I beleive this game continues to hold the top stop for RTS superiority even to this day.
Set in a fascinating world with an amazing back-story about a manmade prison colony drifting through space, only to become a colony across the galaxy completely disconnected from earth. As per usual Blizzard makes reading an instruction manual very enjoyable.
The RTS controls and hierarchy are bar none, with the building structures upgrading and having add-ons as well as having flexible construction rates with multiple units working on them, the game was a joy to just build up massive high tech bases.
The units were peppy and fun as usual to click on, as well as control, as their invisi-machine gun fire to take down enemies was very cinematic.
The graphics were the best blizzard had done for a quasi-2d RTS title before they made the switch into 3d, I can only hope that they try it again someday.
Oh and how could I forget the music! Although not as dramatic and standoffish as other games, the music definetly had a dstinct feel to it, almost at times a rather poignant mid-90's rock theme, with some very muted tones, something that definetly sticks in your mind though and brings you back when you here the laid back errie guitar strummings that accompay many of the levels.
In the end, even as I wait complacently for the next iteration of Starcraft, I can only hope that it's as fun as this, even though the interface is expected to have some rather large changes to it.