Review by: Jordan Thomas
Published: December 30, 1997

The sky goes red as the unmistakable sound of war rings out over the exotic planetscape. The Tha’Roon saurian empire slithers in, flinging dark reptilian tribal magic at the unsuspecting human forces. In the background, bizarre human-plant Eaggra chant desperately, trying to heal and regroup while the humans distract the opposition.

The tides of real-time war are waged once again in SSI’s War Wind 2, a brutal strategy title in the tradition of Warcraft and Command and Conquer. With four completely different factions to choose from, the game offers several unique strategic philosophies in pursuit of survival and victory.

Players can take command of one of four armies: The Marines, a combative breed of soldiers who will stop at nothing to create a dominant human civilization on the planet; The Descendants, a group of far more peaceful, if brilliant technomancers who intend to use their mastery of science to find a way back to Earth; the Servants Under NagaRom (S.U.N.), peace loving plant-like bipeds, whose essential goal is to re-balance the world and restore harmony through magic; and the Overlords, pseudo insectoid-reptiles who seek only to conquer and subvert the other factions.

This detail, and the multitudes of units that result, are much appreciated. Many RTS clones suffer from a low number of distinct army types, and players tire quickly of using the same old grunts for the same old purpose. This is simply not the case with War Wind 2, and the game makes up in sheer population variety what it lacks in originality.

While the graphics are really of only average caliber, the game flaunts a huge degree of strategic depth. All the best RTS features are present here: band selection of units as a group, 5-interim waypoints to be designated along the path of unit movement, multiple special items, spells, and weapons to be picked up by passing armies, and various types of building and terrain demolition.

In fact, there are so many options for unit training and upgrading, and so many different spells and item inventions in the game, that it seems to achieve a strange but pleasing combination of a strategy foundation built upon by the detail of an RPG system and the item-grabbing fun of a board game. The manual is incredibly informative, and describes every unit, power, item, and structure in painstaking detail. There is even a structure/base iteration tree to make clear what you must have in order to build subsequent new buildings, which offer further unit upgradability, etc.