War Wind

I remember playing this game as a kid. I remember cheating at it a lot as a kid, because I was 5 and couldn't play halfway intelligently. The game has good visuals and atmosphere and is pretty ambitious -- trying to make 4 distinct factions and potentially dangerous wildlife with a variety of spells and upgrade less than a year after Warcraft 2 came out is *very* ambitious. It's also kind of terrible without nostalgia goggles. The programming is *extremely* janky and bad -- units can be dropped off of a boat and not be able to get back on it for some reason, units will decide that "attack" means "walk directly up to the enemy unit and stare at them," enemy AI will chase a single unit through a gauntlet of attacking enemies or a damaging fence even if it kills them, there's weird and random delays in unit response to orders, sometimes the enemy can just sense that you have units within their territory (even if they're invisible) and will chase them down, units only attacking enemies they're order to or who have attacked them directly, etc, etc. Then you get bad interface design. Casting spells and upgrading units are both *extremely* clunky and tedious, and magic gives the AI much more of an advantage in combat than you because they can do it much more easily than you can, even the total lack of anything like an "attack move" makes battle finicky and miserable. Add to that a lot of the mission design is *terrible.* A mission where you have to steal boxes from an enemy base where the enemies automatically detect where your units are at all times so you can't sneak in (unless the AI breaks), a mission where you can't build a base but have to slowly free an army of totally worthless units that can literally be wiped out in a couple of seconds if the AI remembers it has spells, the list goes on. It's a shame the game just doesn't have the basic programming and design chops to keep up with its ambitious scope and cool little world.

"Because a conflict is a great teacher, and hate - the perfect educator". Yes, it's just an old odd Warcraft clone, but this qote from it's intro becomes my moto. I have the CD still as a reminder.

I'd just like to note that this review comes from my experience playing the War Wind CD ROM. I remember playing War Wind from the disk on my old computer, it was a great game with four challenging and long campaigns to complete; one for each race. Each campaign has it's own unique play style that takes time to master, and each race develops differently. The graphics were somewhat simple and yet it worked very well for the atmosphere. I really enjoyed playing skirmishes; there were dozens of maps to choose from, and many different victory conditions to suit the play style that best suits you. There were some small graphics issues i came across while playing the game, at least I think they were issues. I remember the colours would invert when going to the multiplayer/skirmish menu and would remain inverted until the actual game started. There was also a problem with cut-scenes where the video would divide into two horizontal bars at the top and bottom of the screen, but other than that the game wored very well. My only regret was getting this new computer; even with compatibility settings set as far back as they go, the disk still doesn't work with the system and wont let me install the game. It's a real shame too, the older games were some of the best I've ever played.

So amazing to see this childhood classic here on GOG. If memory serves, I actually suggested it. It feels so great to relive this. Thank you so much.

This game has its flaws but has a lot of uniqueness to it in both gameplay and art style. I would love to play it again and use the editor to make funky maps and play multiplayer. However the gog version doesn't include multiplayer so I will refrain to buy this version, it is quite a crucial part of a RTS.. I wish somebody updates multiplayer come on this game is worth it >