A great game on it's own, but falls short in many ways to its predecessor.
Gameplay:
Sc2's gameplay is almost identical to Brood War's, and is, by extension, very good. This is unarguably the game's strongest point. It's very fun to play, has great immersion, and has an abundance of strategies, build orders, and unit compositions for each race. It's extremely fun, and the controls are responsive. The game remains deep and complex. There are several viable build orders and strategies. The macro mechanics also add great depth to the game, making a player decide between powering economy, expanding, building an army, or teching throughout the game. The game rewards fast hand speed, quick decision making, multitasking, macroing, and strategic sense. One problem I do have, however, is that with improved pathfinding, units in a control group always clump together. This doesn't look good, and is particularly annoying when trying to minimize the opponent's AoE spellls. Regardless, the gameplay is great and the new and improved interface is beautiful.
Graphics:
Most people seem to marvel at Sc2's graphics. I'm not one of those people. The biggest change from brood war, other than roughly 10 years of progress in picture quality, is the shift from 2D to 3D. One of the biggest problems I have with this is that units in Sc2 clump together, and often tend to look ridiculous as a result. It's always odd seeing 2 collosi standing in the middle of an army, completely blocking half the army from view. Also when units bump in to each other, they tend to move by in a stiff, unnatural motion. Another problem with the graphics is that many of the unit designs are ridiculous, the spine crawler, spore crawler, thor, siege tank, and evo chamber being examples. These designs are what I'd expect in some crappy tween horror movie. These, along with 3D, make Sc2 lose the gritty feel I loved in the first one.
This is not to say the graphics are horrible however. They are very good at times. Most units look fine, the game feels polished, and the terrain is absolutely gorgeous.
Sound:
This is by far the most disappointing aspect of Sc2. Brood War sounds were nearly perfect; a 9.9 out of 10. In BW the sounds were fantastic, unit speeches were fresh and entertaining, and the music was excellent. In Sc2 the bass has been lowered tremendously, while treble has been raised. Lings no longer make an awesome "thump" whenever they attack, nor do mutas. To me this makes the attack sounds lose their "badass" effect. They no longer sound threatening. The voice acting is also weak at points, especially the races' commander's voice. Kerrigan, the voice of the zerg, is absolutely ridiculous. It's painful to listen to, to the point where I often find myself muting Sc2's sound in favor of music. In Sc1, when Aldaris told me to contruct additional pylons, it was time to make some additional pylons. In Sc2 the voice for protoss sounds like some annoying 20 year old with no authority in his voice. Finally, the music is "good" at best. It's not bad, but not good enough to provide the atmosphere you'd expect from the starcraft universe.
Battle.net 2.0:
Sorry, THIS is the most disappointing aspect of Sc2. The most minor problem is that the new interface is too jumbled. Blizzard needs to streamline it more, and give it then simplicity but effeciency of the original bnet. In it's attempt to streamline esports into battle.net, Blizzard has removed many key features that made the original Bnet so awesome. While they effectively halt other organizations organizing tournaments on their own (through lan) and without blizzards consent, they are annoying for us fans. The lack of cross realm play and LAN, are simply inexcusable. Now if my friends want to come over to my house to have an Sc2 lan party, we all have to buy separate copies of the game. Smart thinking blizzard. The ranking system however, is a very nice edition, attempting to replicate iCCup's ladder system. Although it needs refinement (it's way too easy to rank up for example) it has a lot of potential and provides a sense of reward as one improves and situates himself in advanced leagues. To summarize, Sc2 on it's own is a very good game. Although the sound and bnet 2.0 fall short, the gameplay more than makes up for it.
Overall the game feels fresh, refined, and immersive. The multiplayer experience is fantastic, and countless viable strategies and build orders are guaranteed to keep you busy for years. Although it's fairly early, I'm more than certain Sc2 will enjoy the rich evolution of strategies, timings, and build orders than its predecessor enjoyed.
I did "own it's own" for a reason, however. It's inevitable that Sc2 will always carry the burden of being compared with its predecessor, Brood war. To me the game lost a considerable amount of charm when I made this comparison. The biggest difference is that Sc2 is catered to a more casual audience, while sc1 is catered to a hardcore audience. Sc2 is much much much easier to play. Several luxuries, including unlimited number of units per control group, multiple building select, less emphasis on micro, smart casting, automine, and a fairly black and white counter system make the game easier to play. There isn't as great an emphasis on micro, and macroing consistently is much easier. On top of that, many APM sinks, like sending scvs to mine, have been removed. Macro mechanics do add some more difficulty to the game but overall its much easier and requires less speed than brood war. A casual fan would enjoy this, as it makes the game easier to learn and easier to play. A more hardcore RTS game, such as myself, however, find the reduced difficulty a bad thing. The skill gap is greatly decreased, and differences in micro are fairly hard to detect. This leads to a game that isn't as rewarding. Part of what made Brood War a monumental game was its difficulty. It was impossible to master, and always offered room for improvement. There was a massive skill differential between any rank on the iCCup ladder. This is diminished to a great extent by the ease at which you can play Sc2