Starcraft II - Legacy of the Void

It's out! Being the huge Starcraft fan that I am, figured I'd give my first thoughts. I'm terrible at multiplayer and rarely play it, so I wont comment much on that. I mostly play single-player. (and this time around probably those co-op missions, they look fun)

The Good:

-Blizzard does its usual excellent job overall. Well-polished, solid gameplay, fun campaign missions. Great visuals.
-I spit up my drink when -Absolutely love having all the original Starcraft units back for the single-player campaign: dragoons, reavers, arbiters, even the zerg (flying) queens, lurkers, etc. However, they tend to underperform. Seriously who takes Reavers over Collisi? Dragoons may be an exception. I haven't decided if I like them over Stalkers.
-Your spaceship superpowers are even more powerful than Kerrigan's in Heart of the Swarm, but are slow to recharge so you can't spam them and they're pretty fun powers.
-The challenge is back. I'm not a great Starcraft player, but Wings of Liberty wasn't a huge challenge. Even on Brutal difficulty I could get through things fairly easily. I had to resort to self-imposed handicaps. Heart of the Swarm was worse. The game was unbelievably easy mainly because Kerrigan is so ludicrously overpowered. I beat brutal difficulty building only zerglings, drones, and structures. Legacy of the Void is definitely tougher than the first two. I'm currently playing on Hard difficulty and finding things a challenge (particularly the "Mastery" achievments found at this difficulty level). I don't think I'll end up doing any handicap modes on Brutal here!

The Bad:
- I preferred Wings of Liberty's upgrade system. You had limited resources to purchase armory upgrades, and the tech research upgrades were one or the other, permanent choices. Both Swarm and Void let you change out upgrades and powers at will. I like a little more meaning in gameplay choices. Plus, it adds replayability!

-Blizzard has the same hole in their staffing they've had for years. Writing. For a company that prints money with World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, you'd think Blizzard could hire a decent writer or two or fifty. Blizzard's storytelling is so bad sometimes you just have to laugh. It started immediately in Wings of Liberty. Remember the last thing Jim Raynor said to Kerrigan in Brood War? "I'm the man who's going to kill you some day." The very, very first thing you see in Wings of Liberty is Jim Raynor drunk in a bar pining over a photo of his lost girlfriend Kerrigan. Wait, what? So the Zerg come back and we discover that Kerrigan is important to the Big Space Prophecy and we need her alive to save the universe. Magic stone turns her human again. Hooray, we don't have to kill her! Cut to Heart of the Swarm. Kerrigan stays human for like a week. Bam. She's Queen of Blades again. So much for all that effort to make her human again. An entire game, thousands of poor, poor marines lost to horrible space monsters. Ok then, she's Super Queen again, ready to save the universe. Two games setting her up to be the Big Space Hero, and on to the climax. Except this game is the "Protoss expansion," so we have to focus on them. Kerrigan isn't even around for most of it.

And the dialogue is worse than the overarching story. Wings of Liberty was reasonably enjoyable. The characters were human, and were in a human environment. Swarm was dodgy. Zerg aint much for conversation, after all. It was saved in part by Abathur. Void has no such safety net. Protoss are boring. It's the Star Wars Prequels, except every character is Quigonn Jinn.

Not only are Protoss boring, but they're kinda douchebags too. I am a blatant speciesist.

If you're looking for a game with compelling characters and a great story... skip this one. But if you're looking for solid, well-polished gameplay, I recommend it.


P.S. If you own WoL or HotS and want to try some fun challenge modes, here's what I've done on Brutal:

Wings of Liberty:
No-upgrade run
Marine/Medic only (Maw of the Void mission is tedious as **** this way, beware)
Mission Unit Only (Only build the unit that is added for that mission. had to make an exception for Medic and Medivac missions, obviously)

Heart of the Swarm:
No-upgrade run
Zerglings Only
No Kerrigan Spellcasting (except Zerus)

I've thought about getting it (currently have Swarm). I almost exclusively play multiplayer or solo vs. AI.

Thing is...I've just started to regain a little skill after taking a long time off, and what kills me about these expos is they change a lot around. New/different units to get used to, etc.

I suppose it comes down to how many people will remain playing swarm vs. legacy.

Currently have HOTS.

Until that moronic, piece of stupid **** david kim finally decides to fix thr balance issue of terran mech sucking dick, I refuse to get LOTV.

They need to revert the cyclone nerf or make the cyclone two supply and slightly cheaper.

They need to make terran mech upgrades fully combined again.

They need to stop it with invincible nydus worms.

Photon overcharge is still in the game, and it was buffed from the HOTS version... WTF WTF WTF

Starcraft will be a dead game soon enough, so oh well.

Just started playing LOTV- the Protoss are my fav faction so its great to see them in their full on glory. The only thing that sucks so far is that the characters have no personality- seems every Protoss out there is a depressed kamikaze! As far as multiplayer I just play Starcraft for the single player campaign and then I'm done with it.