Today I will be reviewing the second installment in my all-time favorite series, Starcraft.
The game: Starcraft 2 is an RTS title that was created by Blizzard Entertainment and was released on July 27, 2010 exclusively for the PC. The game is split into three separate products: Wings of Liberty which was the first and focuses on the Terran, Heart of the Swarm which focuses on the Zerg, and the final product Legacy of the Void will focus on the Protoss.
The Story, Part 1: Wings of Liberty 
It’s been 4 years since the events of the Brood War. The game starts off introducing you to a familiar face, Jim Raynor. He’s been on the run from the Terran Dominion, led by the infamous emperor Arcturus Mengsk who vows to kill Raynor first chance he gets. Raynor however won’t let this happen and he wants to expose who Mengsk really is and cripple the Terran Dominion’s tyrannical rule over the sector for good and free as many Terran-occupied worlds as he can. There’s an obstacle in Raynor’s way however. Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, has returned with a vengeance and is now attacking defenseless Terran worlds with her Zerg swarms. Raynor sees her and all the terrible memories come back from when she was left behind by Mengsk, who left her behind to get taken by the Zerg in SC1. Raynor must now stop Kerrigan before she kills everything and everyone in her path, all while also ending Mengsk’s rule.
In this Terran campaign you are Jim Raynor and are in command of Raynor’s Raiders throughout the entire thing. Along the way, you will meet people that will help Raynor’s cause because they also hate the Terran Dominion. You first meet Tychus Findlay and he and Raynor “go way back” even farther than SC1 perhaps because Findlay is never seen anywhere or mentioned in SC1 or Brood War. Findlay is an outlaw and he loves money and stealing extremely valuable things, such as Xel Naga artifacts that play a crucial role in this campaign. Other characters you meet are Gabriel Tosh and he is a Terran Spectre that hates Mengk as much as Raynor does. You also meet Nova Terra(RIP Starcraft: Ghost) at one point in the game too. There are other familiar faces from the first game who you meet like Zeratul for a brief period. I’m all for introducing new characters to the series and some of these are done well, Tosh for example is one of the coolest characters you talk to. At first he may seem untrustworthy but as time goes on you start to like him because he’s actually looking out for Raynor, compared to Tychus who just cares about getting paid no matter what happens.
Gabriel Tosh is just one of many characters who will help Raynor on his journey.
In SC1 before each mission, you met in the Briefing Room which was the same screen over and over again and it got tiring to see after awhile, on top of that it really didn’t get you immersed into the game. In Starcraft 2, Blizzard completely overhauled the pre-missions screen to a whole new level that blows away SC1’s. The “hub level” I guess you can call it is the Hyperion ship. You can go to different sections of the ship. There’s the Bridge, Armory, Cantina, and Laboratory. The Bridge is where you select missions from the Galaxy Map and replay past mission from the Archives. The Armory is where you can buy upgrades for your units from credits you earn while completing missions and make them more effective in combat. You can even see some of the units you unlock and in the Armory and when you click on them, you can read information about that unit and it will do a little animation for you. The Cantina is where you can talk to various characters, buy mercenaries to bolster your forces, watch the UNN news reports on your progress, listen to music from the jukebox, and play The Lost Viking on the arcade machine. And lastly, the Laboratory is where you research new technologies to use for your forces and read more information about the Xel Naga artifacts you collect. This whole experience was something new to Starcraft and Blizzard did a fantastic job on it, especially every single detail they put into this to make you really feel like you’re on this ship going about your business. In some ways, it kinda reminds me of going through the Normandy on Mass Effect.
Here's an example of some of the Hyperion ship sections, like the Armory and Cantina.
There’s also a Protoss mini campaign in Wings of Liberty. When Zeratul shows up on the Hyperion unexpectedly, he’s hurt and warns Raynor about the coming future of the galaxy. You access this campaign in the Laboratory by clicking on the crystal that Zertaul gives Raynor. The campaign is 4 missions long and they focus on a potential outcome of the future. Zeratul is on the run, looking for answers to how to stop the mysterious and unknown entity Amon before he uses his Hybrids. The Hybrids are powerful monsters created by twisting Zerg and Protoss DNA and this goes way back to Brood War when Zeratul first finds them on an uncharted ice world. These missions focus on stopping the Hybrids and getting all the Protoss together to fight them.
Zeratul arriving completely unexpectedly to give Raynor the crystal
The last mission in this mini campaign is the very last bastion of Protoss forces on a shadow world, defending themselves as long as they can before the Hybrids finally kill them off. This last mission was intense and epic, probably my favorite mission in this mini campaign. The objective is to survive as long as you can and as the mission goes on, you get to control the best Protoss heroes like Zeratul, Artanis, Selendis, and Mohandar. They arrive with their forces and let out one last inspirational speech. This mission is also pretty sad because these main heroes who I personally have grown attached to will die and they say things like “Forgive me Tassadar… I wasn’t strong enough.”
In this Terran campaign, there are a total of 30 missions and if you want to literally complete everything the campaign has to offer, it will take you around 30-40 hours to do so. This is a HUGE improvement from SC1/Brood War which has 18 Terran Missions and would take around 12-15 hours to complete. But is more necessarily better? Well, all of SC1’s missions were crucial to the story and felt meaningful. Some SC2 missions just felt like filler and some are not even crucial to the story. They’re just there to give you more credits to use on upgrades. However, the story crucial missions are great and the variety in them compared to SC1’s is substantial. In SC1, at least 95% of the missions were “Destroy all enemy buildings” or “Destroy (insert certain building/unit here)” and that kinda got repetitive. In SC2, the missions are more varied thank god. You’ll be doing different things each mission such as mining minerals before a certain amount of time is reached, protecting civilians as they escape the Zerg, and racing against Kerrigan to retrieve a Xel Naga artifact before she does. I like this concept because you won’t be doing the same thing over and over and over again. There’s even a mission designed almost completely identical to one of the most memorable Terran missions from SC1 and I loved that Blizzard did that. It’s the little things that make me love Starcraft so much.
So how does the Wings of Liberty story turn out? Is it a worthy successor to the Terran campaigns from SC1 and Brood War? Is it still worth buying and playing?
Well after playing through the SC1 and Brood War campaigns multiple times, the story overall in those is still better than Wings of Liberty. WoL itself is still great don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t as dark and didn’t have as many twists and turns like the old Terran campaigns did from SC1 and Brood War. Wings of Liberty I would say its a worthy successor to the original campaigns and it is great for what it is. It doesn’t require you to know what happened in SC1/Brood War because it tells you the events of those when you’re installing the game. And yes, Wings of Liberty is still worth buying to enjoy the campaign. There’s so much replayability, especially if you want to play on Brutal for a real challenge. I can’t even beat the game on this difficulty.
The Story, Part 2: Heart of the Swarm 
Now we begin Heart of the Swarm which is the Zerg campaign of Starcraft 2. This campaign picks off a few weeks after the events of Wings of Liberty. Most of the remaining Zerg on Char has been killed off by General Warfield’s forces, the Protoss are nowhere to be found, and Kerrigan is now back to her former Terran Ghost-self thanks to the power of the Xel Naga artifacts. Kerrigan is being held at a research station where she is being tested on to see if she’s still has her powers she had when she was the Queen of Blades. Kerrigan however still remembers what Mengsk did to her and she wants to kill him for revenge. Raynor is also here and he wants Kerrigan to forget about everything so they can move on with their lives together. Because Kerrigan is now back to her Ghost-self, Mengsk finds out and sends an attack force on the facility led by Nova Terra to kill Kerrigan. Kerrigan ends up escaping, but Raynor gets left behind. Kerrigan flees to her massive Zerg Leviathan in Zerg space and is now on the hunt for Mengsk to finally get revenge on him.
The Leviathan, like the Hyperion from the WoL campaign, serves as the hub level for this Zerg campaign. Like the Hyperion it has its own sections to visit, although there isn’t as much to do as the Hyperion. There’s the Missions screen which is the main part of the Leviathan. It provides a view of the level you are about to do next in the background. The Evolution Pit is where you select upgrades for your units and Abathur is found here. Abathur will give you these things called Evolution Missions and they’re small 5-10 minute missions that let you test new strains of Zerg units. For example, you test out 2 different strains of Zerglings. One makes them jump onto cliffs and the other increases their armor. You get to decide which strain you want to use. Every time you unlock a new unit, Abathur will have a new mission for you to do. As your Zerg army grows bigger, you can see them in the background and like the units from the Armory, they will do their own little animations and roar. Since Kerrigan is playable in almost every mission there is a Kerrigan upgrade screen. In this campaign, Kerrigan gains levels as you progress making her stronger and tougher to kill. In the Kerrigan screen, you can select different abilities for her to use for the next mission. These aren’t permanent decisions like the Zerg strains so you can always select different ones before a mission to suit your playstyle with Kerrigan. There are abilities that benefit her in combat and some that benefit your forces, like increased health and resource gathering efficiency. I enjoyed this concept a whole lot because I’ve always wanted something like this in Starcraft. Upgrading and choosing the abilities of heroes is something new they brought to this series and I thought they did a good job with it. It kinda reminded me of how the heroes from Warcraft 3 would level up and get stronger.
Here's the Kerrigan upgrade screen. You choose her abilities for the next mission here.
This is the Evolution Pit where you upgrade your Zerg units, do Evolution Missions, and talk to Abathur.
The Heart of the Swarm campaign has a total of 20 missions, shorter than Wings of Liberty. I won’t count the Abathur Evolution missions because those are only about 5 minutes each. The campaign will take you about I would say, 15-20 hours if you plan to do everything it has to offer. The Zerg had 20 missions total in SC1/Brood War. Like Wings of Liberty, the Zerg campaign has its own unique and different styled missions. There’s a lot more missions in this campaign where you control units only, and with an upgraded Kerrigan to use all her abilities, these were a ton of fun. When it comes to these types of missions in RTS games, Starcraft does them the best.
Now I begin my little rant about this story. It was enjoyable in some cases but for the most part, this game completely ruins some aspects of the Starcraft story and some of the characters. Former Vice Admiral of the UED Alexei Stukov, who was a major character in the Terran Brood War campaign who gets killed and you see his casket shot into space in the ending cutscene, returns as an infested Terran to help Kerrigan against Mengsk. Stukov explains his ridiculous and unbelievable rise back to life, only to be an infested Terran. Kerrigan only wiped out the entire UED fleet back in Brood War. I’m sure you’d want to see her dead instead of working with her. Way to ruin a great character Blizzard.
Here's Stukov in Heart of the Swarm. He eerily still looks human. Normally a infested Terran will look like a whole new creature but Stukov looks half Zerg and half Terran here.
Another character you end up seeing is Dr. Narud, who is Samir Duran and a shapeshifter and he was another character from Brood War who played a HUGE role in all the campaigns from that game. Duran killed Stukov and betrayed the UED back in Brood War, he worked with Kerrigan and used her to secretly fulfill his own agenda then disappears when it was completed, and then he shows up and terrifies Zeratul on that ice world about the coming future of the galaxy with the Hybrids and Amon. Duran was such a great, evil, and powerful character in Brood War. In Heart of the Swarm, Kerrigan and Duran fight each other and in this fight, Duran keeps shifting from different forms. He even changes to Raynor and the Ghost version of Kerrigan in their fight to throw her off. Blizzard missed an opportunity here as they could have made it so Duran could have switched to his Brood War-self to make it more personal with Kerrigan, since they used to be partners. Anyways, the cinematic when both of them fight was pretty cool but the dialogue between them was pretty meh, nothing that memorable.
This is the cinematic of Kerrigan and Duran's fight. Its pretty good but like I said, the dialogue isn't that memorable. They made Duran such a weak entity here.
Another thing about the story is that you spend all this time gathering Xel Naga artifacts in Wings of Liberty and turning Kerrigan back into her Ghost form and then halfway through the Heart of the Swarm campaign she turns back into the Queen of Blades because Zeratul, yes Zeratul out of all people, tells her to do it because she will be the one that destroys Amon. I know right? That’s what happens. Pretty sure Zeratul is gonna have to explain that to Raynor one day. That is going to be a fun conversation. This is so ridiculous; Kerrigan in Heroes of the Storm even makes fun of this when you keep clicking on her to hear her gag quotes. Blizzard made fun of themselves… hilarious. Back to Raynor now in Heart of the Swarm, and this is where the Hollywood action movie clichés kick in. Mengsk tells the whole galaxy that he is dead and Kerrigan falls victim to Mengsk’s lies once again. Raynor’s not dead, he was just being held prisoner this whole time on a ship. Kerrigan finds out he’s alive and rescues him. He sees her in her Queen of Blades form and is beyond pissed and I don’t blame him. I would be pissed too if I gave you your humanity back only to throw it away. Kerrigan says that she still loves Raynor and Raynor boldly says “We’re done” and walks away.
Then in the final battle on Mengsk’s palace on Korhal, Kerrigan enters the throne room to confront Mengsk. They exchange words and then Mengsk brings out his secret weapon, the Xel Naga device. He uses it on Kerrigan, nearly killing her and then right when he was about to deal the final blow, Raynor comes outta nowhere and breaks the control for the Xel Naga device. Kerrigan gets up and Raynor lets her kill Mengsk. The two look out on the horizon, Kerrigan thanks Raynor for everything he has done, and then she leaves back to her Leviathan, and readies her forces for Amon and the coming Hybrid threat.
The ending cutscene is your typical "Bad Guy taking too long to kill the hero" Hollywood cliche.
One last thing about this campaign; Now that Mengsk is dead, the Terran are basically screwed. Mengsk was experimenting with Hybrid technology and you work with Stukov to destroy the research. Mengsk was really the only human who understood how the Hybrids worked and with that information now gone, how are the Terrans going to defend themselves? In Zeratul’s vision of the future, the Terran were completely wiped out so the future may not look too bright for humanity.
The Heart of the Swarm campaign was entertaining but I would consider Wings of Liberty to be the better campaign Starcraft 2 has to offer right now until Legacy of the Void comes out. The Protoss campaigns were always the best in SC1 and Brood War. I hope Blizzard continues that tradition with this final expansion.
Gameplay 
If you’re new to Starcraft or RTS games in general, there are multiple tutorials that will teach you everything about the game.
- The resources in this game are just like they were in SC1, minerals and vespene gas. In SC1, you harvested both by 8 per worker. In SC2, they changed this. You now mine minerals 5 per worker and 4 vespene gas per worker. Also in SC1, your base started off with one vespene geyser. In SC2, you start off with 2 vespene geysers this time. Its extremely important to have an extremely effective economy in this game if you want to get an edge over your opponent. Expanding in Starcraft is a must as you will deplete your resources quickly if you’re not paying attention. The game will tell you when your mineral fields and vespene geyers are depleted.
- In SC1 the unit pathing AI was horrible, so horrible in fact its always brought up and joked about in conversations about the game. Units from SC1 like the Goliath and Dragoon were so retarded you laughed when you saw them move in-game. In SC2 units are much smarter and will always take the best route possible. Units won’t move across the map just to get across a bridge like in SC1 so praise Blizzard for making units not retarded in SC2. This is a hilarious and short video making fun of the unit AI in Starcraft 1. The units acting retarded in this video is the Dragoon and Goliath. Yes, it was this bad haha.
- In SC1, you could only control 12 units per group so this made it a hard time controlling massive armies to move together as you had to separately select different groups of units to move out plus deal with the horrible pathing AI. In Starcraft 2, you can control as many units as you want in a group. This improvement helps out a whole lot and will make it easier to move entire armies.
- With a new game comes new units and old units removed. The new Terran units added in SC2 are the Marauder, Reaper, Viking, Hellion, Banshee, Medievac, Widow Mine, Hellbat, Raven, and my personal favorite, the Thor. The new Zerg units are the Roach, Swarm Host, Viper, Corrupter, Brood Lord, Baneling, Overseer, and Infestor. The new Protoss units are the Void Ray, Tempest, Phoenix, Mothership/Mothership Core, Warp Prism, Immortal, Colossus, Stalker, Sentry, and Oracle. Most of these units were added to replace the function of the older units. For example, the Terran Viking replaces the Wraith and Valkyrie from SC1. The Protoss Immortal replaced the Protoss Dragon and the Zerg Swarm Host replaced the Zerg Lurker, however, the Lurker will be back in Legacy of the Void. Iconic units such as the Ghost, Siege Tank, Battlecruiser, Hydralisk, Mutalisk, Ultralisk, Carrier, Archon, and Dark Templar are still there. However their roles may or may not be the same as they once were in SC1. I’m still bummed that the Dark Archon never came back. The Dark Archon needs more love.
- The AI is much smarter in this game, whereas the AI in SC1 was kinda stupid and would do stupid strategies, the AI in SC2 is way better than that. The AI will send units to scout your base, adjust to your playing style, and will even micro their units like a human player. When the AI thinks it has no chance of coming back and winning, the AI will type “GG” and you can choose to accept its surrender right there or keep playing. And for the first time in Starcraft, you can select the AI Difficulty. This was a feature that SC1 lacked and I’m glad Blizzard finally brought this feature into SC2.
- The way to win a match in Starcraft 2 is to destroy all of your enemy’s buildings or if they surrender. It has always been like that and will stay like that.
- The maximum amount of players you can have in multiplayer is 14 or 16. I’m not too sure yet as I haven’t been in many matches with that amount of players because my computer will have a heart attack if I played in a match like that. All I do know is that the default maximum is 8.
- Hotkeys are extremely important when playing an RTS and Starcraft 2 does it well. In SC1 you had to memorize all the hotkeys for everything and there was no way to change it to the way you wanted to. In Starcraft 2, you can create your own hotkeys to make it easier for yourself to remember. To make it easier for newer players, there’s an “Idle Worker” and “All Army Units” hotkey to give you a taste of what hotkeys are for.
- The maximum supply limit for all 3 races is 200. The unit that takes up the most supply in the game is the Mothership and it takes up 8. Don’t worry though. You will still have enough supply to create tons of workers and a massive army. The supply limit could be increased further but that is only seen in arcade games. The way to increase your supply is just like it was in SC1. Supply Depots for the Terran, Overlords for the Zerg, and Pylons for the Protoss.
Graphics Starcraft 2 is a beautiful game. Blizzard took this game to a whole new level when it came to the graphics, textures, shadows, details on units… hell just about everything in this game looks good, even the dirt. The lip synching on characters is spot on in cinematics. Speaking of cinematics, Blizzard does the best cinematics in the business and they’re known for that. No other studio comes close to making awesome cinematics like Blizzard does.
Here's what Starcraft: Brood War looked like
And here's what Starcraft 2 looks like. As you can see, a massive improvement in the graphics department.
Soundtrack Starcraft 1 had such an atmospheric soundtrack for every race. The music fit them all perfectly and fit the tone of the game even better. After Starcraft 1, its extremely difficult to replicate that same feeling the music brought to the players. The Terran music from SC1 is probably one of the most iconic pieces of video game music, in my opinion at least. With Starcraft 2 however, Blizzard went with a different mood of music. The Terran in SC2 are often nicknamed “rednecks in Space” mainly because of their music in SC2. Its pretty good for what it is I mean it fits the mood of SC2, but I prefer to listen to the old music. You can select the SC1/Brood War music in the options menu. That’s what I listen to while playing SC2.
Brood War music
Wings of Liberty music. These play in cutscenes and the menus.
Terran in-game music. Like I said, fits the mood of the SC2 Terran perfectly.
Some of the music from the Jukebox Cantina in the Hyperion. Further proof that the Terran are space rednecks.
Extra Content 
The Map Editor in Starcraft 1 was such a big deal at the time in the late 90s and it allowed players to create all-new experiences within Starcraft and share them with their friends and others from around the world. The map editor was simple in SC1 and anyone could make their own maps or goofy mini-games. That’s what I did before I played online and once I saw what the community made, Starcraft became a whole new game to me. Things I thought I would NEVER see in Starcraft… people made it in the editor. Things like Cannon Defense, Risk, Cat and Mouse, multiple RPG-style games, and people even tried to make a Halo RTS game by renaming all the units to whatever they were most similar from Halo. It was here that the first idea of a MOBA-style game was invented called Aeon of Strife and that trend continued into Warcraft 3 where the first big-thing DOTA was made if I’m not mistaken. In other words, the Starcraft 1 Mad Editor was a big thing and has impacted the video game industry in some form.
Then Starcraft 2 came out and wow… I’m still completely blown away from the community creations I’ve seen in the Arcade. The Starcraft 2 Map Editor is difficult to master and I dare anyone reading this to try to master it like some others have. It is insane on what people can come up with. There’s those classic games that people liked to play in SC1 like Desert Strike and Bunker Wars, and then there’s new ones like Special Forces Elite, Starship Troopers, hell even a couple Battlefront-style games from a third-person perspective, yes a THIRD-person perspective in an RTS game. There was even a 2D side-scroller game I found that had its own storymode and was basically a whole game. There was another game I found that played almost exactly like Civilization. Blizzard even released the Warcraft 3 assets for players and they remade Warcraft 3 in the Arcade. And lastly, a hilarious game I found was called Raynor Party and it was an obvious parody of Mario Party and played almost exactly like it too. Words cannot describe the amazing creativity and imagination these people have because I could never make something like the stuff I’ve seen in the Arcade.
Here are some examples of what people have created using the SC2 Map Editor
The game also has achievements to unlock and there is a ton of them too. You get them in campaign, multiplayer, the arcade, custom games, and doing random stuff like playing Starcraft 2 on its anniversary or another special date. These achievements obviously remind me of the Xbox 360/Xbox One’s achievements but there’s nothing wrong with that. It just gives me more stuff to do and more items to unlock.
There’s this thing called Swarm Levels for each faction. You gain XP for playing matches, building units, destroying units, constructing buildings, and winning matches. With this Swarm Level you unlock portraits for your profile to show off. The max swarm level for each faction is Level 35 and it will take you some time to get the max level for all of them.
Final Verdict: I think I’ve said all I can about Starcraft 2 and its been a lot. The game is just filled with tons of hours of content its unbelievable. People thought Brood War was huge but this one takes everything Brood War has and multiplies it by 50. Starcraft is a great series and it should be played by everyone. You don’t have to be a hardcore RTS player to enjoy this game. Anyone can pick it up and have a good time with it, competitive and casual alike.
Starcraft 2 gets a 9.5/10 for successfully delivering on every department and then some. It just does everything well despite having some Hollywood clichés in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. Other than that, the game is brilliant and it’s a game I will be playing for many more years to come.
And Blizzard after you finish Legacy of the Void, please go back and finish Starcraft: Ghost so my life would be complete.
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