The greatest appeal of the original Battle Realms is its themes. The game's looks and its canon are heavily influenced by Oriental cultures. Characters have outrageous designs akin to those in Oriental high-fantasy anime/manga, and also have voice-acting that can be amusing to those who are entertained by stereotypical accents and the quality of the dubbing for localized anime/manga.
For better or worse, the expansion, Winter of the Wolf, does not change the designs that contributed to this appeal by much. While this may seem alright to those who just cannot get enough of Battle Realms' visual and aural presentation, to others, it may seem stale already over the nominal one year since the release of the original game.
As an expansion, Winter of the Wolf introduces some new units and a new single-player campaign, but it appears to give little more. If there is any consolation however, it is a standalone game that also happens to include the original campaign and any updates that came after the release of the original game.
The new single-player campaign is actually a prequel, which chronicles the renaissance of the Wolf Clan from being slaves of the Lotus and Serpent to becoming a force of their own. Specifically, it concerns the rise of Grayback, whom veterans of the original game may recognize as the (future) leader of the Wolf Clan who apparently fights with a giant pickaxe, which is also a keepsake from his days as a slave miner.
Unlike Kenji, Grayback is an emotive person straight from the onset of the campaign (whereas Kenji's personality only becomes more well-fledged some time later into his own campaign). Listening to Grayback develop from just a griping slave into a leader eager to utilize the resentment of his clan-people to unite them against their oppressors can be decent entertainment, though seasoned game consumers would have experienced such stories of revolution many times over already.
It should suffice to say that the campaign will have Grayback meeting friends, who are none other than the Wolf Clan Zen Masters (a.k.a. heroes) in the original game, and enemies, who are also none other than the heroes for the Serpent and Lotus Clans. There won't be many new faces that a player who had played the original game has not seen, though there may be some entertainment to be had from seeing how the backstories of these characters are worked into the campaign story itself.
The early parts of the campaign serve to introduce the Wolf units one by one, but they would be not be strangers to any veterans of the original games. This can be a bit disappointing to such players, but such mission designs may have been targeted at players new to Battle Realms instead.
The later ones are a bit more interesting, but if they do not involve the building of bases and raising of armies, then they involve crawls through what are essentially linear corridors, even if they take place in the outdoors.
All-in-all, there won't be much that veterans of single-player campaigns in real-time strategy games would not have seen in this particular title.
Most of the units and buildings in the previous game has been retained, together with any balancing changes that they have had since the release of the first game. The mechanic of sending freely obtained peasants to training centers to relieve trainees of their duties and accelerate their training to produce battle-worthy units is still there, as well as the resources of rice and water and their associated mechanics.
The mechanics of Yin and Yang and horses are also retained; these worked well in the original game, and still works wonderfully in the expansion. (A lot of the exploits involving these mechanics have also been patched.)
If there is anything close to a new building to be had in the expansion, that would be the upgrade to the Town Square building or equivalent that each faction has. The building is turned into a training center that can be used to produce the two new units that each faction gets, such as the Royal Academy for the Dragon Clan.
These units can be obtained by sending either a Peasant or the female unit of any faction to these buildings to be exchanged for the former. These new units are dead-ended units, meaning that they can't be exchanged for anything else after being produced. They also fulfill the strategic gap common to all factions: the ability to counter Watchtowers within their effective ranges. (Previously, the most efficient way to remove Watchtowers without suffering too much losses is to bombard them from afar.)
However, to balance this ability, the unit using this ability is rendered immobile, with unique graphical effects surrounding her and rendering her easy to pick out from the confusion of battle.
The Wolf Clan gets the Digger, who as his name suggests, can dig past obstacles, essentially appearing from one part of the map to another that is within his limited tunneling range - if he has the blessing from the Druidess. Without it, he is not really any better than other close-combat units that the Wolf Clan has.
Other than the Digger, the Wolf Clan gets the Dryad, who is obtained by sending the Druidess over to the Forest Garden. The Dryad is a close-combatant whose attacks ignore armor and defenses of any kind, thus making her handy for scraps as long as the burlier men of the Wolf Clan take the heat instead of them. Their special ability (granted by the Druidess) gives them the power to drain away the energy of Watchtowers, giving this to herself and nearby allies in the form of a magical boost in defense.
The Lotus Clan gets the Reaper from sending a Peasant into the Flesh Crucible. This abomination (likely transformed from the Peasant itself) is a close-combatant with a powerful but slow attack, though the player is likely to get a Reaper or two for its special Battlegear, which is granted by any of the Three. The Reaper is able to create slow-moving zombies out of the corpses of enemies, giving the Lotus clan an advantage at battles of attrition, which it originally did not excel much in. The zombies are too slow and short-lived to move anywhere else, so the player will not be able to exploit the bunches of freebie units that are left after a battle.
The Overseers are Channelers that had been sent to the dreaded Flesh Crucible. As a result of their "upgrade" in the Flesh Crucible, the Overseers are much stronger than Channelers in close-combat, though they lose their ability to create and command ravens. Their strategic value lies in their Battlegear, which allows the player to turn enemy Watchtowers against their own allied forces.
The Serpent Clan gets the Enforcer, who is obtained from the Assassin Den (oddly enough, as his skills do not fit that of an assassin at all) after sending a Peasant to it. The Enforcer gives the Serpent a mid-game unit that is good at tanking, though, again, the player is likely to produce some Enforcers for their two Battlegear options. The first of these is the Enforcer's uncanny ability to hit sensitive areas of the target's body, with deleterious consequences for the victim. The second improves the Enforcer's movement and attack rates, allowing him to keep up with speedier elements of the Serpent's army.
The Serpent Geisha can be said to be a good girl gone bad, but the Witch is her gone even worse. The Witch loses her ability to heal directly, but gains new weapons in the form of fire-imbued gloves and also new forms of Battlegear. The first is Vampiric Gaze, which allows her to sap the energy of enemy troops and Watchtowers and grant these to allies (and herself) in the form of health. The second turns her into a melee monster outright, at the cost of her draining energy.
The Dragon Clan's new units are not featured in the single-player campaign, understandably enough. (During the timeline of this campaign, the Dragon Clan has yet to rise.)
The Guardian serves a similar general role as the Enforcer, i.e. giving the Dragon Clan a mid-game unit that is durable but a little slow on the move. More importantly, his Battlegear options give the Dragon Clan additional tactical possibilities when both on the attack or defense. The first of these gives the Guardian a tremendous increase in damage and speed when he is at death's door; if used properly, his death throes can be targeted at powerful enemy units to weaken them, or he can be sent after fleeing enemies to harry them before they can retreat to some place to heal. The second Battlegear is perhaps a lot more amusing; the Guardian attaches explosives to this tetsubo club, allowing him to make an opening attack in battle that damages clusters of enemies, at the cost of some of his own health.
The tenure as a Battle Maiden is what a Dragon Geisha who fails at being courteous gets, according to the canon of this unit. The Geisha is sent to the Royal Academy to train her martial skills, and as a result, the Battle Maiden is a much better fighter than she was. The Battle Maiden loses the ability to heal, but gains access to new Battlegear.
The first of these splits her into two clones, both capable of inflicting damage, but at a lower efficacy as long as both clones are still around; they also happen to be weaker than the original. Practically, this means that both clones still have offensive power equivalent to the original, but having an additional target for the enemy to worry about can be handy. For the Battle Maiden to survive, only one clone needs to; when either dies, the remaining other has her stats reverting to the original's.
The second Battlegear is a hard-counter to Watchtowers; it drains away the energy of the targeted Watchtower and grants it to nearby allies in the form of damage bonuses.
Like the existing units, these new units are colorfully designed and well-animated inside and outside of battle. They also receive voice-over treatment of the same quality, which would be entertaining to those who liked the sometimes campy voice-acting of the original.
Other additions to the game includes snow terrain, which causes clear and high-contrast footprints to appear when units with feet move across them; these footprints can be seen even at low graphical settings (albeit they appear simpler), and can linger for a while, thus betraying the passing by of units.
Maps with snow terrain also have occasional snowstorms, which damage the cultivation and harvest of rice (but not water, oddly enough). Existing maps gain the mechanic of occasional rainstorms, which perform the reverse of what snowstorms do to the rice resource. These weather patterns can be utilized in the execution of certain short-term strategies, but like all game mechanics that are affected by randomness, their effective utilization is dependent on the player's luck.
Despite the new additions, a veteran of the original Battle Realms may opine that there is not much of anything new to be had from Winter of the Wolf; the rebate that customers of the original game get when they purchase the stand-alone expansion may also seem too small to justify the new additions to the game.
Furthermore, Winter of the Wolf fails to address significant issues in the original game. The most apparent of these is the chaotic nature of battle, where opposing armies, in their eagerness to battle each other, eventually disintegrate into hodge-podge clusters of feuding individuals that move away from the main area of contention; the expansion does nothing to address this.
The mechanic of sending units from one building to another to obtain higher-tier units is still suffering from the limited waypoint-setting options. Thus, the player still has to create multiple buildings of the same kind in order to automate the raising of a balanced army. At the least, the decision by Liquid Entertainment to make use of the otherwise useless Town Square building is not affected much by this shortfall.
As an expansion, it should be understandable that Winter of the Wolf uses the same game engine and graphical assets as Battle Realms did. However, that the game only came out a year later would detract from the appeal that it would have on newcomers.
Match types in skirmish and multiplayer games still remain the same: free-for-alls and team battles, with the Last Keep Standing modifier still there.
In conclusion, Winter of the Wolf can be considered to be more of the same as offered by the original Battle Realms, especially to veterans of the first game, for better or worse. It may appeal more to newcomers, but previously released, higher-profile additions to the real-time strategy genre dilutes its attractiveness.