After almost 15 years, I finally mustered up the time and energy to fully complete the Starcraft 2 campaign (and dive into its various other features). I am not exactly sure why this was the year I finally finished it. I always planned to finish SC2 when Legacy of the Void arrived but somehow I never got around to it until now (3 years after its release).
I will preface this by saying that I have played pretty much every Blizzard game (except for World of Warcraft, not big on MMORPGs). Diablo 2, Warcraft 2/3 and Starcraft: Brood War are among my favorite games of all time. And while I don't think the newer Blizzard games are as good, they are still very good, polished games that are quite enjoyable. Through Blizzard and Warcraft I got into RTS for a period of time and like many, I long a Warcraft 4 that will never come. Even though I enjoy RTSes, I am a newbie when it comes to competitive play. Sure I can use hotkeys, do micro and macro but it's not properly fine tuned. After Starcraft, I started playing the Relic RTSes like Company Heroes and Dawn of War 2. These games actually had a style of RTS that I enjoyed more (more micro, squad centric tactics) but they didn't have the fast paced, tight controls of Starcraft. And after that I moved very heavily into MOBAs like DOTA, HoN, DOTA 2, HOTS etc. basically forgetting almost all of my RTS muscle memory like many out there.
Starcraft was also one of the first video game series which I actually followed the story very closely. I rather enjoyed the political machinations in the game, the constant back stabbing and the focus on characters/factions with various point of views. The endings in both of the versions had me legit shook as a kid, to think that someone would end such an epic game with the bad guys winning and killing billions at the end! Because of what transpired in Starcraft Brood War, my hype for a sequel to Starcraft was immeasurable. Especially after experiencing the great campaign of Warcraft 3 with better graphics (well sort of, I think SC has aged better than WC3) and more interesting mechanics like the hero system, my young mind buzzed with possibilities of what a sequel to Starcraft could bring.
I waited for the day and it finally happened... about damn time! Of course I was hype but my hype was immediately deflated when I heard that they were going to split it into 3 parts with one campaign each. Original Starcraft had 6 campaigns across two games but now Blizzard was going to opt for 3 games and 3 campaigns. I came to terms with it because I knew they would put more effort into every campaign and honestly they did. But I wasn't going to buy 3 games one at a time, I was just going to wait for the 3 part Battle Chest to get them all.
But in classic Blizzard fashion, they made us wait 5 years after making us wait so long for Starcraft 2 to begin with. By that point in time, I had sort of forgotten about SC2 and moved on to other games as I waited for the "ultimate" edition essentially. My tastes in games changed over time as did my tastes and demands for story telling in the entertainment medium. So here we are now... 15 years and I have finally scene the finishing credits of the final Starcraft 2 mission.
GAME PLAY/MECHANICS - 9.0
Honestly speaking, I am not some expert in Starcraft mechanics and game play. I know what all the units do, I know the counters, basic strategies, combinations, the hotkeys, the controls etc. But I can't tell you stuff like "oh Siege Tanks plus Marine/Marauder/Medic is TOO good!" because it's not my place to talk about balance in the game when I haven't experienced SC2 at a high enough level. What I can say is that the feel and pace of the game is very familiar in a good way. It's tight and responsive, very skill intensive both on a macro and a micro level. They have added a lot of new units that I enjoyed playing with greatly from all factions. The biggest thing about the game play that I can say is that they made many quality of life changes that I appreciated. Now you can select larger group of units. Units are easier to control and bug out far less. You can see what control group you have marked on a bar. The UI is more user friendly, has more customizations and then you have mechanics like F1 for idle workers and F2 to command all of your offensive units at once (which I used a lot in the campaign especially for Zerg). All of these changes made even something like Zerg very enjoyable to play for me as I hated playing Zerg in SC1, I was very much of a Protoss player and sometimes Terran for the strong defensive capabilities. I IMMENSELY enjoyed the new Warp Gate feature of Protoss which allowed me to "bank" some resources in order to quickly warp a whole squad at once after building 10 of them as opposed to being forced to use up resources on units as I get them because otherwise I am being inefficient.
I am sure many Brood War purists will say that they made the game more casual but I think it was done in a very good way. The skill cap is still there but it's easier to control larger group of units now and get to the meat of the fun of Starcraft. However, I will say the main fault of the game play is that it's TOO MUCH like Brood War mechanically speaking. Sure you have a ton of new units, new balancing and various quality of life improvements but ultimately it's still very much a "safe sequel" in terms of game play formula and loop. The jump from something like WC2 to WC3 was immense mechanically. Same for something like Dawn of War 1 to Dawn of War 2. If Starcraft 2 had came out within 5 years of SC1, then this type of game play would have been more appropriate. But it came out nearly 12 years after the original. Some more innovations were needed to reinvigorate not only the series but the RTS genre as a whole. My 18 year old self would have laughed at my 28 year old self for even thinking of something like this but this just goes back to how my tastes have changed over time. And honestly, that's also why SC2 never really hit it that big with the general audience. The people who were Brood War purists weren't really going to go ham on SC2 because any minute changes would have ticked them off especially when making 1 to 1 comparisons. It's like Smash Melee and the newer Smash games, the people who play Melee will always only really play Melee. I really can't blame Blizzard for playing it safer than usual, they wanted to carry over the competitive user base from Brood War to SC2.
However, despite being safe SC2 is still a joy to play when you understand the nuances and flow of the game. It's rewarding and of course blowing up Zerg is still immensely satisfying. The new tools that the factions got very welcome. Another small disappointment is that they could have had this opportunity to include another faction into the mix like Warcraft 3 did (which actually added 2 factions!) but I guess that's another missed opportunity for the game.
GRAPHICS/AESTHETICS - 9.0
Honestly I can't say much bad about the graphics. They look fine for when they came out but more importantly the graphics hold up very well on lower hardware. I tested SC2 on my laptop which really doesn't have much in terms of graphics card and it plays very well on it too without dipping in quality. The art direction is solid and the look is very clean and not busy with details that would otherwise bog down performance or visual clarity. Game is very good at holding performance which is ESSENTIAL for a competitive game like SC2.
The graphics aren't pushing cutting edge technology but Blizzard games never really did that to begin with. They normally go for the widest spread in terms of consumer technology and rely more on their art direction. And I think it works well here too. Even though SC2 essentially came out in 2010, it still looks good in 2018 IMO especially on Ultra settings with all the bells and whistles enabled. Overall, I am satisfied with how Blizzard managed to translate the 2D look of SC1 into the 3D realm, the art style didn't take a massive hit. Presentation wise this is still top notch Blizzard effort, the menus and the UI is just all around excellent. And the cutscenes were surprisingly good too for their time especially when maxed out. The production values were obvious in this game.
The only bad thing I could say here is that in between the expansion releases there wasn't really an effort made to update the visuals with newer hardware available. SC2 does show its age but not as much as you would think for a game that came out essentially during the PS3/360 console era.
CAMPAIGN/STORY - 8.0
This is the main focus of the review IMO. I generally wanted to play SC2 for the campaign/story, not really for the multiplayer. That's probably shocking to many and they will mark me down as a casual pleb. But as I said before, SC is one of the few game series I actually care about the story and campaign so I was going to be more interested in the story than I was the multiplayer. I tried my hand at the competitive multiplayer in Brood War for a while but I learned after a while that it was going to take too much time and drill practicing to get to a level where I could be satisfied with myself. I was fine being a "casual" Starcraft fan.
The best thing about the campaign is the actual "playing" of it. Playing it is very fun all around and the missions are varied and dynamic. However, by the time Legacy of the Void rolled around I started to get kinda bored with playing the campaign as I could see that they were running out of ideas in terms of mission design. I just wanted it to be over and sped through the missions more. I beat the campaign on HARD mode and tried to get as many achievements on the way as possible (usually around 50-60% of a campaign). I generally beat most missions on first try and a few that took some retries but nothing too absurd, once I knew what was coming at me in the mission it was easy to prepare. The campaign also gave you access to very powerful unit abilities/transformations and other perks available to your base building which allowed you to overcome seemingly very difficulty obstacles. It was all quite fun trying to come up with very broken combination of units and strategies to crush the campaign with. The side missions and achievements added some nice spice to the campaign and it kept me engaged almost through the entire campaign which took quite some time to beat.
In terms of length, this is a very good length and I am satisfied with it when compared to Brood War. Despite being 3 campaigns, it feels longer than the 6 campaigns of Brood War. The difficult is also very good as you can actually choose your level. I tried Brutal for some missions and while I feel like I could beat most of them, it would have doubled my campaign beat time and honestly if I wanted a fierce challenge I would just play multiplayer. The campaign is also very replayable as you can go back to earlier missions with your more powerful upgrades.
However, the big aspect of the campaign is the actual story, the lore and the dialogue
. Well, it started off quite nicely with the Terran/Jim Raynor campaign only it ended on a ... weird, non-Starcraft type ending with the hero carrying the damsel in distress Queen of Blades in his arm overlooking a nice sunset. Starcraft endings and climactic moments are generally very intense and bittersweet... I guess this was too with Raynor having to kill Tychus but in the grand scheme of things it didn't really matter all that much. Heart of Swarm starts of promising with Kerrigan going on a rampage but the impetus for her going on a warpath was because she thought Jim died... due to an obvious ploy by Mengsk. At this point I sort of realized what the issue with the story of SC2 is.... the focus is more on a few characters rather than faction vs faction political maneuvering which I liked so much from the original.
Now there is nothing wrong with focusing on specific characters and characters are a big draw of SC to begin with... but I felt that the focus was too much on a few characters and not enough on the supporting characters. The supporting characters had a lot of dialogue and things to say... but none of it was really meaningful or built their own character much outside of their 2D cutout self. And the story is far less interesting when EVERYONE is essentially trying to fight some evil space bogeyman. While Heart of Swarm ends with a somewhat satisfying ending.... the real juice for me was the Protoss campaign.
The Protoss campaigns and storylines in the original SC were easily my favorite parts. I have played the starting Aiur mission in Brood War countless times. The Protoss campaign starts out SUPER HYPE in SC2 with that opening cinematic of Protoss on Aiur against Zerg defending a Probe trying to summon in a Pylon so they could warp in their forces The set up was great where it was Protoss trying to reclaim Aiur... and then the boogeyman appeared again. After that the pacing of the story came to a halt and you went galaxy trotting trying to recruit factions and doing some pretty inane missions. You spend a lot of time interacting with other Protoss which is kinda cool from a lore perspective and it greatly enriches the Protoss culture which I liked.. but it was a bit of a drag overall because of all the personalities on board. I like Artanis as an Optimus Prime type character but the character I enjoyed the most was Alarak. Sadly not many other characters similar to Alarak aboard the ship, most of them were just regular ol' Protoss do gooders.
There was no political maneuvering or faction drama involved in the campaigns.. it was just the main guy of each faction going after an evil space boogeyman. That's basically the entirety of the Protoss campaign and that just really simplifies the story and character motivations. It really takes out the inter-faction tension when everyone is striving towards the same goal. There weren't really any twists or surprised to be honest. Even when Kerrigan confronts Mengsk for example, I thought "oh shit, I bet Mengsk has a contingency plan here!" but nope. The final ending had some interesting elements but wraps up the Starcraft universe in bow that is just too tidy for my tastes. A lot of the aftermath of SC1 was ignored in SC2.... people somehow completely forgave Kerrigan for her treachery and committing mass genocide. Jim Raynor swore on his life that he would be the one to kill Kerrigan but instead he just fell for her again... even goes off into the sunset with her in the end of the campaign!
However, I still don't think the campaign was bad... it was quite entertaining and had numerous highlights. Blizzard put a lot of effort into it and it shows. The game play side of the campaign was polished to near perfection and is paced quite well (except for the Legacy of the Void middle sections, that drags a bit). The length is very meaty and the value proposition of the campaign is just excellent. It just felt too safe on the story and character side of things. I don't think SC1 was some high art in story telling but what it did well was have a better sense of dread and "grey" to the characters. You never knew who would betray you while playing in missions. I never really got that feeling in SC2, you generally knew what each character was about which failed in creating proper tension and stakes.
EXTRA FEATURES/MODES - 9.5
With 3 games released, Starcraft 2 is brimming with post campaign content. Multiplayer is fleshed out, there are tutorials, co-op commander mode which is fun as hell, Arcade custom games that made SC1 so replayable online, Challenges etc. Too many to list and they even have weekly mutations that impact some of the modes. The only bad thing I can say about the extra features in SC2 is that Blizzard somehow manage to incorporate MTXes into SC2 which kinda puts a damper of the amount of effort put into all these modes. It's a bit lame having to pay for Co-op commanders for example.
Also I never bought the Nova core campaign but I doubt the story would really change my mind however it's a nice extra campaign to play around in that it's probably more micro intensive than standard campaign missions.
SOUND DESIGN - 9.5
Honestly there is little bad I can say about the sound design. Unit sounds are excellent, music is fine, dialogue voice acting is solid and there is a lot of it. The UI sounds and effects are also on point. It's just very polished in this regard. The only issue I can find in the sound design is that it doesn't quite have the charm or staying power of SC1. Like when you hear a dialogue of a unit in SC1, you already know what it is. There are very few sound queues in SC2 that are as iconic as the ones created in SC1. But from a technical and artistic point of view, I see nothing really wrong with the sound design in SC2... it's only a comparison thing.
OVERALL - 9.0
IMO Starcraft 2 has two faults that keep it from being a legendary Blizzard game:
*Due to the time gap between it and SC1, there needed to be more changes to the formula. SC2 would have been much better if it had came out like 5 years after Brood War but 12+ year after meant that people were just expecting more out of it. Because SC2 plays it so close to the vest, it just invites a ton of comparison to the original rather being its own thing (as its own thing SC2 is an excellent game all around).
*It's one thing to play it safe with the game play but SC2 playing it very safe with the story hurts it more than it helps it. SC1 admittedly took many risks with its story in the end game but SC2 goes the complete opposite. While it's not all bad, it doesn't leave you as shook as SC1 did. It doesn't leave you wanting more.
But aside from that, from top to bottom this is an excellent video game that is worth the money. Technically sound, artistically solid and brimming with features/modes to keep you playing for months and even years. SC2 still holds a lot of what makes Blizzard a top tier game developer, the polish is outstanding. It's just that even for Blizzard, making a satisfactory sequel to one of the best games of all time was always going to be a herculean task.
