I was a huge fan of Starcraft 1 and was very excited for Starcraft 2. I participated in the beta (most of my comments on multiplayer will be based off those experiences) and I have played the single player campaign almost to completion.
**When I started writing this I didn't expect it to be this long, but I just didn't think any of the reviews really looked at the gameplay, and took a fair look at SC2.
Gameplay
The game is a lot of fun. If you liked SC1 or just fast paced RTS in general, you will not be disappointed. You have 3 races that have very different units, strategies, strengths and weaknesses. You have the Zerg which are strongest when they're in large numbers, quantity over quality, the Protoss which are the exact opposite, quality over quantity, and you have the Terran race which sits somewhere in between. So depending on whether you want to macro out and mass up units to take out your opponents, or micro your units and make each mineral/vespene gas you spend counts, you'll have a race that is well suited and very effective at doing just those things.
The game is very balanced unit wise. Being part of the beta, it was very interesting seeing each of the tweaks they made to the game based on player feedback and the massive statistics they have available. Blizzard can see what races are winning in which leagues, using which units, and on what maps. This, in conjunction with an active dialogue with the player community has worked splendidly. Starcraft 2 is about reacting to and countering your opponents. Each race has a counter for each of the other's races units. That Terran player harassing your mineral line with reapers? Switch up your tech from Zealots to Stalkers with blink and instantly teleport next to them to take them out. Tanks raining down on you wiping out your stalkers? Tech up to immortals and let them absorb the hits so your other ground forces can close the gap. I could list a dozen other examples but you get the idea.
Graphics
I think the game looks very good, though I've never been too picky about how games look graphically. I run the game on a EVGA 9800 GTX with a Core 2 Duo E6750. (Old machine but still handles decently) I can run the game on High settings at 1920x1200 resolution, but it lags if the game is more than a 2v2. I typically run it on Medium if I want it to be as smooth as possible on bnet games.
The unit animations are very interesting, seeing Zerg buildings explode with guts and ooze when you destroy them is awesome. The way units explode and fall apart on death is also amusing and not over the top, and if anything shows that Blizzard put some effort into making the game visually appealing. There's a nice variation of map palettes, there's your standard volcanic world settings, the lush jungles associated with the protoss, space platforms, and urbanish settings. The maps look, feel, and play differently.
Multiplayer
First I'll say that this is the full game, meaning the Protoss and Zerg races are 100% complete and playable online. Moving on to battle.net...If any of you have played Blizzard games in the past, you'll be familar with battle.net. Battle.net has seen a major overhaul for SC2. In general, I'd say the changes they've made have been very good. So, say you and 3 of your buddies log onto SC2 and want to start playing some ladder games. You can create a "party" and you'll have voice chat communication (in game voice chat is nice in theory, but currently buggy and nonfunctional) and create a chat room just for you 4. For people that play competitively you'll probably still want to stick to ventrilo or whatever else you happen to use. If you don't want to listen to others, you can toggle voice communication off. From this party, you can find ladder/ranked matches by clicking on find 4v4 match, you can set map preferences, and each of you selects you're preferred race. If its your first time playing, you get 5 placement matches that will determine into which of the 5 leagues you're 4 man party is placed into. There's, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and diamond. Your team of 4 gets placed into the league and the more games you win in a row, the harder opponents you'll get. So say you're in bronze league and you win the next 2-3 games, you might find yourself playing against a gold, or platinum ranked group to test your skill. Your ranking in the league is specific to whatever group you made. So say I'm in a 2 person team that's ranked gold. If i make a new 2 player team with another friend, I'll need to do 5 new placement matches to see where we fit. (If any of your are curious, I was gold league in 1v1, and platinum in a few 2v2 and 3v3s. The match making system does a very good job of placing you against opponents that will challenge you. The more you win, the harder the opponents you get, and the more points you get if you beat them. If you lose to someone who is considerably lower ranked than you, you lose more points, and etc.
What is also nice is that you can join Custom (Use Map Settings) games as a party as well! This would have been really nice in Warcraft 3 for Dota and other very popular custom maps. The maps are downloaded directly from blizzard now rather than users (so no more booting just cause you don't have the map ((and are potentially a noob!))) So after tearing things up in the gold league with your 3 friends, the 4 of you can easily join a Turret Defense game to relax and unwind. Also, when you create a game (Use Map Setting or Custom) with your party, it defaults to it being a "Private Game" which you can then open to the public. (You can't make a public game private however). If you join a random game, you can recommend the host invite certain people (e.g. your friends) and your friends can join you fairly simply. The way you join custom games is also very different, rather than seeing a list of custom games with names, you see a list of maps you can play, and you're put into a random one.
There's also a co-op play where you're placed in a team of people playing against the AI. It ranges from Easy to Insane and Insane can prove challenging if you're not accustomed to how the AI works.
The chat feature and responding to chats is better implemented. You can have chat windows that you can pop out for different dialogues. If you play the single player while connected to battle.net you can chat to friends mid cutscene. At first I wasn't sure if I liked this or not, but in the end I decided I did.
Also, your last 5 replays are saved online automatically, and you can review them if you want at any time. A VERY nice feature for seeing how that Diamond player you played with 2 games ago kicked your butt so bad. Once the game is over, you see all the various econ, army, and kill tabs, but now you can also look at the build order of your opponents. You can see when they did what, and in what order. Very useful for learning new build orders.
One thing that I didn't really like in the new battle.net is that there are no more public chat channels that you can join.
Single Player
A lot of people are giving this 1 star reviews for being Terran only or being 1/3rd a game and I whole-heartedly disagree. The terran campaign is massive, 26 missions (compared to the 30 of the original SC). People are saying its Blizzard being greedy but really, I see it as Blizzard wanting to make this a story telling experience. The trailer released by blizzard was spectacular. [...] (the Ghosts of the Past Video). After watching that, I felt like I was watching a trailer for this summer's next blockbuster. Good voice acting, good story telling, and blizzard quality animations and cutscenes. People have been demanding a SC2 game for years, and guess what? they're giving us 3 full games set in the starcraft universe. Rather than seeing this as 1/3rd a game, I see it more like Half-Life and its subsequent episodes (though not an apt comparison because the episodes for half life are so short.) They're giving us a trilogy with a linear story using the same game engine. Blizzard has said each of the expansions will include new content (units) and just as rich a story telling experience and campaign length in all 3 races. See this FAQ for reference: [...].
As for the pricing of the expansions? No one knows what that will be. Blizzard has said in that FAQ that they will price it according to the value of the content. Whether or not Blizzard's idea of the value of the content and the buyer's value match up? Only time will tell. For those people saying you're not paying $180 for one game, please just stop. No one knows the price and saying that it is $180 is speculation and disinformation.
The objectives of each of the missions are very different (though i guess a lot involve obtaining certain objects) and is accompanied by very interesting dialogue and story telling, before, during and after each of the missions. In between missions, you have the ability to customize your forces, and to buy upgrades for them. You won't be able to get all of the unlocks (as the research ones make you choose between 2) but its still a very fun system to play with and adds a lot of fun to customizing your forces' strengths.
Once you activate the game, you can play offline. So you do need an internet connection to create a battle.net account, and then activate the game, but afterwards you're free to play offline as much as you want. This didn't bother me so much, because I love digital and online distribution. I'm a huge fan of steam and what they're doing, and while battle.net is still far from what steam is, its at least something towards that direction.
Other Thoughts
I guess being a review and seeing as how so many people are bringing this up, I guess I should comment on the lack of lan-play. While I was somewhat disappointed at this too, I find this to be a small annoyance that shouldn't preclude anyone from enjoying this game if they like Starcraft or RTS in general. Blizzard wants to shift to creating an online and connected experience, or so so they claim as the reasoning for not including LAN. That might be true, it might not be the only reason, but who can really say. I for one enjoyed talking to my friends while playing the single player. Me and my 3 other friends were having a great time with the campaign and we could talk to each other when we got to a particularly exciting part of a mission. My friends and I are all in different cities. So in that sense, I benefited from this online and connected experience Blizzard created. Others who gather together for LAN parties are not going to benefit as much and that's unfortunate. Blizzard is trying to be innovative and some ideas will work and be good for some, and others will prefer how things were before. That's the nature with any kind of change, some will love it, some will hate it.
In closing, I'll say that Starcraft 2 is a great game. It has a great story, great gameplay, and has tried to learn from its previous experiences with SC and Warcraft. Some changes work out, some do not, and to me the changes that work out are minor and don't take away from the enjoyability of the game.
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Reviews with images
Stacraft 2 is a long awaited Sucessor
I was skeptical about the game at first, what with it being only the Terran campaign, but the story is so fleshed out and much deeper than before that it makes up for the only one race oriented campaign. There are actually a few missions where you play a different race so that helps to add to the depth. My overall enjoyment of the game is great and I would highly recommend it to anyone who played the first one.My one gripe however is that the online portion of the game is all about speed now. Ever aspect of the game is PURE speed and no strategy at all. This really irritates me b/c it really reduces the accessibility of the game to players. I myself prefer a stratagem in my games rather than just pumping out as many units as I can as soon as I can. The plus side, however, is that there are plenty of challenges and extra things for you to do if you don't want to face the ridiculousness of the online. And you can always play private games with your friends against computers or each other.The visuals are beautifully detailed, sounds are excellent, and pacing well balanced. You won't find yourself trying to keep up with what the game throws at you at all so long as you use what you learn throughout the game.For any gamer out there or someone just looking for a good PC game, I would recommend this. It's addicting, fun, and has a great story to go along with it.
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2010
Platform For Display: PC/MacEdition: StandardVerified Purchase
Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2010
Platform For Display: PC/MacEdition: StandardVerified Purchase
Top reviews from other countries
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Bueno
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