Dune II / YMMV - TV Tropes

Audience-Coloring Adaptation: Dune II and Dune 2000 durably influenced how the public viewed the Dune franchise. When the 2022 4X game Dune: Spice Wars was announced (which is based on the novels and the 2021 movie, but doesn't pretend to be a continuation of Westwood's RTS series), many people complained screenshots didn't have elements which originated from Dune II (notably, House Ordos wasn't teased and House Atreides' color wasn't blue).
Awesome Music: The soundtrack composed by Frank Klepacki is very memorable. "Fight for Power" and "Harkonnen Battle" are some of the best tracks out there which make you feel that you're fighting in Arrakis. It got to the point that the teaser trailer for Emperor: Battle for Dune used the latter track, rather than anything that had been finished for that game.
Creepy Awesome: The Ordos mentat in Dune 2000: A cyborg (maybe) with Bald of Evil who talks in Creepy Monotone. Until later in the game when he is hopped up on Spice, which makes him sound like he is Drunk on the Dark Side.
Common Knowledge: House Ordos is often thought to be an original creation made specifically for Dune II. They actually originate from Dune Encyclopedia, a companion book of the Dune franchise published in 1984 and considered canon by Frank Herbert himself (Brian Herbert, co-writer of several prequels, sequels, and interquels to the original series, later declared it non-canon). That being said, all of House Ordos' traits are original to the game: all the Encyclopedia says about the Ordos is the number of seats they have in the Landsraad and how their coat of arms looks (which wasn't used in the game^note).
Cult Classic: Upon release, Dune 2000 received mainly So Okay, It's Average reviews for essentially being Dune II in Command And Conquer's clothing, at a time when the RTS genre was rapidly evolving through games like Starcraft and Total Annihilation. Over the years, however, the game has developed a cult following for being a well-made but refreshingly simple RTS and solid update to Dune II. There are even fan-made patches available to play the game at modern resolutions on newer versions of Windows. Not to mention a fairly strong modding scene - even OpenRA, a modern source port of the first two Command & Conquer games, also includes an update of Dune 2000.
Game-Breaker: The Sonic Tank in the earlier versions the game, before the developers apparently reduced its sight and attack range (originally they had a long enough range to be able to shoot rocket turrets from a safe distance). Once you had enough of these, the mission was won.
Genre Turning Point: Dune II is universally considered the Trope Codifier for the Real-Time Strategy. While it is incredibly dated from the modern perspective (every campaign mission consists of destroying all your enemies, the strategy ultimately boils down to frontal attacks with heavy tanks and artillery, factions are nearly Cosmetically Different Sides with just a few unique units, etc, to say nothing about the clunky interface and UI), it still made the ball rolling, becoming a template on which the likes of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Command & Conquer, or Age of Empires I build and improved on.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While relatively obscure in the West, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive port was massively popular in Russia, overshadowing original version in notoriety and ranking consistently high in regional polls of greatest Mega Drive games.
Good Bad Bugs:
- Two bugs related to the Ordos Deviator in the Sega Genesis port. One of them involves Deviators being completely useless if you don't play as Ordos because their Nerve Gas does not turn enemy units into your House, but always to House Ordos. The other involves sending damaged deviated units for repair, as they will permanently become yours, with the Nerve Gas effect never wearing down even when shot. It's possible the developers were aware of these bugs, as Sardaukar Heavy Weapons Factories don't grant you access to Deviators if captured.
- In some levels of the PC version, the computer players are given buildings their faction cannot use (such as Atreides bases having WOR trooper facilities). Also, their bases sometimes don't have enough Windtrap power stations, resulting in slower unit production. This makes the final levels of the game somewhat easier.
- Because of some typos in the game code, the computer players will not group vehicles when attacking (as they do with infantry). This makes the game easier because the enemy vehicles will come at you as a steady trickle instead of the larger groups the game designers intended.
Harsher in Hindsight: The character design of Dune II's Harkonnen Mentat^note is uncomfortably reminiscent of the antisemitic "Happy Merchant" caricature, first printed in 2001.
Hilarious in Hindsight: In Dune 2000, the Harkonnen mentat Hayt De Vries (counterpart and Captain Ersatz of Piter De Vries, especially his portrayal in the 1984 film) is explicitly mentioned to be a ghola (a clone) both in cutscenes and in the manual. The game predates The House Corrino^note by a couple years, in which Piter dies during the climax, which means the Piter from the original novel was a ghola as well.
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The biggest issue with Dune 2000 is its lack of technical improvement compared to the two previous Westwood titles. The sidebar is still divided into two long columns, all the buildings on the left and all the units on the right (annoyingly long scrolling ensues) and it's impossible to establish production cues (something which would only be rectified a year later). The campaign remains almost unchanged from the original Dune II: first two missions for resource-gathering, all the rest are killing everything. Only the presence of secondary missions adds a bit of extended variety. The plot is rather underdeveloped, with the cutscenes mostly consisting of Mentats' briefings. Noticeably, the leaders of the three houses themselves don't even appear^note, something which was rectified in Emperor.
Nightmare Fuel: In Dune 2000 and Emperor: The Battle for Dune, the Harkonnen love to play with heartplugs of their hostages, traitors or just victims. Proven by the fact that the mentioned bloody cutscene in Emperor got removed, all thanks to the ESRB.
Polished Port: The Sega Genesis port holds surprisingly well despite the console's limitations. While it's somewhat difficult to control at first and some unit actions are missing, no other feature is missing (with all units and the three campaigns with all their missions), and it's got sprites with more detail than the original version. Also, and despite the fact this version uses a controller instead of a mouse, it is actually easier to handle in some regards (with features such as automatically recognizing whether you are ordering to Move or Attack instead of having to click on a button beforehand, the ability to begin building the last structure again, and also being able to build 2x2 concrete slabs without upgrading the Construction Yard).
Retroactive Recognition: John Rhys-Davies as Mentat Noree Moneo. What the hell is Gimli doing as a Captain Ersatz of Mentat Thufir Hawat?
Scrappy Mechanic: Outside of combat, buildings not built on concrete need to be repaired from time to time for maintenance. However, having to click every single building one by one in a large base, plus your expansion bases, and hit the repair can be tedious and tiresome. In Dune II, all buildings need to be repaired periodically or their hit points will gradually deteriorate to 50% (except in the first two levels).
Sequel Displacement: Dune II is one of the most influential games of all time, largely responsible for the birth of the Real-Time Strategy genre, whereas the game that preceded it is largely forgotten by anyone that isn't already a fan of the source material.

YMMV / Dune II

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