Just finished Brutal, none of the missions were really all that hard if you know how to use hotkeys. Though I just beat all the missions and made sure I got all the Kerri tech, I didn't get every single achievement yet. Maybe I'm just getting more used to the SC2 units/abilities/controls but I thought it was way easier than WoL Brutal.

I echo the same sentiments as the rest of you guys, the story was cool, but so much of it was cliche that I actually enjoyed the visuals and stuff better than the actual story. One thing I did not expect however, was at the very end where Kerrigan just floated up and away like some kind of angel fish thing. Took me completely off guard.

Personally I thought the whole Raynor/Kerri thing was lame. Do you hate her or love her? Stop flip flopping. When this person kills your friends and millions and millions of your species, you either already love them so much you don't care, or you hate her so badly that they don't get a second, third, and fourth chance. Them working together vs. Mengsk made sense, but none of the other shit did.

With Raptor 'create two raptors' morph and kerrigans baneling spawn morph - i made easy use of that level. I'm now going through trying to get all the mastery achievements and so on.

The key is to wait until the last possible second to launch the first Gorgon, and then so on with the other Gorgons.

Eventually I'll tackle brutal but I still haven't finished the last WoL mission on Brutal yet lol.

Yeah I kept wondering if she now classifies as a flyer or something.

I think they gave up on composing the story to appease lore nerds a long time ago. Just smatter around some BW references as fan service. That'll suffice.

Only thing that really super disappoints me is the lack of Kerrigan vs. Nova. Narud was a poor, context-less substitute. Would have helped to refer to his time as Duran even just a bit, rather than completely ignore such a non-trivial character ever existed.</nerdraeg>

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Mar 21 2013, 6:58 am by Tuxlar.

Did they let Jim keep everything he had including his gun when they threw him in jail or did kerrigan bring it to him? That confused me.

also I played the campaign on brutal and beat it but I only got achievements for the first two and last two missions because the blizzard servers were down on the release day so almost nothing was recorded. Felt bad.

I don't think their servers were down, rather you simply couldn't connect to them.

I had some disconnect issues the first day but i would always reconnect right away, afaik I didn't miss out on any achievements because of this.

I finished playing it about 2 weeks ago, but am only now getting around to writing this.

Overall, I enjoyed the storyline in Heart of the Swarm better than the one from Wings of Liberty. It was more linear, which I think is appropriate for the kind of story StarCraft wants to tell. Something I didn't like about WoL's storyline was that you could meander around doing irrelevant stuff and it made little difference in the primary story arc. There were a few non-linear elements to HotS, but it was toned down and more relevant to the overall story. Me likey.

But the price for a cleaner story was, IMO, weaker characters. The additional characters weren't all that impressive to me. Except for maybe Abather, who I kind of liked, Kerrigan's flunkies seemed to exist just so she could have sounding boards. We might as well have just had her talking to herself, in most cases. But on the subject of Kerrigan, she finally felt like herself again. Her vulnerability, cunning, and wickedness were on full display again after not seeing either since the original SC and BW. She was disappointingly one-note in WoL, and I'm very glad she's back. The new voice actress is really sounding like Glynnis Talken, which is good (though I still wish they'd used her again - maybe she wanted too much money or her voice changed with age). I'm hoping the writing for her is still strong in the Legacy of the Void.

Jim Raynor, Mengsk, and Zeratul felt familiar. Someone earlier criticized Jim Raynor's flip-flopping over Kerrigan. The point is valid, yes, but if Raynor has rationalized that it wasn't really Kerrigan who killed Fenix and countless others, then he was clearly more willing to let his attraction to her take over. It didn't feel like too much of a stretch to me. I do wish Mengsk had been more menacing, but he wasn't bad. Zeratul's new voice actor doesn't quite capture the integrity and ferocity of his original actor, but Blizzard obviously did what they had to do since the original actor died. I'm glad that they gave "The Fallen One" a better name. Amon works (though it's the same name as the villain from The Legend of Korra!) and makes him feel more like a character than like some phantom whose personification is guaranteed to disappoint. I too found it odd that neither the story nor characters ever directly point out that Narud was Duran. But since it's so obvious that we can all see it, maybe Blizzard didn't want to beat us over the head with that particular detail (though they can be ham-fisted with other things). I was never a fan of infested Stukov. I thought his death gave more poignancy to DuGalle's mental breakdown, but having him survive in infested form weakens that, IMO. He wasn't anything special in HotS. I wish Artanis had made an appearance, but I'm sure Blizzard hasn't forgotten about him.

The game play was enjoyable, if a bit too easy. I too just massed a ton of my favorite units and sent them into battle to win most of the missions. The evolution missions and their results were interesting, if a little pointless at times. I like how there was an achievement called "Mined Craft," since I've become quite the Minecraft fan, myself. I liked the explanation of the Zerg's origins. It was risky for Blizzard to explore that, but I think they made interesting choices with it. Some of the original Zerg creatures/characters were cheesy in presentation, but I can let that go.

Again, I liked this campaign a little better than WoL's, but it still doesn't live up to the epic twists, treacheries, and bonds from the original games' stories. I'll definitely get the final installment.

This is what she said about not getting Kerri, no mention of money:

Well, it just figures, doesn't it? Blizzard just gave me my Dear John phone call. Basically, it was "We can still be friends—we just don't want to see you anymore." Ha ha! Ah well...that's showbiz. Anyway, thank you for a wonderful and touching article—it's a great going away present, and I'll cherish it.

And here is what her voice sounds like as Kerri in SC2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=5biNaGkYzh4#t=111s

Amon is a pretty good representation of the entire campaign. It's the laziest name choice for a villain that brings doom, period. It actually means 'Doom' in Sindarin. You know, "Amon Amarth". Mount Doom. Lord of the Rings.

The campaign itself was lazier than Wings of Liberty. The build and destroy missions have zero effort put into them beyond making them functional in the barest sense of the word. The commando missions are dull a-moves, with the exception of the star battles ripoff.

The AI doesn't defend itself, the AI doesn't attack beyond what it is triggered to do, and some abilities are broken (the tongue grab comes to mind; doesn't aggro nearby enemies). There is no challenge, even on Brutal, even to a player as shitty as I am.

Didn't expect much, but even my low expectations were shattered. HotS is as bad as Conan, Space Marine, Dante's Inferno, etc. etc.

Yeah, HotS on Brutal is much much easier than WoL, I suspect in part due to having Kerrigan as a hero, and also simply how quickly you can replenish your troops once you've got larva and cash. It doesn't matter so much if they attack your base when you're not there, because you can get large numbers of troops out pretty quickly, especially if you go with swarmlings and they're sufficient to stop the counter attack.

And yeah, they don't really attack much at all, even on Brutal. The Terrazine gas level in WoL was actually pretty damn hard on Brutal, but nothing in HotS is anywhere near as hard.

Overall, it was a solid effort, but not a particularly good game.

There's plenty of instances of bugs and lack of testing, and the overall "finished product" felt like some dude's first WarCraft III campaign. I suppose we have very different ideas of what constitutes a solid effort.

I didn't find any bugs.

Injured roaches able to burrow, regain health.

Try listening to that ad infinitum until you get the frozen base.

So I've finally got my hands on it and played through the campaign. Overall I must say I liked it. In many aspects a step up compared to WoL although I agree in WoL the characters had more spice to it.

Still some criticism for inconsistencies like the primal Zerg, character decisions, only average voice acting and cheesy lines though.

What I didn't get was the sudden love from Kerrigan towards Raynor. Even when she was still a ghost she was just teasing him a bit. And during her Queen of Blades stage she didn't seem to have any feelings at all. Must have happened a lot in the 30 days until Raynor crashed into her prison... I felt the same with other scenes where it just seemed they skipped part of the story telling (Duran (!) , Stukov, Protoss in general, and more) just to get on with the game.

Like Doodan, I really liked the other choices for Kerrigan though. And the way they progressed her as a Zerg leader and thus the Zerg race in general. The Zerg now have a purpose and aren't necessarily the ultimate evil anymore. Kerrigan even raised a Broodmother to become a rational fore-sighting being in case some day she can't or won't lead the Swarm anymore.

Needless to say I loved Blizzards cgi work.

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As for the game play itself I've played on hard and didn't think it was easier than WoL (played WoL on hard and brutal). Strategically it was mind numbing, as others have pointed out. You can basically just mass whatever and win with it. But I had problems keeping up with the fast pace that was forced. Most of the times you had 2-3 things to work on simultaneously, at least one of them timed. So my low APM and lack of hotkey training really hurt me there. I had preferred missions that challenge me strategically rather than being defined by how fast I can execute everything. I still wonder why Blizzard removed the game speed slider. But yeah, I've noticed this is a general trend in gaming, and even strategy games have shifted to a more action oriented game play.

Interesting mission design overall, but like always the enemies felt a bit static. Where's the classic 1v1 situation where you win by denying expansions and expanding yourself when you can? (Little to) no triggers, just StarCraft.
Also like others I liked the more linear progression much more. Any mission had a clear purpose.

Upgrades: I think it was fun being given so many options to improve your units and having mini missions that show their potential. But most of the options I didn't even get around to test properly because I just massed 1 type of unit. This points back to too simple strategy.

Using Kerrigan was also fun but infinite respawns are lame imo, especially since she was OP as fuck. Would've been more interesting if more of her abilities buffed units or economy or gave scouting information so it feels more that she's leading the Swarm rather than being a 1-woman army with bodyguards.