Starcraft 2 - Is it worth the time?

Stg-Flame

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Mar 10, 2007
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I recall being incredibly hyped for this when it first came out only to be extremely disappointed with the finished product. I tried to stick with it for a few months, but they way they constantly changed the game to suit the multiplayer side always annoyed the hell out of me (not to mention realizing I paid full price for only 1/3 of the actual campaign). I read you can play it for free on the website (or download it), but I was wondering if all three games are worth bothering with. Brood Wars is still my favorite RTS so I'm hesitant to see what they've done with all three games.
 

Martimus

Diamond Member
Apr 24, 2007
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I would love to know this as well. I played Star Craft when it was released, and really enjoyed it (Never played Brood War though, it came out when I was in college, and free time was a fantasy at that time). I've been waiting for Start Craft 2 to come out all at once then I lost interest. But it would be cool to finally play the game. (Same with Diablo 3)
 
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Feb 4, 2009
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I enjoyed the first one but if I remember correctly I didn’t finish it.
I did like how it is an old school rts, I liked the between mission cut scenes and stuff.
I am more of a C&C player, I felt the maps were small and you couldn’t zoom out too much. Small irritation that ground me down.
 
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JTsyo

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Nov 18, 2007
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Played all three campaigns and the Nova missions. I really enjoyed the Terran and Protoss campaigns. Zerg was kind of meh. The missions were well varied, not just kill the enemy base. There's a bit of strategy with research you can do to further specialize your units between missions. I liked the plot to SC, not so much SC2. Seems it went from SciFi to fantasy.
 
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Dranoche

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Mission structure/design is really good, story is meh. The in-between mission decisions don't do much for the story but can affect playstyle in interesting ways. I think story was fine in the Terran campaign but it went full anime after that. I still enjoyed parts of the Zerg and Protoss story but overall thought the dumb parts were too much, or it was poorly executed. Even if you end up hating the story, I think it's worth playing if you're an RTS fan. The full-price for 1/3 of the campaign concept was way overblown. The overall volume of content was the same, it was just structured differently. I totally understand not liking that structure, but nobody got ripped off in terms of the amount of content they got for the money they paid.
 
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GodisanAtheist

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Nov 16, 2006
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Great question! SC + BW were two of the finest RTS games ever made and their campaigns were truly fantastic, not only in gameplay but also the story which was epic.

I recall picking up the Wings of Liberty campaign back in the day when I still bought the odd hyped game on launch and remember being generally underwhelmed.

Most annoyingly, it looks like Blizzard wanted to completely forget that BW's entire campaign arc with the UED even happened.

After that it was more or less a hard pass on the Zerg and Protoss campaigns, which I wouldn't have thought possible back in the day when I was knee deep in Starcraft.
 
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Aikouka

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If I remember correctly, the free version is multiplayer and Arcade only. You'll have to pay to play the campaign missions. I think they also added in some other commander mode later on that might be part of the paywall too.
 
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Stg-Flame

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Mar 10, 2007
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I enjoyed the first one but if I remember correctly I didn’t finish it.
I did like how it is an old school rts, I liked the between mission cut scenes and stuff.
I am more of a C&C player, I felt the maps were small and you couldn’t zoom out too much. Small irritation that ground me down.
That was another gripe is how they forced the single player campaigns to act like multiplayer skirmishes. Constantly moving/pushing. I recall putting the campaign down and just waiting for someone to recreate BGH so I could at least have some fun on skirmishes, but the few player maps that came out at that time remade BGH in their vision - ie. screwed it all up.

I would love to know this as well. I played Star Craft when it was released, and really enjoyed it (Never played Brood War though, it came out when I was in college, and free time was a fantasy at that time). I've been waiting for Start Craft 2 to come out all at once then I lost interest. But it would be cool to finally play the game. (Same with Diablo 3)
You really need to go back and play Brood Wars. The remastered version is actually pretty well done and is really just updated graphics/animations and better support for current monitors. I can't recall how much I paid for the remaster, but I don't think it was that much.

If I remember correctly, the free version is multiplayer and Arcade only. You'll have to pay to play the campaign missions. I think they also added in some other commander mode later on that might be part of the paywall too.
That's a shame. I figured they wouldn't put the whole game up there for free unless there was something else going for them. I'll keep my eye on the battlechest and see if it comes down to a reasonable price.

While I think about it, can anyone confirm if the real BGH was ever made/recreated for SC2? The only information I can find is player-made custom maps and there's always differences between the new ones and the original.
 

Fenixgoon

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Jun 30, 2003
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legacy of the void was the best of the 3 by a mile. it had the most "starcraft" campaigns of all of them, and i've beaten it a couple of times and enjoyed it very much.
Heart of the Swarm has a much greater RPG focus on using and powering up kerrigan
wings of liberty isn't bad.
 

Stg-Flame

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Mar 10, 2007
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It looks like the battle chest is available on Amazon for $30 and $40 from Blizzard themselves. I might pick it up soon and give it another chance to redeem itself.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
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I'm punishing Blizzard for their abusive policies, with automated system permanent bans in Overwatch and bad service.
 

Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
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The campaigns, including the Nova Covert Ops pack, are excellent. As usual, great lore from the SC universe. The MP can be fun, but 1v1 is very difficult and will drain a lot of time in practice to get better. Team games and customs can be very fun, as can the Coop missions. Recently, they had a major patch which implements a ton of new features into the game editor, so if mapping and modding is your thing, this is also looking promising.
 

Martimus

Diamond Member
Apr 24, 2007
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Despite me being much more of a Warcraft fanbouy I believe it is worth the time. Starcraft has an engaging campaign and is super difficult to master. I would give it the light of day.
It is too bad that they stopped making Warcraft games after Warcraft 3. I never played the original Warcraft, but Warcraft 2 was a fun alternative to Command and Conquer when I was in High School. I actually quite liked Warcraft 3, and the story was pretty good. It is too bad they never expanded on it.
 

Zenoth

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Jan 29, 2005
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I enjoyed it. Nothing mind-blowing, but I've seen a lot worse.

I never quite made the 'connection' with the original SC though. I mean SC2 is a "sequel" but it really - to me - felt more like its own alternate reality / spin off variation. And to be honest it probably was, it's just that they labeled it with a "2" for obvious advertising and hype goals. At least it's my perception of it. It really didn't connect well with SC1, in my opinion. However, with this said, on its own I still enjoyed SC2 enough. It's a bit like Mass Effect 1 Vs 2, for me (whereas I never quite considered ME2 a canon follow up to ME1, but in its own right I still liked ME2 for a couple of reasons).

I only played SC2 for the three campaigns though, never really touched the multi-player (same with SC1 for me). So after I was done with the last campaign I played some Versus A.I. skirmishes for a day or two and I was done. I haven't really got back to it. When it comes to RTS gaming, and fun (from the genre) I actually prefer the likes of Warhammer 40K, or classics like SC1 (if I had to choose, for the gameplay that is) or Rise of Nations, Command & Conquer RA2, Age of Empires 2 or Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, and so on. I think that SC2 was enjoyable for the cinematic presentation aspect of its campaigns. It probably was the major attractive 'branch' of the game for me. You "play a small movie" under the RTS view, you have some genuine interesting gameplay builds to try out (upgrading units, giving them specific types of attacks or defenses and so on) and that's about it. It's really a rather straightforward, simple enough experience overall (the campaign I mean, I know the multi-player part is a lot more complex than this).

I think I enjoyed all three campaigns almost equally. But contrarily to some here I actually think it simply got better with each campaigns. The Terran campaign felt very generic overall, with maybe the exception of the last few missions when finally the stakes are raised much higher and things are taken to a more epic scale. The Zerg campaign finally gave me the better close-up on the Zergs I had been wanting to see all those years about the StarCraft universe, it may not have been the "best" way, but really I was ready to take it, and I honestly enjoyed it a lot (especially Abathur, he's amazing, he's the "show stealer" of the Zerg campaign, and Zagara ain't bad at all; Kerrigan is 'ok', nothing crazy but I liked her role in it nonetheless). The Protoss campaign was the full blown Sci-Fi aspect of SC kicking in, in my view. There's (small) parts of it that kinda irked me (story, writing-wise) but overall I really enjoyed it. I can't really say anything about the ending to avoid spoilers, but I will say that I liked most (although not all) character progression developments at that point in the campaign (I.E. considering where those characters 'started' from, and where they ended up by that point; their growth). There's only maybe 2 of them in the end that I was like... "R- really...? Wow, ok." But that's about it.

I'd give SC2 (for the campaign at least, and the gameplay within the campaign, excluding the multi-player) a solid 7/10.
 
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zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
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I never played it myself, but would be interested on the takes in here. ...I actually didn't like Starcraft that much, so it never appealed to me anyway. I was way into Warcraft (I and II--everything else after--EVERYTHING--was garbage)...so I just assumed that by the time Starcraft II came out, it was more like that MOBA crap that WC III brought into the world, and really very much PvP and light on the PvE stuff.

...not to say that I hated all of WCIII, definitely lots of appeal with the mechanics of those Elven folks, but it's kinda like Jaws or Star Wars or the Matrix--as good or good enough as they were at the time, they kinda ruined everything after because people got on that crack and thought everything should be that. Know what I mean?
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
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It is too bad that they stopped making Warcraft games after Warcraft 2. I never played the original Warcraft, but Warcraft 2 was a fun alternative to Command and Conquer when I was in High School. I actually quite liked Warcraft 3, and the story was pretty good. It is too bad they never expanded on it.

ftfy. :D
 
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Martimus

Diamond Member
Apr 24, 2007
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I know that Warcraft 3 wasn't well received. I didn't like many of the seemingly arbitrary mechanics, but I did like the story and the single player campaign. I don't remember much about the actual gameplay though, just that I wanted to know where the story was going to go at the end of the game. It is too bad we never found out.
 

Stg-Flame

Diamond Member
Mar 10, 2007
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FINE!

You all win. You all made it sound good so I bought it and I'm playing it and it's actually really good so thanks for the suggestions. I can't honestly remember what specifically made me quit the game before but there are a plethora of things I'm seeing now that don't look familiar at all. It has been a decade and a half so I'm guessing quite a bit of content has been added since it was first released.

I do appreciate all the input. I was going to happily wait until it had a major sale because the memories I had of the game were just so bad that I honestly didn't have high hopes for the game. I am, however, still very annoyed by the fact that the original BGH just doesn't exist anymore. Every single iteration of BGH that I've found online (even the ones that say "Original BGH - NO MODIFICATIONS") have all been modified to some degree. I understand these are all custom maps that have been recreated since Blizzard refused to remake BGH, but it shouldn't be that difficult to simply not add extra stuff to the map. Maybe I'm just insane for loving that map but I spent years playing all manner of skirmishes and incorporating self-imposed challenges (personal favorite was Plasma Cannons Only). I also made a ton of really fun RPG custom maps that I spent months to years creating, so I'm pretty excited to run through the campaign and get started at looking for custom RPG maps.

One little gripe though is that I can't seem to find the offline skirmish button. It's always a private online lobby filled with AI without the ability to save. I looked around online for a solution and the official response from Blizzard linked through an old Reddit post said to right click on the map name and click on Offline Skirmish, but that option does not come up when I right click on the map name. Small complaint and I'm fairly certain I'm just doing something wrong, but if someone has the answer to this, please let me know.

Huge thank you for this. I was coming on here to fix that myself, but you beat me to it.
 

piokos

Senior member
Nov 2, 2018
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I guess the different comments really stem from SC 1 and 2 just being fairly different games. And launched years apart.

I wouldn't dare to say which one is better - like many did in this thread.
Starcraft came out when I was 11 - when gaming pretty much filled my free time. And SC is the only game ever when I got really into competitive multiplayer.
I played SCII for the first time in 2016. And I loved it, but I never got as involved as with the original. I've changed. Gaming is not that important.

If both games came out today and they had the same graphics, I'd probably love both.

That said, from modern perspective, SC seems a bit... shallow. The story is great, but you mostly click through the objectives and focus on the actual gameplay. The actual narration is a bit "dry" and boring.
For me the balance between "gameplay" and "story" is spot on in SC II. I really like the animations and dialogs between missions. It's a pleasure to watch.
 

Chiefcrowe

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Sep 15, 2008
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Personally I really loved playing SC2. I like the idea that the 2 games are set in alternate universes.

I finished it a few years ago finally. I think part of the perspective is very affected by the age and phase of life of me as a player.

I enjoyed the cinematics and the style of the game and game engine also. The missions were interesting and I liked the different abilities in Heart of the Swarm.
I think Legacy of the Void ended up being my favorite and before I didn't love the Protoss, at least playing as them.
The story wasn't the best overall but I liked it enough to finish the game when I wasn't really playing a lot of video games at the time.

Nova Ops expansion was great too and different, which was nice and refreshing.

I am planning to go through the SC remake, I think it's really great and definitely worthy of playing.

I hope they do another SC game one day!
 

piokos

Senior member
Nov 2, 2018
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I hope they do another SC game one day!
Probably. SCII is getting old. They should be able to launch another game before 2025.
On the other hand, utilizing RTRT would be nice, so they might wait until it is available in most GPUs in use. They always take care of cheap/old PCs (nothing altruistic, they want to sell millions of copies ;)).

Honestly, I would love to see them tackle a new game genre. They won't cannibalize anything that already makes money, so we won't see a Starcraft MMORPG.
But what about a more complex first-person RPG? Skyrim on Aiur? :)
 

Stg-Flame

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Mar 10, 2007
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I love the cinematics between missions. It brings back the old feeling that an RTS can be more than just one mission after another with a few sentences describing what's going on.

I am a bit disappointed with the difficulty though. Even playing on Hard didn't feel like there was any real challenge so I've been running through the campaign on Brutal and so far it's really fun. Already finished the Terran campaign and am working my way through the Zerg. I did jump into a few skirmish maps, but was quickly overwhelmed with all the new features so I'm probably going to leave that alone until I've completed all three campaigns.
 

GodisanAtheist

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Nov 16, 2006
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Hmmm... this might be a series worth picking up after all.

Would be mainlining nostalgia to see the old band of SC characters again.