Loria: the Warcraft clone its own community stands up for

Released in 2019 and still listed as early access, the game drops leveling heroes into a framework that admits, without apology, where it came from.

Two races, six heroes, and a resemblance nobody denies

Loria's top-rated review — flagged as helpful by 147 people — opens by owning the harshest charge you could level at the game: it calls it a blatant clone of Warcraft II's art and Warcraft III's mechanics, and points out that even the skirmish format, with magic items hoarded by neutral monsters, was lifted without disguise. Scroll through the rest of the reviews and the comparison comes up again and again, in praise as often as in condemnation — what changes is never what people recognize, only what each reader does with the recognition. If you've played the real-time strategy classics, the design here will feel instantly familiar.

Beneath the real-time strategy surface, the game grafts on pieces of another genre: playable heroes who level up and carry an inventory, items to collect, and quests that push each campaign's story forward. The game has two playable races, each with its own campaign. Together the campaigns add up to sixteen missions, eight per side. There are also standalone skirmish matches and units that earn veteran status after surviving combat, and six unique heroes are spread across that roster.

Made and published by the Loria studio itself, which lent its name to the game, the title came out on August 21, 2019 — and the store page still classifies it as early access. It's a detail that weighs more heavily later on: not everyone who came back years after release found a project still in motion.

The players who recognize Warcraft and thank it anyway

Anyone who arrives at Loria already knowing where it came from tends to leave happy. In a five-star review dated August 22, 2019, the mood is described as a return to the golden age of real-time strategy: the prologue, its author says, recalls the old Ultima scripts, the voice acting carries a tongue-in-cheek humor, and the controls stick close to Blizzard's more recent real-time strategy games. The same person notes that the soundtrack evokes Warcraft II while keeping an identity of its own, and that the artificial intelligence pathfinds well most of the time — apart from the odd unit that gets stuck on the terrain.

Whoever reviewed the game on August 24 of that same year went beyond nostalgia: they said they only noticed the title because of its Linux version, made not by the studio but by a community volunteer over a few days of work — and that, without it, they would have skipped the game entirely. Today that person calls Loria one of their favorites. If you know by heart the sound of a unit taking an order in Warcraft, the echo here is instant.

Not every compliment comes unqualified. In a review from August 26, 2019, someone recommends the game while warning it isn't for everyone: alongside the Warcraft II art, the soundtrack, and the campaign's humor, they list units that freeze or teleport on their own, few skirmish maps, and the absence of a map editor and a multiplayer mode. A 2025 review sums up what carries across the years: it's hard to judge Loria without bias, given how much it resembles the original — but even so, it's good.

The same copy, now as an accusation

Anyone who showed up expecting originality left bothered by the very opposite of what the fans celebrate. In a review from June 21, 2021, the first impression is described as mockery, not homage: the game inherited the same pathfinding problems the original had, inventing nothing beyond what it copied, and the writer goes so far as to ask why not just play the old versions of Warcraft II or III instead. If you expect a tribute to come up with something of its own, that's the question that will stay with you. The voice acting, per that same review, is competent but impersonal, and the art direction is so flat that it hides levers, chests, and treasure in the scenery.

The point that recurs most on the complaint side is technical: units that freeze, teleport, or stand still in the middle of a mission. Someone who played on July 10, 2021 reports a hero who got stuck on the map and sat out the rest of the mission — and concluded that the heroes are dispensable, because every mission resolves the same way: mass troops, attack, lose half of them to towers the artificial intelligence keeps rebuilding. Someone who came back on May 20, 2020, trying to reconnect with the game, found a stalled project: no map editor, no update in ages — the early-access label, in this person's view, no longer matched anything actually underway.

Not every complaint is born of contempt. A review from June 2, 2022 opens by warning that its author rarely likes to leave a negative rating; before the gripes, they credit the game with its art, its humor, and its affection for the Warcraft II reference. The person recounts abandoning the campaign on the third mission, when the only gold deposit available ran dry against an army they found nearly impossible to beat on normal difficulty.

Where the copy becomes the deciding factor

Loria serves well anyone who wants the Warcraft II and III format without reinstalling the original games, and who doesn't mind bumping into units that freeze or teleport along the way. It serves poorly anyone who plays solo after a balanced challenge, a variety of maps, or someone on the other side of the network — none of that is here, and whoever takes it on will feel the gap early. The pool of reviewers is small and mostly favorable, but the line that separates those who liked it from those who didn't is always the same: the game's admitted copying. One side calls it affection; the other, laziness. Loria doesn't decide for you — it only guarantees that, once you've picked a side, the game delivers exactly what it promised to copy.