An excellent addition to the Starcraft series. (This is strictly a review based on the campaign/narrative.)
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This long-awaited game is a real treasure to me, if only for the fact that they've been continuing Starcraft's story for so long. The story and strategy have always had a special place in my heart. I even won a standee from a pre-release raffle and have it proudly standing in my room. Still, I've got mixed feelings about this game, as much as I like it, so I'm going to divide my pros/cons into narrative and gameplay. I'll start with gameplay since it's easier to digest.
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Gameplay pros:
Good ol' Starcraft fun, with missions that emphasize each unit's strengths.
This one is my personal favorite: they added how many workers are optimal for your mineral fields in a given base, in a little box above your Nexus/Hatchery/Command Center. That was a big quality of life improvement, and made the game a lot more accessible.
The evolution missions, while slightly tedious, were still well done and brief. There were times where I wished they'd just be over, as I'd already made my decision before even starting them, but I enjoyed playing them nonetheless, even if they were basic.
On that note, the whole transition between seeing a planet and zooming into it was flawless, even if the load times were not (but I won't go there).
The new units are kickass on all accounts. This one I also won't comment too much on, as there are differing viewpoints on strategies and whatnot, but I will say they made Heart of the Swarm even more interesting than its predecessor in terms of strategy.
Every campaign mission had something unique about it to challenge you. Gameplay cons:
The difficulty is low. I know this is partially because I've played Starcraft for so long, but I can also recognize it's because they want to make the game more accessible. As a result, Brutal is the only option for me, and they made that a little over-challenging. Hard was a little easy, but approaching Goldilocks.
My biggest pet peeve was that I couldn't left-click my enemies' units to see their health, nor could I left-click my resources to see what they had left. What the frigg. Although, I can see why they would want that to be trivial. Mixed feelings on this one but still my biggest pet peeve, 'cause I checked that sh*t all the time. This doesn't happen in multiplayer, thankfully.
Blizzard. Go home, you're drunk. You can make an automated squadron-style AI for Warcraft 3 and beyond, but you can't do the same for Starcraft 2? I don't get it. Line my units up in proper order. You put orc grunts in front of troll headhunters, yeah? Put my ultras in front of my hydras. Granted, you gave ultras the burrow-dash ability, but that seems like a compensation like a lot of things. Why can't Starcraft get the same treatment? This may be a personal problem with my own strategy, and I accept that, but I don't get why they haven't integrated a similar squad AI. Not that it's a big deal to organize your units though, especially when your Ultras/Zerglings/Banelings all have a dash, and your Aberrations go over smaller units. And your Hydras have extra range. Still, these seem like compensations for a feature they were able to put in a game years ago, and I don't get it. There must be a reason for this, and I'll look it up later.
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************POSSIBLE SPOILERS BEGIN HERE************
Narrative pros:
Excellent voice-acting. I mean that. I was skeptical about this game initially because, well, I miss Kerrigan's old VA. She was the best, and in Wings of Liberty, I thought the new VA was a bit lackluster. She's been training since then, that's for sure, and the voice acting/modding for the zerg campaign side-actors were awesome! Abathur was my favorite. And I'm pretty sure Stukov's VA was the same as in Brood War.
The new music is AWESOME! Sometimes it feels like the swarm is burning into your brain. This was probably the most impressive thing to me, I love a good soundtrack.
The cinematics are spine-chilling. Kerrigan F*CKS SH*T UP right from the start, all out of love, and even when she becomes the Queen of Blades again, she's STILL in love with Jim. F*ck. The narrative in this game is so powerful and moving.
On a similar note, and this deserves special notice, Sarah kicks Zeratul's ass while she's still human. Spots him and gives him a serious beatdown in the cinematic before she evolves. Long story short: you don't f*ck with Kerrigan.
Narrative cons:
Okay, I was really excited to see the return of Duran. We get Dr. Narud instead, who resembles nothing of Samir Duran, who was one of my favorite characters. This may just be a personal thing rather than a "con," but I wish they'd have included the original Duran. In fact, I was kind of hoping for a side-mission set (like they did in WoL with Zeratul) where we would play as him or fought against him, but nah, we get two missions with his re-imagination as an enemy. The whole Narud thing seemed trite; if he were an ally to Kerrigan first (DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR?) he might have been a more important character. She doesn't even catch the inverted name. While that's fitting for her loss of memory (eherm, deus ex machina), even Stukov doesn't catch it, and he damn well should have. FINE BLIZZARD, BE THAT WAY! At least you included him somehow!
Kerrigan's kind of stupid to believe Mengsk when he said Jim's dead. For one that's been on the bad end of tyranny, you'd think that would be something she'd predict. That was some bull****, right from the start, and I feel like anyone who is even remotely familiar with plots would catch that one. However, that cinematic was pretty well done, and Kerrigan's emotion was appropriate.
Needs more Protoss like Walken needs more cowbell. We see them in like, two or three missions tops.
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All-in-all, this edition of SC2 did not disappoint, and is well worth the value. And of course, for competitive play, you'll have to pick this up. I was very happy with the campaign's narrative, with a tear shed and a jaw dropped at some points, but holes were noticeable and some parts could have been done better. Kinda feels like they made the cinematics first then made the missions to fill in the gaps, but whatever. My pleasure Blizzard, always was.