Finished! I ended up playing the last two massive maps in one evening, and now I'm ready to review this brilliant campaign. I have many things to say, so I will break my review and my score in the fields of Presentation, Gameplay, Story, Map Design and Originality (I'll adopt this method for my future reviews as well). I will try to give as few spoilers as possible, since this campaign has just been released and most people haven't played it yet.
PRESENTATION: B
The campaign is presented nicely, with an informative documentation and an inspiring backstory. Evocative titles have been chosen for every mission, and right from the first briefing you get that authentic, nostalgic, classic SC feeling, which is a trademark in all of Andrea's campaigns and something I appreciate very much. Too bad for the lack of voice acting, but we must take into consideration the obvious disadvantage of him being a non-native English speaker. Every other aspect is very polished. Excellent choice of sound effects.
GAMEPLAY: B
The first scenario begins with an adventure section to test your tactical skill, then transfers smoothly into a limited tech tree B&D where your actions in the early stages will decide whether you will be successful or not. This is a great opener which foreshadows what's to come: a varied mix of gameplay styles, in which each scenario offers a different challenge and adds a new chapter to the brilliant story. Throughout the campaign you will be facing all kinds of odds, even environmental ones, and some maps have randomized elements that enhance replayability. The fantastic map design (see below) makes it more fun thinking about the tactics and movement rather than making a huge army, but that's still a viable option as the resources are always adequate. The difficulty ramps up quickly, and even experienced players need to pay close attention: I lost several times, but the game always left me with a desire to go back and try a different approach. Default campaign scripts work in unison with scripts adapted from the original episodes, resulting in unusual (and often devastating) attack waves: all of this without resorting to any modding, which is truly commendable. In a couple of circumstances, toward the end, things became really too much hectic for my taste, and that's what prevented me from giving a perfect score to the gameplay.
MAP DESIGN: A+
This is more like art. Don't get me wrong, there are several campaigns that sport elaborate custom terrain and goregous blends (Inconsumate immediately comes to mind), but none of them can convey the feeling of realism and naturalness that can be seen here. Andrea had already shown great attention to map design in his previous projects, but those were made with Staredit - now he has embraced Scmdraft and the results speak for themselves. The detail is everywhere, on the cliffs, in the water, even under the creep. Every little spot is painted in a way that I had never seen before: it's not only very detailed, it looks realistic as well, without being glaring or distracting. I really felt like I was living in the maps, not just playing them, and this tells a lot about how good the map design in this campaign is. Finally, not only Andrea has used all the best custom doodads stored in the various brush libraries, but he has also come up with dozens of new ones for everybody to copy and paste in their own maps! What more could you possibly ask for?
STORY: A
The project is heavily researched, and the conversion to playable maps and objectives matches the story so well. The story itself is well structured and well written, giving you a good understanding of what you're doing and why. Briefings and dialogues are concise thanks to Andrea's ability to synthesize, and it’s surprising how much detail he packs into often just one paragraph, where others would probably write much more stuff and undermine the player's attention. The overall mood is dark, with almost no hint of comic relief. The characters are well portrayed and not excessively stereotyped - the Hermit Archon stands above all, geez that guy always has some weird deep sh*t to say! There's even a bit of character development, which is remarkable for a relatively short campaign.
ORIGINALITY: A
Champions of Khandia scores high in this area too. The first thing you'll notice is the awesome map design, then you'll be greeted by its nice scripted events, like the flawlessly executed volcanic eruptions in the second mission (great stuff!) or the devastating psionic attack at the end of the third one, or pretty much everything that happens during the final battle. We've already seen similar things in the past, but expanding on old tricks is a sign of creativity too. What I had never seen is an underground map made with the ash tileset, since people normally use jungle/badlands cliffs to represent caves. This rendition is extremely convincing, to the point that you really feel like you are in a large underground chamber and not on Char. The same is valid for the fourth mission (my fav btw), in which the space tileset was used profitably to represent a dystopian metropolis.
Not much else to say. What amazes me is the huge leap forward Andrea makes every time he releases new content: Tales of Halcyon was Good, Voices of the Swarm was Very Good, Champions of Khandia is downright Excellent. The only problem with this campaign would simply be the fact that it ended too soon... I wanted it to go on and on and on.
Well done Andrea. As DaMnUFo0 said, I really hope this isn't your last release. However, if this is the case, then it's a great way to say goodbye...
~~~ Si vis pacem, para bellum ~~~