Four races, and the story of their struggle with each other produces the best RTS game you'll wintess for a long time.
In previous Warcraft games you took command of two main races: the humans and the orcs, in this latest installment however two new races will be available for you to try out: the undead and the night elves. The undead are a bunch of ghouls, necromancers and hideous creatures, and their race's main strong point is their defensive abilities. On the other hand the night elves are pointy eared people with magic as their main strong point in addition to their strong bond with the powers of nature. Of course you will still be able to play as the brutal orcs and the well balanced humans. So the whole game feels huge and long, trust me when I say that this game will take a lot of your time, in a good way of course.
The story of warcraft III Reign Of Chaos starts as Thrall, the young war chief of the orcish horde witnesses a dream in which he is advised to travel to a far land with his people for the sake of their safety, this serves as an introduction to the game and it is followed by a tutorial level that will easily introduce you into the game, so warcraft players and new comers will both get appropriately involved in this enormous adventure. After this short campaign with the orcs you begin the human campaign which is the longest by the way, and then as the story progresses you'll unlock the undead, orc and finally the night elf campaigns respectively. The change from one campaign to another is brilliantly made in a way that eases you in to playing no matter what your level of skill in this type of games is, so you begin a campaign with a few easy missions and then as you progress new units, and game play elements will be introduced to you in a very smooth learning curve. But don't think that the missions themselves are easy, for although some of them are relatively easy some missions are EXTREMRLY hard, but no worries because they are all fun and a great joy to play.
The controls are very similar to any other RTS game, and as mentioned above the learning curve is very smooth and will easily draw new gamers and Warcraft veterans alike.
I mentioned earlier that this game feels more like an RPG than an RTS, which is correct not just because some of the levels play like Diablo in which you explore dungeons and opening routes in order to reach your goal, although the majority of the game is still RTS stuff like building bases, upgrading them and making armies to defend your base or to assault your enemies' bases. But the RPG feel comes from the whole story which involves different races, backgrounds, magic, demons and legends among other stuff. Another thing is the inclusion of heroes which are the main characters of your race and at some missions their death will mean a failed mission, but in most missions you can resurrect them if they die at special temples, but be warned that this process is very expensive and takes a lot of time. The heroes them selves posses some abilities that can be acquired and upgraded as they gain experience from fighting, which is a very strong RPG element. But really the RPG feel comes mainly from the story and the atmosphere that this game successfully creates to hook you as a player into this game.
Of course a game that huge should look well and Warcraft III Reign Of Chaos does just that, it has beautiful graphics that can even be checked out more closely if you scroll the mouse wheel, for the camera will then descend and-to give you an even more realistic feel-the sounds and voices will get louder as you do. Speaking of audio the game gives you all the appropriate sound effects and a score suited to every race you play as. The voices of the characters really fit their profiles but the voice acting itself isn't very phenomenal, still it's better that most games out there and you will be hooked in deeply in this world so much that you won't care.
The online experience is fun and should be very enjoyable if more players join in.
It's really rare that an RTS game make you interested in it's story, but Warcraft isn't just about that, it has a solid gameplay that merges with it's story and atmosphere. Only Blizzard Entertainment can come up with this degree of greatness in RTS games. So if you're an RTS fan then you should definitely get this, and even if you don't like this type of games, you will most probably like it specially if you're even a bit of an RPG action fan.