Yeah, I realized this... and just played it. It was definitely one of my favorite now.

Also, as a tip, you can open any campaign map from the map editor, although you wont have any of the special abilities you gained in your saved one, but it will also play cutscenes and such specific to the mission, so you can go back and see anything you missed.

Otherwise, I liked the story, although to me, it became kinda confusing as to what is going to happen next. They werent exactly clear as to why they did what they did other than to stop the zerg, which doesnt make sense considering the next campaign is a zerg campaign.

The first time i played it I decided to eliminate the flyers because i thought it would be easier but those nydus worms are ridiculously strong, a group of vikings will kill any flyers but nydus worms pop up too fast to take care of unless you split your forces and the longer they're out the stronger units they spit out

As my theory has been since that bonus level in SC1, I thoroughly believed Duran was a rogue Xel'Naga that wants to speed up the process of creating the next Xel'Naga (Hybrids), as he doesn't want to take any chances and risk it, as he can clearly see they aren't getting along very well.

Since I read the book, I added to my theory that Ulrezaj is the 'higher power' that Duran was speaking of. Just look how powerful Ulrezaj is. I'd love to see that massive amount of power in-game. I don't think he'd be possible to beat by a single player.

I also believe Ulrezaj is the dark figure in the final stand Protoss mission in SC2. It'd make sense, he's a dark Protoss that's creating hybrids. So I believe in the Zerg or Protoss campaign, Ulrezaj is going to be a really powerful boss that you have to kill, using Kerrigan somehow (as she's the key?). Anywho, that's my theory.

Did anyone else hate the fucking stupid song during the credits? TERRAN UP THE NIGHTTTTTTTTTTTT

Seriously, it was cool in Warcraft 3. This is just a fucking joke -.-

1. Banshees.

There is no step 2.

Yeah thought similarly because I'm a bit paranoic of the broodlords. Ended up having a strike team of banshees to kill the nyduses. Played on hard, but it still worked well until like 3-4 minutes left. Then they were protected by a lot of hydras and I just didn't have enough multitasking to keep on killing them. Also towards the end Kerrigan tore apart my defenses with her ridiculously strong spells and I had to spend my time rebuilding rather than getting the nyduses. However time saved me because I wouldn't have have been able to hold position for more than 1-2 minutes.

I think hard was the right difficulty to play. Challenging, but still not too hard. I hate how I can't lower speed on higher difficulties. Got real problems multitasking.
Also some people complained that normal was too easy, well then why don't you play on hard in the first place? It clearly says hard is best suited for StarCraft veterans which we all are.



My overall score on the campaign: 8/10

The missions were obviously the best part and deserve a 10/10. Very fun, challenging, and diverse. However I hated how almost every mission had a time limit in some form. It's pretty straining to to play at the peak of my APM all the time. I prefer winning battles through strategy or micro but the missions never gave me time to play the way I wanted. Yes 30 levels of sitting back and building bases until you can annihilate your enemy is boring, but just a few more of that sort would've been nice.
I liked the idea of having choices for some missions but it was really poorly implemented so that's actually a downside. Whichever part you chose the outcome always made you feel you took the right decision, which is stupid. Especially in Hanson vs. Selendis where Hanson gets infested when you kill her people and stays normal otherwise. Where's the logic in that? Right, none. That's why they don't explain it. And why the hell does she become a RE licker when everyone else becomes a regular RE zombie?! Also the choice didn't have any impact on the story. So why bother making choices?

The characters were pretty interesting, 9/10 here. Anyone who says the characters were flat must've played without sound.
Liked the cynical Jim Raynor (just like SC1) but they sometimes exaggerated it and he didn't look at all like the old Jimmy. Also his attitude has changed a lot. Hard to believe that he's let himself go that much in just 3 years.
Tychus Finlay was really cool in the literal sense and all this buddy-buddy talk was amusing for the most part.
Matt Horner was perfect for his role. A young, nice and calm starship captain who always tried to give good advice. And yes I too loved the cigar smoking scene with Jimmy.
Gabriel Tosh was a league of his own. Really shady and all. Loved hearing his advice.
Ariel Hanson was a bit too normal to have a strong opinion on. Both her videos after completing her last mission were cheesy as hell. The only character I deemed expendable
... except Egon Stetman. Didn't have a big role, so he didn't have much depth. Guess it's okay. At least he was the geek on board which spiced the mix up a bit.
Rory Swann was exactly how I'd expect a mechanic. Grumpy but in a funny way. Maybe too much cliché, but oh well...
The news reporter were terrible. The first time they cut off Kate Lockwell I was amused, the 2nd time it was still somewhat funny but after that it just got ridiculous. Every fucking mission the same routine. So mindless. God damnit Blizzard, what did you think?

8/10 for the cinematics which were pretty nice overall, especially that you got one before and after each mission. Gfx quality was pretty good too, so they were enjoyable and I didn't need that many prerendered ones. However sometimes the dialog was so cheesy and predictable that I wanted to shoot the line writer. So much that I deducted 1.5 score for it. I really loved the cinematic at the end where you rescue Horace Warfield. Pretty epic fight there. But I hated how they didn't use the opportunity to show a big zerg air vs. bc fleet battle when they approached Char. This had so much potential but they decided to simply show that the battle has been lost without any mention of what went wrong. Just lame, especially after Warfield boldly exclaimed that "he has a battle to win.". Storytelling for amnesiacs - advanced level.

The story wasn't something to be proud about: 5/10. It started well when Jim went out gathering support from the locals and got good again when they stole the Odin to make a news broadcast. But there was so much interlope you completely lost perspective what the actual goal of your journey was. Imo they should have made it more linear. Roughly like this:
- Gather support from population (in more than 2 missions)
- Storyline split: Help Nova or Tosh which affects the next few missions (e.g. Ghosts nuking an enemy base or spectres joining you in assaults, maybe even different missions)
- Make news broadcast
- Play Zeratul's memories
- Storyline split: Help Tychus or Hanson (which decides if you make Kerrigan human through artifacts or the cure)
- Defeat Kerrigan
Each "milestone" consists of several missions and there might be an occasional side mission option from Tychus or Tosh for gaining money.
The choices you make have an actual effect on which set of missions you'll be put in until the next milestone. Blizzard could've even kept most of the original missions, just align them differently and add changes depending on previous choices.
This way the story progression would've made much more sense and you'd have an idea what you're going to do next and more importantly, why. By having fewer non-main-story missions you'd play through faster (unless you play both branches each time) but would be able to maintain motivation.
The main problem with the story was apparently that they had only story for like 15 missions for this race but still wanted to make it a full game with this one race so they had to stretch the story. Bad decision.

The new unit sounds are not as unique and recognizable as in SC1 but the music is excellent and always managed to create the right mood. Really liked the jukebox tunes and the way it was integrated into the game. So overall I'm giving a 8.5/10 for the audio.

The new game play is something that needs to grow on me first, I think. These soft movements feel like going from a sports car chassis to a limousine: Not as direct but much more comfortable. Death animations are terrible. Focus was on eye candy and not on usability. I just can't quickly tell when a unit died or which unit I clicked on. The circle markers easily get overdrawn by surrounding units and generally don't stick out enough. Same problem when trying to distinguish buildings and units. But that may become better with time.
However the big plus is unit behavior. Auto repairing SCVs are a bliss, units moving out of the way (and back!) automatically is very helpful and smart casting and tabbing through selected units make spell casting much less of a hassle.

Other thoughts:
- It was a bit cheesy to have a ton of upgrades and researches for your units but they were also very motivating so that's in fact a plus. Interesting descriptions, too.
- Mercs are an interesting idea
- Entertaining hangar models. Especially liked the spider mines. Those would give me the creeps irl. ;D
- Fun arcade mini game
- Epic Hyperion loading pictures

The single player aspect is definitely StarCraft II's strength. I am really satisfied after playing the campaign, it was an enjoyable experience. I gave it "only" 8/10 because I compared it to the best game of all times a lot. Compared to other games that have been released it's definitely one of the best if not the best game this year and even a few years back. $60 is a bit above average pricing but it'd be worth it... if there wasn't the bitter taste of the cash cow that becomes very apparent in the multi player part of the game, but I guess that belongs to another topic.

You should watch all of the news episodes. There is an achievement for watching 10 of them. Also, Kate slowly becomes the main news reporter for the UNN(?); she becomes the news anchor in the last episode. The news clips are quite humorous imo.

Also, the iPistol commercial was funny.

I liked "Should my child use Stimpacks?" more

It's on the jukebox in the Cantina. Also at any time during the campaign, you can type the cheat "overengineeredcodpiece" and hear the music, and it doesn't affect the achievements like other codes do. I guess it's SC2's "radio free zerg" or "medieval man" from WC2.

My flatmate got the game slightly before I did, and had real difficulty with the Terrazine level on hard, which so far through my re-play through on Hard I agree, it's much harder than the other ones mainly because you don't have many units that can take out air very well, and they have lots of void rays. Also it is more of a 'spam lots of units' level compared to the SC1 campaign in general. If it hadn't been for that, I might've played on hard. Also I had taken 1 1/2 days off from work, so I wanted to get as much play time in as possible, so played on Normal and ended up finishing it late at night on the 2nd day (after not being able to play until about lunch time, 'cause I was using a guest pass from my flatmate the day before).

The Terrazine level was easy for me (all those years of micro intensive games ). I also noticed that the first level gave the enemy marines +1 armor. In brutal they have +1 weapons and +1 armor.

Also, do you get the normal achievements if you just play it on hard? I played normal twice so far to get all the achievements/levels; wondering if it was a waste and if I should have just played hard. (and if I play brutal, if I get the hard achievements)

The campaign was enjoyable. The only missions I found difficult and challenging at all however, were Supernova and All In (Brutal difficulty). I have a total of 102 saves for the last mission, and 56 saves for Supernova. The most of any other missions is three, and combined is 42. Maybe blizzard needs to adjust the difficulty of the campaign.

Yay for Sarah Kerrigan portrait.

I've watched all news. But the episodes where Donny was fading out were even more terrible. Donny going apathic, Kate reporting about Donny in underwear, Kate rejoicing about her promoting, everything cheesy as hell and not really funny. The commercials were kinda funny but by that time I was just too annoyed to really recognize it.

I don't get achievements at all, so I can't tell.

Didn't think the Terrazine level was hard. IIRC I spammed golis, diamondbacks and added some marines, and medics and just intercepted any attempt to close a terrazine.
Then I took the 2nd base and amassed a large army and owned their base from the right. This was a bit tricky because the Protoss kept closing Terrazine sites so I had to have a small backup force to intercept. If need be, just kill the worker and retreat.
Templars raped me, when I entered the base, but I kept spamming units from 3 factories to replenish my losses so I could continue killing the base. When I killed the last Toss building I automatically won. Not a single terrazine harvested.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 6 2010, 10:29 am by NudeRaider.

If you play a mission on hard, and meet the objectives for a Normal achievement that you have not yet achieved, you will also receive it. So if you play on Brutal and manage to meet the requirements for a Hard achievement, you will get it. Note that the 'mission complete' achievement actually doesn't have a difficulty requirement, eg you can get it by playing on Casual, but if you beat the level in Normal you also get it.

I also didn't find the terrazine level hard when I played it on Hard, but that's because I knew what to expect. Also note that getting the Achievement on hard for that level does look pretty damn hard - don't let the protoss cap a single vent. I think the best strat for doing that would be to play the Outbreak level first and get Hellions, because they are fast and cheap and do lots of damage to Light armor. Build a bunch of Hellions, and when the protoss start to cap a vent, just send 2 hellions out on a suicide mission to kill the probe. Unfortunately I didn't play the outbreak level first, so I only have Marauders available, and while fast and fairly cheap, they are also very weak, so I'm not sure how easy a time I will have of that.

Terrazine level, I operated on one base and focused on getting 2-3 goliaths at start, followed by marines and marauders to take out stalkers. Medics are great too. Then again, I let the Taldarim capture three of them, but still.

This is exactly what i did for this mission. 2 Hellions with the flame upgrade will stop any caps near you, 3-6 are needed if they are farther away. On a side note, I didn't build any goliaths on that mission, I just pumped rines, marauders, and medics

On hard or normal, WZ? On Hard, that must've been a lot of marines, 'cause void rays take quite a bit to kill (on the other hand, void rays aren't so strong against marines).

I didn't let them close a single terrazine. I kept my force close to the center of the map and cleared the paths aggressively. Micro required of course so no unit dies. And keep 1-2 SCVs in the battlegroup and you should rarely lose a unit, which is key.
After taking the 2nd base I had full map control so I killed them before they could even reach a Terrazine.

Hmmmmmm..... got my Kerrigan portrait too finally. Unfortunately I've only been able to play an couple hours a night due to work, took me much longer than expected. Looking back, I'd agree with Viet that the only truly challenging levels are the last Protoss level and the final level.

Overall, it was enjoyable. My rating however, is "dissapointed, but enjoyable" The basic storyline itself, was fine. What blizz did with it, was dissapointing. Where SC1 was made for adults essentially, SC2 is obviously marketed to 10 year olds. The dialogue gives it away. There are some really good parts, like when Raynor carries Kerrigan out of the zerg thing at the end, or the missions in Zeratul's crystal. The best line in the entire game was probably when Raynor said "Fix my damn jukebox!" Most of the rest was either mildly enjoyable, or dissapointing. There was nothing to compare to when Kerrigan said "I'm pretty much queen bitch of the universe" like in SC1. What I felt for the most part, was that I could glimpse the diamond in the rough underneath the corporate bullshit Activision forced on Blizzard to market it to 10 year olds. Somewhere under there was a really good story with really good dialogue, probably made by the same guys that made SC1, then a corporate "Someone" came along and censored, modified, 'corrected', reworked, and garbagized it. Basically I enjoyed it, because I could feel the good parts and see through the garbagization. (yes I made that word up)

I agree with Nude about the News Reports mostly. Some things were enjoyable, in the beginning at least, but it quickly went overboard.

One thing I do sympathize with Blizzard about though, is the "choices" in the storyline. Either you have a single story, or you have multiple stories. In my making of Tenebrous RPG for SC1, I've run into the same sort of problem. If a choice is made differently, its hard to have it both affect the story and stick to the overall scheme of things. Blizzard obviously has one story that they're going to continue with in the 2nd installment, so I can see why the choices basically only affect what tech you get.

The good thing about being able to watch the story, and not have to depend on just dialogue, is that it saved the characters from being complete crap in my view. When Raynor fights bare handed against Tychus findley wearing marine gear, that shows that Raynor has balls in a way no amount of cheesey blizz dialogue ever could. When Raynor shoots Tychus in order to protect Kerrigan, that shows you something about him too, again that they could never do with dialogue. Instead of marketing to 10 year olds and blacking out that scene, they should have shown it. The sadness at that moment on Jims face as he killed his own buddy would have been the most moving moment in the game. In SC1, we had the scene where DuGalle and Alexi Stukov stood in their Battlecruiser, surveying the zerg below them. There was no action, they played some music and lit a cigar. The real beauty of the scene, was that Alexi was "prepared to go all the way." They could have done this with Jim in SC2. Instead, we got crap. Like I've been saying, the diamond in the rough is there, they just Acti-crapped on it.

Kerrigan, unfortunately, was very boring. Wheras in SC1 she was like, this huge manipulative force, in this she was like "oh I kinda, well I'm here and I'm powerful... sorta... come get me... I'm gonna come after you too a little bit..." She did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Everything she said was crap, except the one line, in the Char invasion level. "I love how you inspire them Jim, but its all for nothing" or whatever. Only non-crap thing she said in the whole game. She might as well have been a robot. She wasn't scary. The woman who controls a legion of billions of space-travel-capable biological death machines should be scary. Both because she's a woman, and because she can sick billions of zerg death machines on you.

I was also extremely dissapointed by the invasion of char. The general utterly failing was predictable but excusable I guess, since Jimmy is the real hero. What is not excusable, is that the invasion cutscenes suck. How awsome would it have been to see the general and a dozen marines or whatever in their little bunker, silent, waiting. Off in the distance, a hundred thousand zerg can be seen rushing towards the remnants of the generals army. Five seconds before the zerg hit, as the general and his men say their final, hopeless words to one another and begin shooting, a thousand marines, goliaths, vikings, ect swarm over a hilltop and massacre the zerg, and THEN Jim and Tychus hop down off the side of a viking and say hi. Instead, all we got was Jim shooting 1 hydralisk, and miraculously the general is saved. Nevermind all the hydralisks that were killing the general's men. Lame.

Sex appeal of the female doctor girl is excusable too, that markets both to 14 year olds and adults.

I didnt like the fact that every single terran except Horner talks like he's from Kentucky or Alabama. Like, if it was just Tychus and Raynor (and Mengsk I guess too since he spoke that way in SC1) it'd be fine. But .... everyone?

I don't really blame Blizzard about your disappointment of the invasion of Char cinematic. I expected the same, where a large +180/200 Terran force is arriving to his rescue. Back in 2007, Blizzard did mention that the announcement trailer (where the Barracks dresses Tychus Findlay into a Marine suit) did break their CGI movie maker. It's like they went overboard from one marine alone. However, all, except four, of the cutscenes in StarCraft II were not pre-rendered. But I do agree with you, Blizzard should have created a massive battle cutscene like from StarCraft Ghost. But even that was pre-rendered.
What was redeemed about the invasion of Char cinematic is that the General, out of desperate measures, punched the Hydralisk unconscious/dead. And another Hydralisk's brains blown off. Something you will never see again in StarCraft between Marines and Hydralisks. Because in the original StarCraft's cutscenes, the Hydralisks always triumphed, except being corpses in the UED Victory Report. They were bullet proof against the Marines in the Amerigo, they owned Sarge and Lester, Fenix, and even more marines in the intro of Brood War.
That, or the Blizzard cinematic team worked on something different compared to the level designer's.

But because of seeing Jim Raynor, Tychus and several Banshees saving General Warfield at the crashed Battlecruiser; it's like a recreation of Raynor and 2 dropships rescuing General Edmund Duke. But instead of a Vulture, he is in his Marine suit with a powerful Sniper Rifle (1 shot, 50 kills anybody?).

I also didn't like how the people in the Hyperion talked like they were from Kentucky or Alabama. But even in the first game, the Terrans were rednecks. The intro in the original StarCraft, Sarge and Lester's demise, the Marines and Ghost's demise in the Amerigo, and the Terran camp destroyed by mass dragoons under an Arbiter. So the dev team in StarCraft II tried to stay true to that Terran theme. At least Hill, Swann, Horner, Stettman, Lockwell, Donny, Dr. Narud, Valerian Mengsk, along with other minor characters, didn't have those type of accents. Swann sounded like he came from New York. Dr. Narud (Duran, anybody?) sounded German.


Also, I almost have the Kerrigan portrait; there's just a few missions left to do.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 6 2010, 6:06 am by KrayZee.

Good way to put it: "dissapointed, but enjoyable" sums it up for me too.

They could have made it have more impact by modifying the missions a little. See my suggestion for the story line.

Yeah there was only 1 scene where she looked a bit scary. That was after Zero Hour in the green scene which Tychus watched from the Hyperion database.
But the rest of the time she just made empty threats. Zero immersion.

Yup, big invasion needs big battles. Simple as that. Losing the battle wasn't the problem I had, but just declaring defeat instead of showing it.
Also would've liked your version of the Warfield rescue better. Still the fight with the Hydras was cool.

Sex appeal? I thought she's just boring. Blizzard apparently wanted her to have sex appeal, but didn't work for me. Anyone else thought she had sex appeal?