I know that it's a very old game, yet I've seen that the review is very positive. But the graphics is extremely archaic, is there any mod or method to improve it ? Is GoG enhanced version bring better graphics ?

Still, if there is no way to mod the graphics, is the gameplay itself is enough to make up for the graphics deficiency ?

Thanks

There are no mods that "improve" the graphics quality as such. You can play around with mods for higher resolution + different scaling mods. The artstyle of WarCraft II is charming and still holds up to this day, so I would give it a try as it is first.

As for the gameplay, I would say that this game has all the core machanics of the RTS genre, without being too complex for beginner:

- Gathering resources: mostly gold from gold mines and lumber by chopping down trees + oil by building oil platforms on the oil patches in the water (required for naval combat).
- Building various structures - farms to feed your troops, barracks to train your fighting units and other ones to unlock new upgrades and units,
- Controlling different types of combat troops from melee fighters, to archers, siege weapons, ships, spellcasters and flying units.

I don't know how familiar you are with the RTS games, but if you run into any issues, you can ask here and me or other users will help you for sure - WarCraft II is being played by quite a few people still.

Well Warcraft 2 has been out for 28 years now and yet despite the fact that Blizzard threw it under the bus as soon as they released Starcraft/Warcraft 3 players never stopped playing it.

Warcraft 2 features a unique game-play other more modern RTS simply do not feature:
- Units have grid based movements meaning instead of real positions and collisions they move on a grid like chess pieces tile by tile which makes their movements very predictable and the game board very readable at all time.
- Because of those grid based movements a lot of strategies revolve around those such as choke points/blocking/hopping.
- Terrain in that game is very very important and can be heavily modified you can remove trees and rocks and that mechanic is at the core of most maps played in multiplayer.
- Rather than rock paper scissors army compositing the units you produce can all be needed in one single game because all units have roles to play other units simply cannot fill. In WC2 you do not "counter" the army composition of your opponent you counter his placement his choke points and containment in that sense WC2 is more about managing a grid space than managing armies.

If you want to see more in practice what it looks like there are many Youtube and Twitch channels out there that feature 2023 Warcraft 2 content.

I actually used to play Warcraft III for quite some time, it was great, addictive and overall very well polished, a true testament of what the old Blzzard team can do. Nowadays modern RTS are simply...well I say dumbed down and designed to be younger audience friendly. A modern RTS nowadays must be, either dumbed down for console (CoH 3, Iron Harvest, Ancestors Legacy, The Valiant, etc) or designed to look disney-like art style (Age of Empires 4, etc).

There is no modern RTS that able to have the combination of : good gameplay, good story. gritty serious atmosphere and good long lasting replay value like the old days. Until I found Warcraft II. But what hold me so far to buy it, is the graphics. It sounds like better than Warcraft III ?

I do not think there is a scale on which we could rank games that have almost nothing in common on the way they play.

Warcraft 3 is a completely different game and you can totally love both for different reasons.

Some people may prefer one or the other but I honestly do not think it does either game justice.

Warcraft 3 was designed to be a fantastic casual game where all the action is centered around a maximum of 3 points of interests you heroes and armies working together as one.
The developers created an upkeep system for that game to make sure the Heroes never became irrelevant and the strategic nature of the title stays limited and easy to learn. The game requires a lot of reflexes and timing skills at a high level and rewards time invested as knowing maps and creep camps drop tables plays a big role too in decision making.

Warcraft is probably the franchise where the developers creativity went the most wild as almost no game in the series look and plays like another. So yeah Warcraft 2 plays nothing like Warcraft 3 and sadly you cannot simply say one is better than the other unless you mean it the same way you would say World of Warcraft is better than Starcraft or Grand theft auto

Thx, yeah I'm thinking to buy it before the sale ends. Is there any mod or any tweak to improve the graphics ? Is GoG enhanced edition the graphics ?

There is an open sourced ddraw.dll that helps rendering the game with glsl shaders that you can use which makes the graphics a bit more crisp.
search cnc-ddraw on github it usually is very easy to setup.

Warcraft 3 have bad graphics engine and very "casual" models, with some elements on bafks of units are mirrored front texture. Squarish everything. And scale based on unit tech level or hero level for heroes. This squares enlarged during gameplay (also by Rage spell).

It didnt bring improvments to gameplay except heroes. But what heroes for is Founding the Durotar campaign. Normal RTS unbalanced with heroes.
Oh yeah. Balance. Blizzard can into balance only for two identical factions.

There is degrees of UI/controls features in Wc3, Wc2 Bnet after Wc2 The Dark Saga. And if Wc2 Bnet is still old game and based on more older (even with fact it also based on Sega Saturn The Dark Saga) - Wc3 come in 2002 and lack of The Dark Saga features is a bummer in 2002.

So if you come here after Wc3 it is same game. Some elements better some worse in Wc3 <-> Wc2. Graphics are same. Wc2 is sprites, but sprites better themself. Good sprites is better than pure renders of pure models.
But if you come here after eg Wh40k Dawn of War (DC/SS), Warcraft 2 graphics and gameplay probably will be repulsive unpleasant elements for you.