Once you get the mod, it's a perfectly fine game.
This is my first time playing any Warcraft game, and when it comes to old DOS games, this has aged really well. I've been having a lot of fun, and though there is some jank that came with it's age, it's easy to get over that. You adjust to it really quick, and once that happens, it's a really solid game, even for today.
I have no idea as to why this game is held in such high regard, beyond possibly nostalgia. There is mind boggling bad ideas implemented into this game that makes it borderline unplayable in the modern day. The game uses a percentage based system for calculating actions that you can do in the game. This applies to combat as well. Whereas Oblivion and Skyrim have improved on this concept, it is still, even in this system's infancy, bull shit. There are times where I'm swinging my axe, and someone is swinging their's and neither of us are landing a hit, even though both of us are right in front of each other. The range on many attacks are deceptively large, and there are characters just inside the first hour of gameplay that can kill you within seconds. I've tried completing more quests to level up, I've tried going elsewhere to find better loot, but there is no where you can go early game that isn't immensly difficult. I had my game set to normal, and still, I was having to save scum, run away and kill rats just to progress. Don't waste your money or time on this game. It hasn't aged well at all, and frankly, I don't think it even compares to other RPGs of the time. This is a shitty game, with shitty systems and mechanics, and punishes you for trying to play the game outside of the main story.
I genuinely was enjoying this game, but after a little over 90 hours, it gets to a point where problems that weren't that bad for the rest of the game become glaringly horendous. I wanted to finish the game since I had already put so much time in effort into it. Sadly *spoilers* for me, once I got to California, the difficulty ranked up to a point where unless you grind random events over and over again, and level up your characters to a ridiculous level, and pray to God that you get a decent weapon, you will not be able to win. You can't even skip certain missions because story missions are about as difficult. It gets to a point where your characters are fairly high level and can only attack maybe once or twice (if you're lucky) and the enemies can attack over six times in one turn. Some enemies have weapons that can one shot any of your characters, but your stuck with what you find, sometimes meaning you do a 20 damage to somebody with 1500. There is a lot of jank to the game that makes certain aspects of the game extremely frustrating purely due to the fact that almost all jank in the game benefits the enemy and hurts you. I liked this game a lot, but after 90 hours, problems that could be ignored became almost game breaking. I generally put my games on the hardest level I can. I quit when I realized that I had already lowered the difficulty to second easiest. There is no reason why a game should be that difficult. The amount of resource management you have to do rivals the original Resident Evil. You almost never find any good equipment. There is almost no randomly spawning healing items. The graphics aren't that great and after a while the game becomes one of the most frustrating experiences I've had with a game. I'm extrememly sad because I was have a really fun time, but the design and the mechanics are not good, and they really show themselves in the late game.
