Warcraft III Reforged: Forsaken Kingdom – Review

Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Reviewed On: PC
Available On: PC
Release Date: September 12, 2026
Review Copy Provided By: Blizzard Entertainment

There was once a time when I thought it was all but over for Warcraft as an RTS game. Warcraft III: Reforged was one of the messiest launches I’ve ever seen in my long years of gaming. It nearly destroyed what little faith I had in modern Blizzard. Of course, the game has rebounded since then, and it’s looking better these days. I thought that was the end of that saga. And then Warcraft III Reforged: Forsaken Kingdom was announced, and shadow dropped on the same day. Could this be the start of the redemption arc RTS fans have long to see, or will it end up being yet another disappointment in a long line of disappointments? Let’s go find out.

Warcraft III Reforged: Forsaken Kingdom is the first expansion of Warcraft III Reforged and Warcraft III’s third expansion since Frozen Throne was released roughly 20 years ago. The campaign is split into two parts: The prologue, which is set during the fall of Lordaeron, and the main campaign, which is set during the founding of the Undercity. The story focuses on Garek Bandarion, a city guardsman who fought and died to get some sort of revenge. He is later reawakened in undeath and finds purpose anew as a stalwart defender of the Undercity and a bane against its myriad enemies.

Now that we are through with introductions, let’s go over what Forsaken Kingdom is and what it is not. The expansion is not a pure RTS experience. It has parts where RTS elements are featured, but the game makes it clear from the very start that the stars of the show are the Hero units. In this case, Garek and all the allies he fights alongside during the course of the campaign. Forsaken Kingdom is an RTS-RPG hybrid where players build up Hero units, like one would during a match of DOTA. Players are still able to give orders to regular units, but they are restricted to a small, yet expensive to maintain, band of mercenaries.

In all honesty, I was pretty much disappointed to learn that the expansion was so heavily focused on the RPG aspect. I fully expected to take control of the armies of the Forsaken in their struggle to find a foothold in a world that either wants them gone or enslaved. Instead, I became a glorified errand boy for the denizens of the Undercity. In fairness, we do get to fight existential threats like the Scarlet Crusade and the remnants of the Scourge, but that only happens halfway through the campaign. More on that later.

Controlling the Hero units didn’t end up being the horrible experience I was dreading it to be. Garek is a competent damage dealer and crowd control specialist. Anya is a ranger who moonlights as an off-healer in her spare time. And then there’s Leonid, the DPS tank who can single-handedly hold the frontline for as long as needed. What I like about the trio is that they don’t strictly follow RTS archetypes. Anya is the only source of real healing in the group, but in the right circumstances, she can out DPS the lads by a huge margin. I also like the fact that Anya’s healing ability acts like Mercy’s Caduceus Staff, which makes her a better healer than anyone else in Warcraft. Sorry, Paladin mains.

Admittedly, there is ample opportunity for skill expression, as you not only have to manage cooldowns but manage your mana usage as well. This is particularly important for Anya, as her healing lamp consumes mana while active. Ultimately, I might have preferred to play a standard RTS; I still walked away from the experience feeling good about having to micromanage a strike team.

The best part of Forsaken Kingdom is the level of attention given to its cutscenes and in-game cinematics. The team has clearly picked up where they left off when they reshot iconic moments in the base human campaign to give it that cinematic touch that was not possible back in the early 2000s. I appreciate that the team remained faithful to Warcraft III’s style and presentation when it came to telling the story of the campaign. Especially the ending, where Sylvanas looks back on the events of the campaign and contemplates changes that affect not only the Forsaken but changes the course of the Horde for years to come.

Aside from the numerous bugs and glitches, I’d say my biggest complaint is that Act 1 dragged on for what feels like forever. It feels like I spent the first half of the 20+ hour campaign doing pointless stuff for no reason. Thankfully, the pace quickened after the Scarlet Crusade’s raid at the start of the second act. It was also around this time that Leonid was introduced to essentially fill out the party. This was the point when the game truly started to hit its stride. I only wish Leonid was introduced earlier in the campaign. It may make sense from a narrative perspective, but it doesn’t from a gameplay perspective to have a crucial part of your party appear more than halfway through an RPG campaign.

Realistically, it shouldn’t have taken me too long to get past the first act. I wanted to see how my actions affected anything in the story. Turns out, it all amounted to a laundry list of tasks that ultimately amounted to nothing more than a pile of experience points. Not that it mattered much since the early game was more difficult than it needed to be. Mercenaries would have been helpful in those early days, but the thing they did was burn a hole in my pocket and be a net negative overall. Imagine trying to micro a small force that dies to anything more powerful than a standard zombie. I never hired mercenaries again past that point.

It’s no secret that Reforged was released in an embarrassing incomplete state. It was buggy and riddled with performance issues. Forsaken Kingdom suffers from the same issues; however, it should be noted that it was released in a slightly better state. I guess some lessons were learned in the years after Reforged launched. Performance didn’t take a nosedive until the end of the first act during an assault on a monastery held by the Silver Hand. The final fight moved at twice the speed of a slideshow on my mid-range PC. Just when I thought things were looking up for Warcraft III, the game pulls this one on me.

But the worst didn’t happen until well into the 3rd Act inside the infamous Naxxramas. Near the end of the campaign, you fight an “old friend” deep inside the flying fortress. After the first phase of the fight, the game would always crash on me. I would load the sequence in vain multiple times. One quick look in the forums reveals that there’s a bug that’s caused by your character’s equipment, and that’s what’s making the game crash. Who in the world missed this during testing? I only made it through the fight by unequipping every piece of armor I suspect would cause a crash. It worked, by the way, which speaks volumes about enemy scaling and game balance.

Version 3.0.1 in the patch notes says it’s been fixed, but it’s wild that a bug that severe is allowed to remain in the game for nearly a month. That should have been a “week 1” priority fix.

Forsaken Kingdom is, at most, comparable to Rexxar’s campaign in Frozen Throne. The parallels are there: both games are set during the founding of a major Horde faction post-Frozen Throne. The difference is that Rexxar’s story is but a small part of the expansion; Forsaken Kingdom is the whole expansion. The next logical step is to either have expansions dedicated to the new Alliance or the Blood Elves. Maybe even about the Night Elves just before Illidan’s imprisonment. There are a host of stories that we know of through other media that we would like to experience as a video game. Whether it happens or not will ultimately depend on Blizzard and their plans for the Warcraft IP. I just hope that those plans involve more than just WoW Forever.

Warcraft III: Reforged Forsaken Kingdom is a positive step toward what we all want as the next Warcraft RTS installment. We’re not there yet, but if this side adventure is any indication, we’re nowhere near closing the final chapter of the Warcraft III story. If you are a huge fan of the Forsaken faction and you want to know a little bit more about your favorite faction, then this one’s for you. For everyone else, it’s optional content that’s nice to have.

Warcraft III Reforged: Forsaken Kingdom Review (PC)

6 Justified

Warcraft III: Reforged Forsaken Kingdom is a positive step toward what we all want as the next Warcraft RTS installment. We're not there yet, but if this side adventure is any indication, we're nowhere near closing the final chapter of the Warcraft III story.

The Good

1. A new campaign after 20 years
2. Cutscenes and in-game cinematics look and feel great
3. Nice to see the origins of characters we'll see in World of Warcraft
4. The second half of the campaign carried the entire experience

The Bad

1. Game-breaking bug allowed to remain in the game for nearly a month
2. Lots of small, annoying bugs
3. Game balance is all over the place
4. Act 1 drags on forever