The only RTS campaign I can say I really finished, out of no obligation, no gritting teeth, no asterisks attached.

I think the biggest thing immediately for me is that Wings of Liberty as a campaign is not satisfied with just teaching you the general units and the general strategy. No, it wants to push into you every RTS fundamental. Getting really good at this campaign also made me more confident in the genre as a whole, because objectives had you target core fundamentals. On top of this, Wings of Liberty just has a lot of heart! There's a fucking shmup minigame in the mission cantina, there's a post-mission news reel you can watch, so many interactable characters with some of that "Blizzard magic" that doesn't feel like swallowing poison. And god there's a brutal difficulty option too, I can't imagine something like the last mission with nydus tunnels (which output STRONGER UNITS THE LONGER THEY'RE OUT) any harder than normal. I barely got through in the end.

I think the most titular example I can think of that felt like some ecstasy level mastery, was the mission Engine of Destruction. It's a very simple mission in concept, your pal Tychus is piloting an Odin that decimates mostly whatever is in his way, but he can't hear you. So he waits a bit, then hightails it to the next base he's going to destroy. This stresses a few things:
-Make sure to have enough units giving support that you'll also need to replenish, as fast as possible
-Defend him from harm
-Adapt quick to the enemy unit forces that are in your way.
I ended up finally getting a handle of the command group hotkeys, and things just completely clicked. Oh and during the whole thing you just get Tychus saying one liners with just perfect voice acting. It's soulful, it's damn well structured, it's a really really really good game!

finally finished it on brutal

One of the best RTS, if not the best RTS ever made.


Man, I remember all the hype there was when it was announced. People have waited for this game for so long, and I didn't care to be honest. I haven't played SC before so yeah. I was a big big big fan of W3 tho, so I was somewhat interested

After a couple of years after the release I finally played it and OH BOI. I fell in love with this game. The campaign is soooooo good. Intractable HUB between the mission..... probably my fav way of games filling in the extra space in between missions.... You can talk to your people, you can upgrade different things, you can find easter eggs... The story affects the location and people in this HUB area... Man, I just focking love this shit.

And the missions.... Oh, man the mission. Blizzard at its finest. There is no way people can come up with so many different and interesting levels for an RTS game, it's just insane.

Then you have the story and the settings... BUgs are attacking the humans and there is a war between them??? Starship troopers?? I LOVE IT. I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE IT. it's just my jam all the way through. The only big complaint I've got is the protoss. Why the fuck zergs couldn't be just fucking evil bugs, why does it have to be some old fucking advanced race of wizard naked bois. Man, I fucking have this shit soooooooooo much in SCI-FI, and SC is probably the universe that hurts the most

And then you have the multiplayer.... Man oh man, you can go competitive, which is just insane ESport. I have never been too invested in that, but I do watch competitions from time to time, but playing it? naaaah
But custom games, MAN. It's one of the best gaming experiences you can have. There are like 100000 different games that you can find in custom games, that could be a standalone game (dota, different TDs, and other games have proven that)

Overall, one of my most fav games ever. I just wish it didn't have protoss in it deadass

Nothing particularly impressive as far as a sequel goes, other than the updated graphics engine. The storyline was a bit hollow and anticlimactic as well, in light of Brood War's ending. The characters are a little one-note. The gameplay mechanics are slightly modernized and the AI has been polished, but its more or less exactly the same game. Battle.net has been revamped as this game is based almost entirely on multiplayer. It felt as if I were playing a "remastered version of Starcraft" rather than its sequel- as far as my expectations went, it didn't surprise or impress me too much, and of course this game took far too long to develop

This time it's Warcraft III in space.

Very tough to encapsulate how I feel about this game, other than it is very good on paper, but it is not at all what I wanted from a sequel to STARCRAFT.

Is this what anyone wanted, really? A full 30-mission game for each race? Extremely overdramatic cutscenes and score? A MASS EFFECT-inspired ship and crew? An aggressively Triple-A production and feel? The spark and crassness and humor of the original is nowhere to be found here, really. The story isn't about the great clashes of huge armies in an all-encompassing interstellar war, it's about a ragtag bunch of outlaws doing stuff on the margins that eventually becomes a big deal. But even with the vastly decreased scope, it's bloated beyond belief and overblown to the point of being comical. The single-sentence summary of the main thrust of the story is instantly tiresome. It's corporate and focus-tested within an inch of its life, and yet there are tons of weird choices. Why is everyone a GEARS OF WAR-proportioned meatcube? Why does nobody look or act at all like they did in the last game? Why is the voice acting universally worse, down the filters the put on the Protoss voices? It feels surreal to experience.

But the thing is, it's good! The RTS gameplay is genuinely awesome; every unit is somehow fun to use, the game-spanning upgrades feel meaningful, the QOL advancements make playing a breeze, and each of those million story missions are unique and have unexpected tasks and objectives - you're almost never just building a base and killing every hostile unit. Lots of effort went into the campaign design. I was engaged with the gameplay from start to finish, and in a way that I'm usually not in RTS, which normally I kind of just muddle through.

But even with how good actually playing feels, it's way too long. The story content could have easily, EASILY been the first third of a traditional game. It feels incredibly padded. You don't mind for (quite) a while, but eventually it draaaags while you're listening to them go ON and ON and ON about KERRRRRRIGANNNNNN and what to DOOOO about her, ugh. Oh, and then it just ends, with no proper wrap-up and a literal text-paragraph summing up what happened right after cut to black and an advertisement for the next one, lol. But you know what, that's okay because I fuckin' hated all the characters by the end of this thing and did not need to hear any more from them.

Anyway, I'm interested to see where they go with this for the other two. Are they going to be just like this in structure? How's that gonna work for, like, the Zerg? Did they get feedback after this one? Maybe I'm the asshole here and everybody ate this up.

P.S.: I gotta say, even for a down-the-middle triple-A game from 2010 the writing is REALLY bad. The dialogue, but also, like ... "General WARFIELD"??? Come on, guys, this isn't WoW.

Oh, and Dr. Narud? NARUD? REALLY??? How did that make it out of the brainstorming meeting it was half-jokingly pitched in.

This campaign is still the best RTS campaign I've ever played, with some criticism towards the plot. Ignoring the fact that the story of SC2 is a weirdly heroic and "bright" follow-up to the dark tones of Brood War, the story is very broad with some very flat characterization. The storytelling elevates a lot of the characters with good moments, at least.

The core gameplay of SC2 is an RTS that is so responsive and comfortable to play that nothing can compare. The campaign is great with it's non-linear approach, risk-reward factor in accumulating money and research during the mission to unlock unit upgrades, and every dang mission is crafted so well. There's a lot of pizazz to the in-mission storytelling that doesn't take away from the player's performance or their build.

The game is optimized and while the music isn't as good as the original StarCraft, it's still pretty appropriate. The sound design is great at signifying who's attacking, what's happening, who's dying.

I've played this time half a dozen times before but I wanted to give it another go to get the achievements and to set up the next two expansions.

It's a shame I didn't play this game when I was much younger and addicted to RTS games. Nonetheless, it was a good journey, a quite enjoyable campaign with very diverse missions. The wall of fire level and the final stage are good highlights, with a nice level of difficulty. Others have good setpieces, like the mission where you have to transport your troops by ships and release invisible specters to pre-emptively kill enemies.

Many good moments on this one. That said, the upgrade system is kind of dull, and I couldn't get used to the camera using arrow keys instead of WASD. Probably a problem from a casual gamer of RTS games but as someone who never played much RTS competitively, things are as they are. Oh, interesting lore too. Eventually, I should play both expansions.

RTS games of old were just all about buildings units and killing the enemy, and thankfully StarCraft II keeps this in mind and lets RTS fans of the 90’s get another taste. Liberty has you playing as James Raynor who is an outlaw to the Dominion Republic and must stop the alien Zerg, the Dominion forces, the Queen of Blades (Sarah Kerrigan), and the Protoss all at once. The story is pretty riveting especially for an RTS thanks to excellent voice acting, dialog, and plot twists.

I’m not going to explain how an RTS is played, and if you played the original game you know what you’re getting here. The game is very simple with the premise of just building you army and completing objectives. There are only two resources in the game: Vespian gas and minerals. Don’t like it then go back to Company of Heroes or Dawn of War (I’m not saying those are bad games). You gather these with SCVs, and you build your main buildings such as factories, starports, barracks, and anything that other units require and have at it. Yes, it’s that simple, but there are many changes and enhancements from the first game.


Firstly there are a ton of different units, and you really have to think and strategize how to beat each mission. Each building has several units, but the game focuses on air and ground units. There are weaker units such as marines, reapers, and firebats, but then Marauders are the strongest. The factory holds goliaths, different vehicle units or the strongest one being a Thor which is a giant mech. The starport has several different types of ship units with the biggest being the battlecruiser.

There are also defensive units that SCVs can build such as missile turrets, detectors, and mind control units for the Zerg. There are so many units you have something for every situation and you end up using every single one quite often since they are perfectly balanced. Some units have special attacks that do extra damage but use up the units’ energy supply. Some units can transform from ground to air, or turn into defensive units. There is so much when it comes to this that it would take forever to describe them all.


The missions are great and varied and you will never get bored. They offer a fair challenge and even the later missions were fairly balanced. The game is just full of so much variety, but it’s so simple and easy to play and understand that really pulls you in. Throughout the 26 missions, you will slowly earn more units to build, and be able to build larger stronger armies. The literal goal is to just build dozens upon hundreds of units and attack or defend and complete the objectives.

The game’s only real flaw is that building units take forever, but this also balances the game out so you really think on what units you need and use them wisely. There are small band-aids for this such as the mercenary compound. You can instantly call down highly skilled units for a large price, but there’s cool down time. You can also build multiple buildings or build a different lab to build two units simultaneously, but you can’t build more advanced units without the tech lab.

You can upgrade most units with credits earned during missions, but you won’t ever be able to buy them all so choose wisely. You can also use research points to pick one of two upgrades on a ladder. One side helps your army and the other is research against the Zerg. Choose wisely since you can’t pick the other or go back. This upgrading system is great and adds lots of strategies even off the battlefield.

Aside from all this you can click around and listen to dialog from key characters, and this adds to the story and interactivity of the game which is excellent. There are no extras, however, such as behind the scenes footage or anything which would have been great. The game just has so much variety and content and is so perfectly balanced it really feels those 12 years were put to good use.


The multiplayer is what will keep you coming back. I’m not a huge fan of RTS multiplayer, but Liberty really shines in this area with Battle.net. With the human opponents and four different factions to play as you will surely pour dozens of hours into this part of the game.

The game also looks amazing. If you have the rig to play the game with all settings to their highest you will be treated with beautiful visuals, excellent lighting, and well-done animations and effects. Everything looks amazing, and the game just plays brilliantly. I highly recommend this for StarCraft vets, but people who like their RTS complicated and with a lot of depth will be disappointed, but there is something here for everyone.