordearon? Yeah, the parallel with that campaign keeps going for the first 5 chapters, and the 2 campaigns only really separate at the 6th level. The timed base building is an interesting idea, and not
that frustrating since even if you failed, you didn't loose much time and you can just try again. Having knights this early is a tad weird (and reminded me a bit of Garithos with his only footman/knight army), but the enemies definitely were formidable, so I don't mind it.
CHAPTER 3 - A pretty simple and short micro mission, and one of the only Turnro levels where the player actually gets an AI ally (I wish more missions would have them, and please don't remove any from the Sentinel path of Malfurion's Quest, the sheer number of allies is the appeal of that path). I just wish that the ally wouldn't immediately start moving forward, but 1 or 2 minutes later instead, so that the player has time to explore towards the dead end with the legendary item, and then do everything else together with the elves afterwards. I don't really have a lot to say here, as this is a very small, but also extremely well made map, and I hope that I'll get to see the giant mirror image army as a usable ultimate one day (seriously, someone should do it). Appreciate the heavy armor buildings here too.
CHAPTER 4 - The concept of this level is pretty neat, as you don't really see many missions where you're going back to a city that the enemy just destroyed a few days/hours ago. And it was a well executed chapter too, for the most part. As you have to wander around in a completely decimated Silvermoon, looking for surviving citizens and invisible shades. That enemy base however, felt like an immortal mosquito, as it's placed in a way where 90-80% of the time, you will not be able to intercept their attacks, and those attacks are decently big and frequent, so you're gonna have to ditch what you're doing to deal with them quite frequently, and since you don't have access to siege weapons, you can forget about ever destroying the base itself. I guess that's what makes the mission challenging, but it's still very annoying nonetheless. The legendary item being hidden inside the Lich in the base was also annoying, and forced me to tower spam a bit on that tiny area between the bridge and the base (that should be a little bigger imo), though I'm very thankful that it wasn't a Death Knight. The survivors just sitting there with the undead near them was weird of course, but the ending explained why that was happening pretty well, which was good.
CHAPTER 5 - A defense mission that doesn't bore me to death or cost me my sanity to complete? Sign me up! Now, I actually do like defense missions a lot, I just feel like most campaigns don't make them as nuanced as they should be, and just doing a mission where the player has to sit in their base for some minutes and kill attack waves is not enough. This map plays with some concepts that make the level somewhat more interesting than an ordinary defense map. The little tower areas, the villager quest, the hidden items, the gate being the objective rather than the base behind it, the big boss, and the slow introduction of the 3 undead bases all help make this level very fun. And I also liked how the player starts off basically defending the entire map, but the areas he can hold will slowly get smaller, as the undead is claiming more and more of the city. My only complaint is that the map didn't feel Dalaran-y enough. There wasn't anything related to experiments, magical traps and auras, activatable runes or anything weird in general (other than the box I guess, which was a neat way to hide the legendary item). I'd definitely like to see some of the creativity from the Dalaran of Resurrection of the Scourge being used here, which would turn this level from good to excellent. Oh, and how is it possible that Antonidas needed the book of Medivh to summon the portal, yet his son could just do it out of nowhere? It just doesn't add up, and it also makes the book feel pointless.
CHAPTER 6 - Despite Turnro campaigns being very similar to the original ones, there are still a few hero focused missions, like this one for instance (the only campaign that has none is Jeopardy for the Horde, I think). The majority of the map was very easy, since the Paladin - Archmage hero combo is probably
the safest one that you can have in a micro mission, and the enemies would need to have insane damage (like in Dwarf Campaign) for the player to be put in real threat. Destroying the draenei base is definitely a little challenging though, and there are also cleverly hidden secrets, which should be present in every dungeon map of course. I liked the little rat helpers and goblins that the player can use to Mass Teleport across obstacles, but there should probably be a safety net for the rat that you can find way before reaching the goblin base, since teleporting to it could get you stuck if you forgot to leave Rowan or a water elemental behind.
CHAPTER 7 - The first section of this mission made me realize how absent tomes are in this campaign, which is somewhat unusual, but it makes collecting them feel even better (and I recommend that you reset if you failed to get all 4 while also killing the summoner, if you're playing on hard that is). The Arthas boss fight was a decent one, and it made me realize how items and proper micro can turn a seemingly fair matchup (3 knights + Rowan vs 3 abominations + Arthas) into a one sided stomp that makes the enemy call for reinforcements multiple times. The Logan section was alright. I liked the way ships were used, and that they can be an excellent backup plan if the player has resources but is still struggling with the enemy base. Shylvanas in this chapter was one of the most annoying heroes I ever had the pleasure of facing, as her Silence is really good into a high utility/spellcaster faction, her Life Drain can only be interrupted by the Silence of the spellbook, and her Charm apparently works on magic immune spell breakers (it's kind of weird how Resistant Skin counters it, but Spell Immunity doesn't). The lore is really what I felt iffy about, though, as the blood addiction of the blood elves literally never got brought up again in Turnro canon after Logan's introduction cinematic, and it left me a bit confused about how the blood elves dealt with that, or if it was even there after Sylvanas' base was gone.
CHAPTER 8 - This is the point where I got convinced that the campaign was made for more experienced players, because oh boy, these enemies are no joke! Though the fact that the map literally starts off by forcing the player to destroy two bases with mostly just heroes really goes to show how insane the hero powercreep in this campaign is. The good thing is that the campaign was made in a way that the hero powercreep doesn't make everything laughably easy while also making normal units useless, which is a trap that many campaigns (especially the Arthas Campaign series) has fallen into, so I'm pleasantly surprised that this one managed to avoid it. I found it pretty dumb how Anub'arak comes back to help the undead base after the player completes the sidequest, because those aren't supposed to have tradeoffs like this (the tradeoff is the time and resources that the player put into completing it after all), so I'd probably change that in some way. This is also the map that has two legendaries, and one of them is really well hidden, so I recommend that you get some mortar teams and throw flares across the map.
CHAPTER 9 - Ah, long and hard micro missions. These are what I would call Turnro's speciality, as they're all very memorable and really well designed (plus they're somewhat rare in WC3 campaigns). My only complaint with this mission is how the map gives you guardians as starting units, along with some very low tier items on the way (like Healing Salve). Both of these are completely worthless at this point, and I would definitely swap out a few of these consumables for better ones, while removing the two guardians and swapping out them with some blood elf units (preferably priest/spell breaker, but a sorceress is fine too), in order to make up for their lack of chapters, as they only got 1 while the dwarves got 2. The number of enemies in this mission is absolutely insane, and I don't think my sanity could have survived that big faceless one section without all my Dispel and magic protection items. This is really one of those missions that I absolutely despise, yet also really love at the same time because it's just so damn well made.
CHAPTER 10 - Good lord. So far I've played the challenge run in all of the default campaigns and in 6 custom campaigns, and this was the second toughest final mission after Twilight of the Gods, which is quite the achievement, cus it's not like the other final missions were easy. There's two things that really boil my blood when it comes to this mission. The first is that there's no location where you can position to intercept all of the enemy attacks, so defending your 3 bases is very rough. And the second is that destroying the base of an enemy hero will make it spawn in front of the Frozen Throne, so if you want to remove that insane pressure, then you're shooting yourself in the foot by doing so, meaning that you're now put in a loose - loose situation, which is a very frustrating way to design a level. It's still absolutely beatable, especially if you've found all 10 of the legendaries, as the hero composition is basically unkillable as long as they have mana, and they have a
lot of mana. I've once lost right at the end due to the blood elven base being destroyed (which honestly caught me off guard, since the quest description didn't say that all 3 bases have to survive), but it turns out that the AI is a dummy, and you can just build a single building very far away, and they'll just simply ignore it, which totally saved me at the end. Overall, it was a really great finale for the campaign, but I definitely wouldn't mind seeing a few changes to it.
So, that was my review of the Adventures of Rowan the Wise himself. Overall, the campaign was very fun and had a ton of charm to it, with a decently simple design that was very well executed. Despite the few things that I'd change, I still think it's an absolute 10/10 that tops everything else that Turnro has made so far. I would recommend it to anyone who likes Warcraft 3 campaigns in general, as the campaign offers something for everyone. Looking for an exciting story with hilarious moments? Or a source of challenge? Or a fun adventure where your heroes really get to shine? Or something that lets you really get a feel for the power of the Alliance? Or even just a nostalgia trip that perfectly captures everything that made all the original campaigns fun
(unlike a certain reforge)? Then look no further than this great campaign!
Thank you Turnro, for putting up so much wonderful content, and wish me luck as I slowly, but surely grind through the 30 remaining maps. (Or I guess 32, because of Malfurion's Quest CH4 having 2 parts and Jeopardy for the Horde having 2 different versions of its fifth chapter)
Wish you all a good day and night!
Approved
. The RPG missions are flawless！5/5. But the RTS missions have big problem. 3/5. I think the problem is not they are too hard, but the author artificially set many man-made troubles 
. I feel deep malice (in our chinese players' words，我感受到作者的恶意). Sum up 4/5 for me 
. What a pity.
. 10/10 Recommend this one and if you wanna see some gameplayof every level just check out my youtube channel.
