War Wind II: Human Onslaught

This is just unfair that War Wind 2 hasn't become as popular as Warcraft or Starcraft, maybe cause of its overcomplicated interface and mechanics. But War Wind 2 has much more interesting obscure sci-fi setting and great art and music. Definetely worth a try

I've always been weirdly in love with War Wind. Despite clumsy UI, some bugs and not so great gameplay, the game itself was very enthralling. The huge part of it is definitely thanks to it's very unique and interesting setting: the world Yavaun, inhabited by four, vastly different, but inter-dependent races, that makes you really want to explore it, learn more of its history and take part in it. War Wind 2 keeps all the clumsiness of previous part, while mostly losing most of what making it's predecessor good. The core idea of the game is introducing your old good humans as the "new" race to this interesting, strange, complex world. Did it really needed it? Even worse, the humans are represented not as one, but as two factions - Marines (ie jocks/bullies) and Descendants (nerds/scientists). Both are very boring and generic, first one wants to bully everyone else why other wants to get back. They have such exciting original units like jeep, gun car or security guard. In the meantime the other two factions have been created by mishmashing old four races into two factions (tharoon+oblinox => Imperium or something, eagra + shamali = S.U.N.). The end result is that instead of 4 fully-fleshed and diverse factions from War Wind 1, we got 2 boring and generic human factions and 2 mish-mashed, noncohesive "alien" ones. This takes away a lot of magic and atmosphere of original War Wind. The gameplay itself isn't better in any way to it's predecessor. Campaigns are boring and uninteresting, missions are meh. You have some choices along the way and there are few "special" characters, but just as the factions they are incredibly uninteresting. E.g. a pair of magical apes, pair of magical twins, redneck woman with shotgun who in some campaigns you can kill, in another exchange 1 sentence. To sum up: if you love and miss War Wind, you might still want to play this game and have some nostalgia-driven enjoyment there. If you are just looking for a good game, this is not the one.

War wind 2 tries to expand and upgrade the formula of its predecessor, but ultimately it ends creating something way worse As an RTS, the first entry of the series was brilliant : an unique game with almost truly unique races and features. However, the second instalment of the series introduced the Human races ( eliminating that feeling of strangeness from the clashing of completely alien cultures and uniqueness that was given to the saga) and it does that TWO times (the descendant and the military) which is not only idiotic but an immeasurable waste and downgrading the whole setting to a point that it now feels.. bland. On top of that, the previous races were crammed in just two factions to give enough space to the TWO human campaigns (which is a combo in genius game design's choices, let me tell you) , and eliminating the possibility to create other new and more interesting races. Gameplay wise, the elimination of Inn ( structures where units are acquired) is both bold and damaging : the units necessary for the army must be acquired from the map, which is implied that if you make a mistake you have to start over since that's all what you gonna get for the mission. In the end, the reason why I gave it three stars is that although it has nothing truly unique at point, the game can be still play decently like any other RTS (although some I found some mission to be a little unbalanced).

For years mainly had the demo to these which was super addictive. was glad to finally get the full version.