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General Thoughts on Starcraft II (& it's expansions)?

Blues1990

Member
starcraft2.jpg


I have never played Starcraft (or it's expansion Broad War), although I do plan to in the near future. But I've been having a blast with Starcraft II: Wings of Liberity, and I can't wait to play the co-op missions with my friend. However, it came to my attention that people found the sequel to be very problematic, either from the quality of the campaign's narrative to the additional changes to the games core mechanics that threw people in a loop.

Both the campaign and multiplayer have been a blast for me (so far), but I want to hear what other people think of SC2 & why it's "crappy".
 

Hektor

Member
The campaign gameplay of Starcraft 2 and its expansions is amazing and some of the best you are ever going to play on this genre, even if hots was pretty short.

The story on the other hand is a giant train wreck with an ending that is straight up insulting and lazy.

Definitely worth playing if you enjoy WoL tho
 

nkarafo

Member
The campaigns are not as good as the OG Starcraft and Brood War.

99% of the time there is some kind of time limit or forced scripted events that force you into completing the objectives or else you simply fail them. The missions never let you play at your own pace so you don't have time to build or expand your bases and your defenses or even your units in general, like the originals did. And it's extra bad with the Zerg campaign as there are multiple evolution trees you can try with several different units but you never have enough time to try them and experiment.

It was pretty tiresome for me so i skipped the third expansion with the Protoss completely.

Oh and another thing that i found ridiculously bad was that in the very few missions that did let you play on your own pace, the CPU opponent never tried to replace his destroyed buildings or units. Even on the harder difficulties.
 

Neptonic

Member
I f'n love StarCraft 2. My dad played lots of SC1, and I watched him play for hours when I was a kid. I never was allowed to play online back then, only single player stuff, so I grew to love the characters of that game.
Then SC2 came out and was easier to play and I loved it. Sure the story gets really stupid by the final expansion, but at least it's fun to play. Just the number of QoL improvements they've made over the years have made it the king of RTS in my eyes. It's a shame Korea doesn't like it. I really enjoyed the multiplayer but I guess the ever changing nature of patches and stuff was off-putting to guys who have been playing the same version of Brood War for years competitively.
IMO it's a great game overall
 
i found the difficulty balance in the campaign to be pretty bad.
Which is surprising, given this is Blizzard and polish and balance are their things.

For me, in Normal the campaigns were super mega easy, except the last Zerg one and the last two from Protoss.

Switch to Hard, you will say. But that's the problem, in Hard the game isn't a bit harder, it's like twice as hard, and I'm not that hardcore. I really wanted a difficulty between Normal and Hard.
 

jahasaja

Member
Starcraft 1 and broodwar have good story. Maybe not amazing but one of the best sci-fi stories in videogames.

Starcraft 2 story is nonsense. It lacks all the elegance and depth of the first game.

The mp is still great but I think broodwar is much better. The races feel much more distinct and "clean" in there design.
 
The campaign has really fun gameplay, but the story is not great when compared to the original Starcraft games.

I never really dug into the multiplayer, or followed the competitive scene of the game, so I can't comment.
 

Maddrical

Member
I really, really enjoyed WoL, thought HotS was okay and enjoyed LotV, but I really hated the epilogue. The story is mediocre which is a shame because they could do SOMETHING interesting with it. But the gameplay is good throughout and I definitely encourage anyone who enjoys RTS games to play them, but let's face it, you probably already have.

I did enjoy the achievements of the campaigns too, they added some legs to them. I got every single one for WoL except the brutal achievements because I've never been good enough for brutal.
 
The campaign gameplay of Starcraft 2 and its expansions is amazing and some of the best you are ever going to play on this genre, even if hots was pretty short.

The story on the other hand is a giant train wreck with an ending that is straight up insulting and lazy.

Definitely worth playing if you enjoy WoL tho

Agreed. The campaign missions are pretty original in terms of design.

The story though...is way more convoluted than it needs to be. The irony that the old starcraft games with their crappy cutscenes can be much more memorable in its story due to its 'straight forward' story. In their quest to add even more lore into starcraft, Blizzard just create additional unnecessary complications to the characters. In fact, none of the original characters in SC2 were as memorable as SC1's.
 

Syf

Banned
The quality of the missions remains excellent throughout the expansions, and the co-op is great too. There's some good stuff to find in the arcade as well. People saying the game is crap are flat out wrong. It's one if the best designed RTS campaigns ever.

The knock on SC2 is without a doubt its story, which you might not even mind so much having not played Brood War. You're already enjoying it, so don't let gaf's shit opinions get to you.
 

TheMoon

Member
I really enjoyed Wings of Liberty's missions. The story was just pure garbage, though, sadly. Typical Blizzard of this era, like with Diablo III.

Nevertheless, jumped into Heart of the Swarm excited when that came out. Still haven't finished it. One of those "survive until X" missions made me lose interest. Not the biggest Zerg fan in general.

Never even bought Legacy of the Void, despite Protoss being my favorite StarCraft race. I plan on finishing HotS one day and then gie LotV a shot, though.

The whole triple split just wasn't a good idea. The great thing about the original is that it's focused and felt somewhat down to earth (as much as that can be the case in a silly sci-fi narrative).
 

ISee

Member
Wings of Liberty was a vert good game. I was extremly hyped for it and it delivered. I played through the SP in a couple of days and than played the MP for about a year and loved it.
Hearts of the swarm was still okay. The campaign played fine but the story began to turn bad. They started to tune the MP and made it even more micro heavy than wings. Still I played it for a couple of months.
Legacy of the void was a trainwreck. There were some fine missions but the story was stupid and uninteresting. MP felt even worse. The amount of micro management needed in MP even increased and matches became stressfull, hard work instead of fun. Terrible expansion that destroyed starcraft for me.
 

Blackage

Member
I think it's amazing that Blizzard of all companies, made 0 effort into making the game more accessible to their general audience like they have for every other IP they own/operate. Like I know nobody here probably plays WoW, but WoW used to be a much much harder game to play, classes were harder to master, things were harder to get done in general, but nowadays a great deal of it is automated in terms of getting people together to do things, and the classes are 10x easier to play then ever. Overwatch is probably the easiest FPS on the market to get into, even if you're awful you can have a great deal of fun playing this, and you can Q(Ultimate) for the win without regard to your skill level, eventually even the worst player can get play of the game because of this. HOTS goes without saying, it's the easiest MOBA on the market to play/get into vs DOTA2 & LOL which pretty much requires you understand that 1 map people have been playing on for 15 years and item loadouts for characters. Hearthstone is Card Games made easy. Diablo kinda screwed up initially with 3, but corrected the ship into faceroll adventure/loot game with Reaper of Souls which was for the better.

Starcraft 2 is the only game out of the bunch that went not 1, but 2 expos without trying to make it easier to play. The developer's idea of making it easier to play was giving people opening build orders in hopes they could keep up/perform right. In fact during beta for Legacy of the Void(The last expo) they were talking about removing macro abilities(Shit you have to do every 30 seconds or so in-game or fall behind) to make it easier for people to focus on other parts of the game, like army and building, but ultimately threw their hands up in the air and said fuck it, Koreans don't like not doing insane shit after testing for like 2 weeks and said they're gonna keep em in. The E-sport scene has since crashed and burned with the SC2 Proleague dying in Korea and most Korean teams disbanding as a result, and the ladder is for the most part dead with the sales of the 3rd underperforming the previous 2 entries.

So what's keeping Starcraft 2 alive/afloat nowadays? Co-op. Yep, with Co-op you don't have to be particularly good at the game, your partner can carry your slack and your opponents are just CPUs. It's the most popular mode of play in SC2 nowadays and is probably the reason they got the whole Deepmind AI thing going on and might excite some people. It makes me wonder why the fuck the campaigns were delayed for 4 years when most people who play SC2 were interested in the single player/story vs the minority that actually dedicate insane hours into learning multiplayer.

I don't exaggerate when I say Starcraft 2 is probably one of the hardest competitive games to play properly on the planet, learning to play SC2 at a high level is the equivalent of learning to play the piano. I'm also amazed it came from Blizzard with that in mind.
 

spuckthew

Member
I really enjoyed Wings of Liberty's missions. The story was just pure garbage, though, sadly. Typical Blizzard of this era, like with Diablo III.

Nevertheless, jumped into Heart of the Swarm excited when that came out. Still haven't finished it. One of those "survive until X" missions made me lose interest. Not the biggest Zerg fan in general.

Never even bought Legacy of the Void, despite Protoss being my favorite StarCraft race. I plan on finishing HotS one day and then gie LotV a shot, though.

This is exactly the same boat I'm in. Wings of Liberty had me drooling before its release, but, while good, left a sour taste in my mouth due to the length and story. The gameplay was solid though. Stopped playing Heart of the Swarm after a few missions and haven't touched StarCraft II since.
 

Q8D3vil

Member
Sp is ok.
MP is amazing for someone like me who didnt play competitive rts. Extremely rewarding on the long term too.
 

Haunted

Member
Pretty good.

Story was typical Blizzard stuff, juvenile power fantasies, self-inserts, one-dimensional characters and bad writing.

Gameplay and design were incredible.

Following the rise of SC2's competitive scene was fantastic and exciting. So many hours spent watching live broadcasts and fun matches, just awesome. It's actually tough to "just" judge the game on its own merits because these aspects are inseparably linked in my head.
 

Fliesen

Member
With each addon, Starcraft 2 (single player) moved futher away from my prefered playstyle - which is to build up an economy and then just run over the enemy base with a huge army.

More of the missions in HotS and LotV were of that pushy kind that gave you some kind of built in 'count down' (which leads to a loss state, not a win state, like for example the final mission of WoL, or the one with the Laser Drill) of which there were barely any in the original SC or even SC2 (most notably the mission where you got the banshees.)

In the addons it's all about "You gotta be faster than this big laser. You gotta finish the mission before the orbital platform crashes on the planet. You gotta save person XYZ before the timer runs out. You gotta capture the temples before person XYZ's beam overwhelms Kerrigan's. You gotta hurry HURRY HURRY!" - i hated that. Chill, Starcraft, chill!
 

fireflame

Member
I hate missions with countdowns:(Starcraft 2 seems to be designed to preprare you for multiplayer by pressuring you. But i dislike multiplayer in RTS and this will not change. I have not bought LOTV yet.

I also found the story less interesting than in first game.

There are so many things i do not like about Blizzard games these days :/
 
Gameplays good. The story isn't what I wanted out of a sequel. If you haven't played the original or broodwar it's hard to explain other than saying it's a huge drop in quality. I always hated Warcrafts story telling and I feel like that's what this was. There wasn't any "He's our snake now" moments for me which is disappointing.
 

Blackage

Member
Storywise, the original Starcraft & Brood War was very much about 3 races that ended up getting into a galactic war due to their various natures making co-existing difficult if not outright impossible. The various Human factions were always at each other's throats while having to deal with the 2x Alien races trying to destroy them. The Zerg weren't evil in the general sense of the word, it was just in their nature to devour and consume everything in their path, that strive for perfection. The Protoss were the most advanced race in the universe and their arrogance and hubris made them look down on everything around them and saw no value in the lives of the Terrans and thought they'd be able to sweep away the Zerg threat easily.

Starcraft 2 is about how an Evil Space god is responsible for the Zerg being corrupted and evil and can corrupt both Terran and Protoss and everyone needs to work together to fight him because reasons. Kerrigan went from being one of the greatest villains of all time to being corrupted by said god to just being angry at Mengsk to justify her edgy and aggressive actions and eventually becoming a deity herself...because why not. At least John de Lancie voices a very angry and awesome evil Protoss named Alarak, one good thing came out of this mess?
 
Don't play competitive multiplayer so my thoughts on Campaigns:

Wings of Liberty - Clearly they spent most time on Wings of Liberty's campaign than the other two. It easily has the most variety of the campaigns, but not all of it is great. Some missions are more of a chore than fun to play. Still, it had some of my favorite gameplay in the Campaign, and Terran is my least favorite race. You have so many units you can build late that you can go any tech route you want and still be solid. The Zerg and Protoss tech trees gave you some nice customization, although a few choices are clearly better than others. The Mercenary building was a really cool concept and I'm sad they didn't bring it back for HotS or LotV. The 2nd to last mission changing how the final mission goes was also neat and never came back either. The mini Protoss campaign was nice, although I think the main campaign in WoL heavily outshines it. The story was more inoffensive than anything. Not great, not particularly groan-inducing like the expansions.

HotS - The story is awful to start and the ending is corny as hell. Everything in the middle is mildly interesting and not particularly bad. I didn't really like how they limited customization compared to WoL. For every unit, you could only choose one upgrade at a time. You couldn't unlock multiple at once like WoL. I was also really disappointed with the amount of units. After the huge amount of campaign-only units in WoL, I was expecting something similar in HotS. In HotS's campaign, the only real new unit to Starcraft is Aberrations, which while a neat concept, aren't that good and don't even have their own set of upgrades. Units aside, I felt like the missions were a bit better in HotS compared to WoL. It didn't have the lows of WoL's, but I felt the high's were a slight notch below.

LotV - I didn't find the story in LotV to be that bad until the ending and the epilogue campaign. The ending of the campaign is the dumbest part of the trilogy, outside of the epilogue which I won't really touch. LotV took a bit of a different turn with customization, letting you switch units which are similar but have their own features. The rate of which you unlocked alternate versions was pretty neat, and puts it above HotS's customization. Mission design again improved slightly from HotS, although I felt it had the weakest final mission of the trilogy. In concept it has the coolest idea, with you defending a base with 3 other allies, but in reality they do almost nothing and you have to cover basically every side for them. The end of the campaign soured me on it a bit, but overall it's about equal to HotS.
 

nkarafo

Member
With each addon, Starcraft 2 (single player) moved futher away from my prefered playstyle - which is to build up an economy and then just run over the enemy base with a huge army.

More of the missions in HotS and LotV were of that pushy kind that gave you some kind of built in 'count down' (which leads to a loss state, not a win state, like for example the final mission of WoL, or the one with the Laser Drill) of which there were barely any in the original SC or even SC2 (most notably the mission where you got the banshees.)

In the addons it's all about "You gotta be faster than this big laser. You gotta finish the mission before the orbital platform crashes on the planet. You gotta save person XYZ before the timer runs out. You gotta capture the temples before person XYZ's beam overwhelms Kerrigan's. You gotta hurry HURRY HURRY!" - i hated that. Chill, Starcraft, chill!
Seems like i'm not the only one after all!

Building a base and slowly creating an army while you defend is my favorite play style. I know it's not recommended for multiplayer but i'm a single player guy.

Heart of the Swarm was even more disappointing because there are so many different units to experiment with, thanks to the evolution trees. But the game never gives you time for this, you only use each new unit once, when they introduce it. After that i had just enough time to create a big army of Mutalisks in every mission and destroy everything with ease. Even on harder modes. No need to create any other unit or use strategy. Just a lot of health regen Mutalisks and Kerrigan.

For me it was probably the worst single player experience in an RTS.
 
I think it's amazing that Blizzard of all companies, made 0 effort into making the game more accessible to their general audience like they have for every other IP they own/operate. Like I know nobody here probably plays WoW, but WoW used to be a much much harder game to play, classes were harder to master, things were harder to get done in general, but nowadays a great deal of it is automated in terms of getting people together to do things, and the classes are 10x easier to play then ever. Overwatch is probably the easiest FPS on the market to get into, even if you're awful you can have a great deal of fun playing this, and you can Q(Ultimate) for the win without regard to your skill level, eventually even the worst player can get play of the game because of this. HOTS goes without saying, it's the easiest MOBA on the market to play/get into vs DOTA2 & LOL which pretty much requires you understand that 1 map people have been playing on for 15 years and item loadouts for characters. Hearthstone is Card Games made easy. Diablo kinda screwed up initially with 3, but corrected the ship into faceroll adventure/loot game with Reaper of Souls which was for the better.

There is so much wrong in there...

WoW being "harder" is a difficult comparison. I think most people would tell you a lot of the Mythic+ content now is substantially harder than anything that used to exist in the game. Things like LFG and LFR certainly are easier, but it's a false comparison since there is still Normal, Heroic, and Mythic to account for, and most of the complaints I hear are from people who think all that story content and gear should be completely gated behind overtuned (a lot of raids in Vanilla and TBC were overtuned if not completely unbeatable--C'thun) raid instances that take weeks or months to clear for even the best guilds.

On top of that, the classes are not substantially easier to play, they just removed a lot of the clutter and janky mechanics of certain specs. I played Enhancement through MH/BT/SWP, and had to deal with Totem Twisting (Drop Windfury Totem for 0.5 seconds to apply WF buff to group members, then switch to Grace of Air Totem to give them a different buff for 5.5 seconds until WF wore off, rinse and repeat the entire fight), which was manageable, but certainly not fun. A lot of the difficulty in classes now boils down to maintaining a very tight skill rotation and player awareness and positioning--fights are quite a bit more complicated than "Stay away from the Tail and Head". Yes, you can clear LFR content with ease, but it's not an accurate representation of the difficult part of the game.

As for Diablo, while the story sucks, the game has near infinite progression, and while it's not all convoluted skill trees, there is a ton of nuance to building characters--2 people could have equally geared characters and one could struggle with GR50 where as the other could push GR60+. I think you're also downplaying how different the game is from when it initially launched, and how high quality Reaper of Souls was. The story was substantially better in RoS, and it changed a majority of the complaints that people had about the original game. The pacing was much better, the stories more interesting, and the locations a lot more menacing.

Heroes of the Storm is definitely a MOBA/ARTS with training wheels, but that's by design. Blizzard designed the game from the ground up to get rid of the 30+ minute matches their competitors were offering, and instead focus on team-oriented objective-based maps, that are easily done in ~20 minutes. You're also grossly oversimplifying the complexity of DotA 2. It's a lot more than understanding a handful of heroes and item builds. There's probably thousands of item/skill interactions, different map interactions, character movement, pathing, pull times, animation cancelling, and dozens of other aspects of the game that take years to fully understand--I know this since I occasionally see things pop up on Reddit I didn't know about and have been playing DotA since around 2005.

As for Starcraft II, the campaigns are probably the best part of the games in my experience. Online play is really frustrating and I think mechanics heavy RTS's are going the way of the dinosaur. They are solid games if only to play through the interesting and varied single player campaigns, but Blizzard kinda dropped the ball on SC2--SC:BW was hugely popular not only for its finely tuned multiplayer, but also UMS Maps, and the Arcade in SC2 never panned out as well as it could have.
 

KLoWn

Member
The story is what it is, but the game itself is absolutely amazing, and easily the best RTS out there imo. The campaign is so much fun.
 
Entirely forgettable story compared to SC1 and Brood War. WoL was okay, but HotS and LotV were just a sad thing to experience.
 
I really enjoyed the actual campaigns but I feel like the main reason Legacy of the Void took so long to actually come out was not because they needed to make it feel Protoss-y enough, but because they had no idea how the fuck to end it.

I'd still be there for a Starcraft 3 or soft-reboot one day, it felt like Blizzard nailed that style of RTS really well. Although I'd enjoy more of the hero-unit stuff from Heart of the Swarm.
 

TheMoon

Member
Seems like i'm not the only one after all!

Building a base and slowly creating an army while you defend is my favorite play style. I know it's not recommended for multiplayer but i'm a single player guy.

Yup this is exactly how I felt, too. This is how I grew to love that specific genre.
 
Single player was great gameplaywise. Stpry was meh

Multiplayer is GOAT. Unfortunately the esports policy, in particular the lack of local lan play, the pc bang pricing in korea and the racist banning of koreans, was detrimental to the scene. Its a shame because its an amazing game
 
Wings of Liberty was good, Heart of the Swarm was great campaign-wise. Didn't play Legacy of the Void yet.

I never liked Starcraft as much as Warcraft.

Story is garbage. It's seriously stupid. Saturday morning cartoon-style. Almost as bad as Diablo 3. And that's the biggest problem with the game, or new Blizzard games in general. They lack the style and atmosphere of their older games. Original Starcraft + Broodwar are better than SC2.
 
campaign has some decent scripted stuff

multiplayer didn't seem to learn anything from the previous 15 years of strategy game development

everyone knew why people couldn't play brood war, but the devs were too scared (or just incompetent) to really change anything fundamental because someone on the internet would whine about it
 
Complete and utter trash multiplayer when it comes to anything but some casual play in short bursts. One of my biggest disappointments considering how hyped I was before and during the first few patches. Blizzard being Blizzard just ended up nerfing every interesting aspect of the game into oblivion only to later shoehorn in patchwork mechanics/units to plug the exact holes they patched away two years ago??? They have no idea what the hell they are doing.

Campaign had decent gameplay marred by very sub-par writing and generally way too Saturday Morning Cartoon-ish character presentation.
 
Lots of hardcore try hard boys in here...

For casual play, SC2 and extensions are the BEST rts you can get right now.

It's fun, pretty, casual, engaging.

It only goes full stupid in the last 3 missions epilogue on the last campaign.

Also, Co-op mode is a great time sink
 
Lots of hardcore try hard boys in here...

For casual play, SC2 and extensions are the BEST rts you can get right now.

It's fun, pretty, casual, engaging.

I completely agree with everything you said. I still think the game is trash because it has no depth, just a bunch of surface level "good design" and that's it. Maybe I should specify "if you want to take the game seriously and play at a high level". Disregard my opinion if you just want a fun romp in the lower leagues, it's perfectly fine for that.
 

Fliesen

Member
Lots of hardcore try hard boys in here...

For casual play, SC2 and extensions are the BEST rts you can get right now.

It's fun, pretty, casual, engaging.

It only goes full stupid in the last 3 missions epilogue on the last campaign.

Also, Co-op mode is a great time sink

I totally agree with you on that. But i feel that says more about the state of the RTS genre than about the quality of SC2 (or more specifically, its addons)

I must have completed the WoL campaign around 20 times on Brutal difficulty. - It's that good. Every single mission is super memorable.
I've completed LotV maybe twice ...

SC2 as a framework is great. Looks great, plays great - the addon campaigns are only 'bad' in comparison to their own prior iterations.
 

Admodieus

Member
As it's been said, Starcraft 2's story is whack but there's still a lot of good gameplay in the campaigns. I played the multiplayer off and on from 2010 to 2016 and had a lot of fun with it. Never super competitively, but we did ladder.

The reason Starcraft 2 multiplayer died is because a well balanced RTS does not have much room to accommodate a "Games as a Service" model. MOBAs and games like Overwatch are great for this, as they can add new characters all the time with only minor balance tweaks to keep the game competitive. Starcraft is a delicately crafted rock-paper-scissors machine, and adding a third blade to the scissors or trying to make it rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock could destroy it completely.

Adding new skins faces a similar issue - the game relies on players (and spectators) being able to visually recognize what a unit is at a quick glance.

It's a shame because Starcraft is still my favorite game to spectate, mostly due to the information asymmetry between players and spectators and the different capabilities a good player has to possess (tactics, micro, internal clock). But I understand why LoL and Overwatch have eaten its lunch.
 
I feel like people are harping way too much on the story of StarCraft 2.

Yeah, it's definitely not great by any stretch, but it is still very enjoyable in a popcorn movie kind of way. The characters are awesome. It's fun to watch their interactions with each other even though the plot itself is hokey and cliche. Also, the presentation of it all is top class. This is Blizzard we're talking about.
 
As it's been said, Starcraft 2's story is whack but there's still a lot of good gameplay in the campaigns. I played the multiplayer off and on from 2010 to 2016 and had a lot of fun with it. Never super competitively, but we did ladder.

The reason Starcraft 2 multiplayer died is because a well balanced RTS does not have much room to accommodate a "Games as a Service" model. MOBAs and games like Overwatch are great for this, as they can add new characters all the time with only minor balance tweaks to keep the game competitive. Starcraft is a delicately crafted rock-paper-scissors machine, and adding a third blade to the scissors or trying to make it rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock could destroy it completely.

Adding new skins faces a similar issue - the game relies on players (and spectators) being able to visually recognize what a unit is at a quick glance.

It's a shame because Starcraft is still my favorite game to spectate, mostly due to the information asymmetry between players and spectators and the different capabilities a good player has to possess (tactics, micro, internal clock). But I understand why LoL and Overwatch have eaten its lunch.

Starcraft II died because Blizzard fucked up, no more, no less. They fucked up with three expansions, they fucked up with map making, they fucked up with balance, they fucked up with the exclusion of KESPA and no residency requirements in their own tournaments, they fucked up with their abysmal custom games support. The rise of MOBAs and CSGO was just the final nail in the coffin.
 

jahasaja

Member
I know that a lot of us sound negative but I think most of us agree that SC2 is a good game it is just that the original plus it's expansion is one of the best games ever made.

As for the story, I think a lot of us find it hard to comprehend the huge difference in tone and general quality.
 
It's one of the best RTS campaigns ever. Story is hit or miss but the gameplay variety is fantastic and the production values are off the charts. I don't think there has ever been an RTS game before SC2 or since that has told it's story in such a cohesive and cinematic manner. The only one that even comes close in Warcraft 3 and the difference in the level of polish between them is night and day.
 

TheMoon

Member
I feel like people are harping way too much on the story of StarCraft 2.

Yeah, it's definitely not great by any stretch, but it is still very enjoyable in a popcorn movie kind of way. The characters are awesome. It's fun to watch their interactions with each other even though the plot itself is hokey and cliche. Also, the presentation of it all is top class. This is Blizzard we're talking about.

I'll have to violently disagree with this (I'm tearing up my shirt and punching the air while typing this with my angry brows), aside from the presentation aspects. Blizzard CG is always top class.
 
Wings of Liberty's campaign was great. Heart of the Swarm's was such a disappointment that I skipped Legacy of the Void entirely. You could tell that WoL had been in development for a long time, and they really knocked it out of the park. Maybe they just spent all their creativity on that first game.
 

Moff

Member
Best gameplay and mission design ever in any rts campaign, by a huge margin. All three parts are amazing and top tier rts.
 

Coxy100

Banned
Personally I love SC2. SC1 is my favourite game ever - I was obsessed with it in my teens.

SC2 is probably in my top 30 games.

Nowhere near as revolutionary as the first - but still so enjoyable. I get the criticism of story etc - and I partly agree, but it doesn't disrupt my enjoyment.
 

Sulik2

Member
The story is bonkers and hilarious, gameplay wise it's the best rts campaign ever made. So much variety.
 

Innolis

Member
What everyone else said basically, it's the best campaign you'll find in an RTS gameplay wise bar none but the story is a trainwreck and that ending...
 

llien

Member
Couldn't agree more about crappy story.

Game is pretty smooth overall and the best thing about MP is that regardless of your skill level, AMM will most of the time match you vs opponents of your level, so that both parties have chances to win, which is a lot of fun.
 

Arkeband

Banned
I played Starcraft religiously in high school and was dying to play SC2.

I still haven't bought Legacy of the Void. The story is SO BAD, alternate unit/building skins are a terrible idea (and they're bringing this to the fucking remaster as preorder bonuses), there are way too many units and the balance sucks. The matchmaking is also pretty poor, and Bnet 2.0 made the entire thing seem lonely and decrepit.

Blizzard also failed to support the tournament scene so that killed it as an e-sport.

I no longer trust the Blizzard of today with one of their own IP's, and that's sad.
 
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