More of the same. And what's wrong with that? Nothing that's what.
The characters are fleshed out fully this time around with a lot of cut scenes both using the in game engine and Blizzard's trademark high quality cinematics. You really get a handle on the character's motivations and as such care when they get buried under a mass of zerg claws and teeth.
It does play a little bit faster than the original which some will like and some won't. You can still turtle but on missions where you have limited manpower or a timer it gets a bit tense but in a good, trying to redeploy your forces before the civilians get chewed up, kind've way.
The story itself has large Firefly, cowboy's in space overtones. Which is not a bad thing, with the voice acting being generally spot on.
Instead of being ordered where to go in a linear fashion this time you can choose which missions you do and when from your battleship. The ship itself has four areas to explore with places to hire mercenaries and purchase upgrades and even a surprisingly good mini arcade game. This is also where you'll speak to other characters and watch news updates from an increasingly bias news network.
For the most part the game remains unchanged from the original, which is fine with me. Anyone who has played the first game will not need to spend anytime looking at tutorials, with the possible exception of the new units. Everything that made the first game and it's expansion great is still there.
My main problems with the game, unsurprisingly, do not stem from the game itself but rather from Blizzard's frankly greedy choices.
First of all the price, £35 ($60) is very high for a PC game in this day and age. I know it's not unique in it's price point (and it's certainly not as criminal as the unpopular second cousin that was the PC version of Modern Warfare 2) but it is a lot when compared against the majority of other PC releases.
Blizzard having apparently not have made enough money from the initial price point, or from the juggernaut that is World of Warcraft, have decided to entangle Starcraft in it's Battle Net 2.0. You'll need an internet connection to activate it and can then play it offline (insultingly for having paid over the odds as a "Guest") but will need to reactivate it online every thirty days. Okay not a problem for most people except when I tried it my Bnet account had been hacked and I had to create a second account to even run the game. Adding MMO problems to a RTS game is a bit.... uh.... special. All this so that they can try and sell you premium content, more units and maps specifically. Uh didn't I just pay.... oh never mind....
No news to most is the fact that there are no Zerg or Protoss campaigns included. These will be released later, no doubt at a similarly inflated price. So in order to play the whole thing I'm going to have to shell out somewhere in the region of £105 ($180) which seems a bit much. Personally I would have preferred three factions with a shorter storyline but split into three parts. They could have made it an epic, years long storyline and introduce these so called "premium" units in each new release.
Also because of the Battle Net involvement, no LAN play. Okay to most people not a problem, but a not inconsiderable amount of Starcraft's fanbase was due to it being extremely LAN friendly. It was a shining example to all other games with the ability to install Spawns on others computers so that only one copy of the game was needed for LAN play. It was truly a move made by a company that appreciated and respected it fans more than the almighty dollar. Well despite Blizzard now having more money to throw around than NASA they have abandoned their previous noble attitude.
Surely if asked directly they will cite piracy as to the root cause of it's inexplicable obsession with Battle Net. Which, uh, hasn't worked. Torrent sites are stuffed to the gills with hacked copies of Starcraft 2. So in the end the Digital Rights Management has done what it always does, disadvantage the honest man that buys it.
Having said all of that am I going to buy the second and third parts? Heck yes, the game is outstanding on it's own merits. The way it should be viewed is how you feel when you buy Windows. You don't trust the monopolistic, greedy, fat cats that made it but you NEED it.