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
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: 8/10The 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.