Before I begin, I just want to say that there's a free, Stand Alone mod for This game Called The Protectors, The team for that mod is currently active (At the time of this review) And have Improved...EVERYTHING!!! about it. Including adding new classes, Sub Factions for every race, New Stories and Campaigns and more. Plus you don't need to own This game to play it. But I highly Recommend you do and here's why

Warlords Battlecry 3 Combines Elements of both RTS Games like Warcraft 3 and Command & Conquer. With ARPG Elements of games like Diablo and Dungeon Siege to name a few. The RTS Side has you picking from 16 different races/factions, Capturing Mines to build up a base and an army, Research tech and higher tiers. Then going out to crush your enemies. And the ARPG Side has you control a hero that's like a Hero Unit from WC3. They gain XP and level up with each mission/quest/match you play. They earn points that you can put into spells and passive perks. And you can collect pieces of gear off of boss like enemies, Finding Treasure Chests and killing enemy heroes (Note that all gear comes from Treasure Chests In the actual game maps and such)

Like I said, There are 16 Different Races you can pick from and play, Each having the same ways to get higher tiers but each having their own play-styles, Strengths and weaknesses. For an example, The Fay or Or Fairies. Are the weakest in terms of Health and Defence, But they make up for it by being a Swarm like race, Able to product an army at an alarming pace and also having extremely fast moving units in both movement and attack speed. And the Minotaurs, They have the smallest amount of units in the game, But they make it up for it by having a lot of upgrades for their units. Every unit in the game has a different attack like, Like the Orcs Ogre unit has a big club so it does crushing damage, Attacks can also Critically strike which dose an effect depending on the attack, Crushing can stun targets, While Piercing Ignores armour. Units can also have weaknesses to different attack types, Like an example. A skeleton is weak to Crushing damage, While a Stone Golem is weak to Lighting based attacks

Before you begin to play, You will be asked to create a hero, While the creator is very basic In terms of what you can do you. You can do any race/class combo you want So if you wanted a Demon to be a paladin or a Human Knight be a Summoner of demons then you can do that. Perhaps you want a Dwarf Druid or a Elf Runemaster, That's possible. Your hero is very Important, Depending on the game mode/rules, You start off with nothing besides your hero and Maybe a couple of towers depending on the map. Your hero has a few abilities besides the class spells (Because of course a Ice Mage will have Ice Spells or a Necromancer can raise the dead) For one, Your hero is a builder so you want to quickly plop down your races HQ. Second, Your hero (And other higher tier units) Has a Convert ability. Again, Depending on the map. There are 4 main resources, Gold, Iron, Stone and Crystal. Each having 3 levels. The Difference Between the levels is that the lowest can hold up to 5000 while the highest can hold 150000. Converting makes your hero stand in place and do a channel, Then once it's finished you own the building, You can do this with enemy buildings as well.

The campaign has an "Open world" location to location system, where you can travel around the world to different spots on the map. You first need to do the main quest in a set area before you can explore the wider world but it shouldn't take too long to finish There are two kinds of missions. Regular/Main Quests that you can only do once, And Repeating Quests that can be on randomly generated maps (More on that soon) The only down side is that while you travel, you will be ambushed, Think of it like Final Fantasy Encounters, You can defend your self with an army you can prepare before, While others are just unfair (!#$%y !#$%Ing Griffons...). Of course doing these missions will make your hero level up but also your units can as well. When you finish a mission there might be a chance of you getting a named Secondary Character to join you, Think of these like the Honor Guard In dawn of war Dark Crusade/Soul Storm. At first they are nothing more then a higher level basic troop, But if you baby them and take good care, They can be beasts. But sadly, Once they die. They are Dead for good

The Skirmish is one of the best I've ever played in an RTS, Not only can you tweak a lot of rules and also change the game mode, But you can also play on a randomly generated map, Pick the Biome, The amount of resources, The amount of hostile camps (There can be hostile camps that spawn wandering enemy units that can attack anyone) and more. And of course there's an Editor much like Warcraft 3. It won't let you create the next DOTA but it does have the tools to make something grand...And to be honest...I'm one of those folks that will make a XP Farm, Have my self a fortress of 100 titans (The Ultimate Unit of every faction) Have 500 towers, 1000 shops so I can get gear for my hero. Then once I felt like it's time, Send my Army of Titans to crush everyone.

I highly recommend picking up the series on GOG (Or this version on steam) While It is true there is a Stand Alone Mod called The Protectors. I'm sure there are some folks that, Despite there being a Remaster or Remake. They would prefer to grab, lets say a PS1, Find all of the bits for it and play the classic original version of the game they grew up with. There's also a few mods and Unofficial patches for the retail version of WBC3 such as The 1.03.5 Mod Or The Widescreen Patch 1.04b2.