The ideal follow up to an already impressive game that adds a slew of new content, new gameplay, new challenges, and a heaping helping of new stories to explore the aftermath of of WC3's events.
TFT is great example of how a dev team can really go to town once they've mastered the tools. This game expands on all the mechanics and gameplay, introduces new armies, units, and items, and then dumps 4 new campaigns on top of all that. Through these stories we explore the fates of Illidan Stormrage and the Naga, Arthas and the Lich King, the Blood Elves, Sylvanas and the dreadlords, and then finally the bonus 'Founding of Durotar' campaign. It's a gigantic amount of content and if you've played WoW this really sets the stage for how things start out in vanilla through to Wrath.
The stories are well written and have the same great character writing as the base game but uniquely TFT is an epilogue for the antagonists of WC3, exploring how they recover from the finale. Each of the four stories adds all new depth to the various factions and fills in some gaps left from the core game's narrative. I found it dragged a bit in the undead campaign (the starting gameplay is still very base-building focused) but thankfully the devs keep it fresh by exploring new game modes and scenarios with stealth, dungeon exploration, capture the flag, king of the hill, naval missions, aerial missions, you name it. Not to mention a variety of secret missions to discover. This variety definitely gives TFT a whole different feeling from the base game while building on what's come before.
For the new armies, I was a disappointed to find the blood elves are a reskin of humans and elves combined - especially as the demon's army is right there but you never seem to get access to it. The Naga at least are an all new snakeman race that are powerful, slow, and expensive with an aztec theme. They have the ability to cross shallow water giving them some unique movement, but every army has something new to play with between new units and buildings. There's also a host of new hero characters that the story is told through.
The final campaign - The Founding of Durotar - is a 3 part story built from inter-linked sandbox areas that make the game play more akin to Diablo. It actually feels like playing a proto world of warcraft as you venture into the wilds, kill mob packs along the way, do quests, kill bosses with raid-style mechanics, and collect equipment to enhance your heroes. While this gives the game a whole new feeling it's also jarringly slower paced and they aren't afraid to kill you since your heroes now instantly respawn at a resurrection stone. This often leads to fairly drawn out battles of attrition as you throw your units at problems until its solved. It creates a very different tone from WC3 and it's hard to say if it's 'better', so your mileage may vary.
Overall, WC3 built a fantastic engine and TFT is very much the devs using that engine as a playground to experiment with. You can see much of the WoW DNA taking shape through the lean into open world sandbox design alongside the story beats setting up the world politics for a more deep and nuanced setting. If you liked the base game this is an large extra serving of that with all kinds of new ways to enjoy it - but you may not enjoy every new flavour.
TFT is great example of how a dev team can really go to town once they've mastered the tools. This game expands on all the mechanics and gameplay, introduces new armies, units, and items, and then dumps 4 new campaigns on top of all that. Through these stories we explore the fates of Illidan Stormrage and the Naga, Arthas and the Lich King, the Blood Elves, Sylvanas and the dreadlords, and then finally the bonus 'Founding of Durotar' campaign. It's a gigantic amount of content and if you've played WoW this really sets the stage for how things start out in vanilla through to Wrath.
The stories are well written and have the same great character writing as the base game but uniquely TFT is an epilogue for the antagonists of WC3, exploring how they recover from the finale. Each of the four stories adds all new depth to the various factions and fills in some gaps left from the core game's narrative. I found it dragged a bit in the undead campaign (the starting gameplay is still very base-building focused) but thankfully the devs keep it fresh by exploring new game modes and scenarios with stealth, dungeon exploration, capture the flag, king of the hill, naval missions, aerial missions, you name it. Not to mention a variety of secret missions to discover. This variety definitely gives TFT a whole different feeling from the base game while building on what's come before.
For the new armies, I was a disappointed to find the blood elves are a reskin of humans and elves combined - especially as the demon's army is right there but you never seem to get access to it. The Naga at least are an all new snakeman race that are powerful, slow, and expensive with an aztec theme. They have the ability to cross shallow water giving them some unique movement, but every army has something new to play with between new units and buildings. There's also a host of new hero characters that the story is told through.
The final campaign - The Founding of Durotar - is a 3 part story built from inter-linked sandbox areas that make the game play more akin to Diablo. It actually feels like playing a proto world of warcraft as you venture into the wilds, kill mob packs along the way, do quests, kill bosses with raid-style mechanics, and collect equipment to enhance your heroes. While this gives the game a whole new feeling it's also jarringly slower paced and they aren't afraid to kill you since your heroes now instantly respawn at a resurrection stone. This often leads to fairly drawn out battles of attrition as you throw your units at problems until its solved. It creates a very different tone from WC3 and it's hard to say if it's 'better', so your mileage may vary.
Overall, WC3 built a fantastic engine and TFT is very much the devs using that engine as a playground to experiment with. You can see much of the WoW DNA taking shape through the lean into open world sandbox design alongside the story beats setting up the world politics for a more deep and nuanced setting. If you liked the base game this is an large extra serving of that with all kinds of new ways to enjoy it - but you may not enjoy every new flavour.
Klaustrix
9 days ago