I finished it.

[RetlocLive]

It's just too damn cliche to give a damn about the story. If WoL didn't make it obvious enough with its prophecy bullshyt, HotS sure spelled it out in nice large bold letters that it's going to end with a glorious battle between Amon's Xel'Naga and the three races of the sector.

Metzen really does need to give the writing job to someone else...

[Drake Clawfang]

Cliches are not necessarily bad things - moreover, you seem to have confused "cliche" with "predictable". An ending like that is predictable, but not really cliche, and either way if executed well will be quite epic. It was cliche that Raynor came to his senses and helped Kerrigan out in the end, but it was still awesome.

[sandwich_bird]

Cliches are not necessarily bad things - moreover, you seem to have confused "cliche" with "predictable". An ending like that is predictable, but not really cliche, and either way if executed well will be quite epic. It was cliche that Raynor came to his senses and helped Kerrigan out in the end, but it was still awesome.

''Lets all join forces to destroy the ultimate bad guy!'' = cliché.

But I agree that it's not necessarily bad. I actually like those kind of endings. This is not what made the story bad for me. If you look at A song of ice and fire(or game of thrones for those who only watch the show), the story is amazing! And yet, I'm pretty sure it's gonna boil down to ''peeps join forces to get rid of zombies''. The difference though is that there are other things going on in that book and those things are actually serious, deep and interesting. Like, I care when someone die in that franchise because the author made me care about it. In Starcraft 2 though... Warfield is gone? Tychus? meh... And we all know that Mengsk was a freaking joke at this point. His back-story is so deep, and yet, the writers made him less complex than a Disney villain(he's just your typical one sided tyrant. His biggest achievement was keeping the artifact in his office...). I mean, if SC1 made us care about Fenix through lame briefings and some in-game dialogue, why is SC2 incapable of doing the same thing through Hollywood cut-scenes?

[Drake Clawfang]

Eh, Mengsk never much impressed after the base Terran campaign. He was already boring for me in Brood War, he seemed childish, only caring about the Dominion while the Zerg, Protoss and UED were raging war. It was funny when he was actually shocked that Kerrigan betrayed him. "But you said revenge wasn't important!" "I lied, dumbass. You're the one who left me to the Zerg, are you really that surprised?"

I did find it interesting in HotS though how he strains to keep that affable gentlemanly demeanor even when he's begun to resort to blowing up his own facilities to kill Kerrigan, rationalizing the men he kills as "sacrifices". And the final assault appropriately felt like he was throwing everything he had to try and stop Kerrigan, experimental weapons, nukes, psi devices, the Odin. Was also a nice touch to see him send Alpha Squadron in, though they have really lost a level in badass.

[Laurentian]

The problem isn't cliches it's how you use them. Everything has been done before. And if you subvert a cliche then that becomes a cliche of its own if people like it and start copying it.

After all it's not like "dystopian used future where space rednecks fight oppressive government" was all that original. Nor were hivemind or advanced fundamentalist aliens original too. Or the "hero's best friend is turned evil by something" (Ever see the second Star Trek pilot?). Hell the notion that the only good stories are GRIMDARK Tragedies is pretty old too.

Metzen really does need to give the writing job to someone else...

Might not be a bad idea. SC2 is filled with a lot of...er filler so far. Also is SC2 really that similar to WarCraft? I haven't played it but if it as similar as people say then yeah it looks like Metzen only has one story. Perhaps they need to tell a new story.

Also I'm surprised I haven't seen too many people complaining about the Primal Zerg being a blatant retcon. Perhaps I should wait. Rather convenient that it allows Kerrigan to reinfest herself outside of Amon's control and not try to kill everyone.

And Narud was running the Tal'darim the whole time? Err okay...

[Alar]

Laurentian, I -did- complain about the Primal Zerg. I said it felt like a retcon, and I'm still sort of on the wall about where they stand in relevance to everything else. I'm not sure how much I like or dislike them, but it still feels... weird to me.

[Todie]

I personally enjoyed it. The story was better than what I was expecting, though perhaps not as good as I'd hoped for. As described by others, writing fell flat in some places and dialogue felt odd, but otherwise it wasn't excruciating. Things seemed to be more 'serious' this time around, which was good. I'm actually very happy with the direction they took Kerrigan in. She's willing to kill and murder and do what it takes to survive and succeed in her goals, but she actually has a 'Heart' and is no longer indiscriminately slaughtering everything in her path. Plus, the good note she and Jimmy parted on made me smile a little.
[...]

Overall I enjoyed it, and may screw around with it a few more times. I had wished Kerrigan would've received upgrades from the Evolution Chamber, but giving her 6 armor by the end might've been a bit much (of course, it also would've made me concentrate on a power house build for her and just have her solo the crap out of everything with Fury/jumping lightning/Mend).

[...]

Overall I'm quite pleased, the story is a step-up both in the actual story and how it's presented, the gameplay is still awesome and most of the gameplay features felt fitting for the Zerg. The game is a nice improvement from WoL in pretty much all respects.

So I was the only one who actually found the story enoyable? Not just much better than WoL but actually enyoyable compared to other games/stories.

For all I know, I'll be waiting for Legacy of the Void with excitement to know how everything will be finnished.

I can totally second these sentiments.

as for criticism:

[...] This whole campaign felt really really warcraft-ish. It isn't warcraft in space but it's getting closer to it. As far as the art style goes, I wish I could slap Samwise for every unnecessary spike he put on stuff.

Indeed. the design of the primal zerg and espeically their planet screams of warcraf. Also, there are fucking COPIES of warcraft music in there. i swear it.

The Ancient One was indeed a direct copy from Diablo 3

... even though the gameplay in that mission was quite great, this still bothered me a lot. that boss looks like something out of diablo3 and the bossfight was extremly similar to act2 Belial, including the "lol i fooled you" kind of setup

.. I was generally displeased with the music. i didnt notice anything impactful, other than themses i recognized from WoL and from wc3 (witch fucking infuriates me). I dont know how much of this is "the ghost of nostalgia" speaking, but i feel like Blizzard used to be a lot more daring sharp and effective with sound and music in their games. Starcrraft, BW, Wc2, Diablo 2 (and D1, oh my god!) ... i cant speak for the WoW stuff, but i sense Blizzard havnt been on point with sounds and music outside CGI for a long time. its a damn shame! i wish the community could rally together and speak up on this because in my mind, HotS is otherwise a great game compared to what was reasonable to expect.

As for gameplay, its great. I havnt played it all on brutal yet, but from what ive seen it seems less challenging than WoL... what bothers me as a seasoned multiplayer of WoL with Zerg as my main race is that i seem to get caught in old macro-focused habits; my muscle memory takes over and i end up attack-moving over most of the supposedly challenging content, without taking time to really rely much at all on any of the tactical intricacies on the units; using Kerrigans stuff takes enough of my attention, the rest is absorbed by basic troop movement and macro.

.. I would want to play the campaign on brutal or some even harder setting, but with reduced game-speed, to simultaneously force me and give me time to employ more delicate tactical micromanagement rather than all brute-force.

[Kimera757]

Reminds me of Game of Thrones book 3. So many deaths of major characters.

[Drake Clawfang]

]In Starcraft 2 though... Warfield is gone? Tychus? meh...

The reason of this is the way the deaths are handled, but I do agree. In the original game when it came time to kill a major character, they devoted entire missions to fighting your way past their forces and killing them, it was a major plot point, and their deaths had impact on other characters.

Tychus, we had the build-up to his betrayal of Raynor, but we never see any fallout from it, does Raynor regret shooting Tychus, does he think himself foolish for trusting him? A quick line when Raynor sees the reborn Kerrigan to the effect of "maybe I should have let Tychus take his shot" would have been very nicely done I think. And really, in the overarching scheme of things, Tychus is a minor character, why do we care if he dies, the universe will continue on. He's barely mentioned in HotS because why should he be, he wasn't important enough.

Warfield, we barely knew him in the base game and saw even less of him in Heart of the Swarm. His best line was calling Kerrigan out for attacking his men when they saved her. I would have liked an extended conversation between them where Warfield goes further with this and Kerrigan snaps at him that Mengsk killed Raynor. Was Warfield aware of this, does he know it was a lie or does he think it's true, what does he think of it? We don't know, we will never know. All we got was his really dumb final words where he goaded Kerrigan with about the worst thing he could have said.

However, they have really developed Valerian I think, we've seen enough to get to like him and know he's a genuinely good person who cares about the Dominion and is an ally to Raynor. If it had been a twist at the end that Valerian was aiding the Dominion like "I understand you Kerrigan, but I cannot let you kill my father", and Kerrigan ended up killing him, had it been executed well I think we would have cared. And it would have impacted the overarcing plot hugely, throwing the future of the Dominion into question, and making Kerrigan a much darker Anti-hero than she ended up being while creating sympathy for Mengsk - or not, if he saw it as a loss of an asset more than a loss of a son. Or what if Mengsk killed Valerian trying to get to Kerrigan? Imagine how they could have developed that, maybe the Dominion begins to turn on Mengsk?

This also has to do with how long we get to know the cast - in BW, everyone killed was someone we knew well, in SC2, not so much with Warfield or even Tychus. Remember how much we didn't care with Zasz died, because we didn't know him that well and what we did see of him showed him as a snivelling toady? It was a major plot point but in terms of emotional investment to the character, nothing of value was lost. That's SC2's problem, it's been Zasz deaths so far save for Mengsk, and if not for the leaked ending spoiling us it would have had more impact - it was very gratifying to see him finally pay.

[RetlocLive]

General consensus regarding the campaigns difficulty is that Brutal mode plays out like Normal for a lot of people; the one exception being the Crysalis defense mission during the Zerus arc which felt like a Hard mission. The other feeling people get is that the difficulty actually does feel to be constantly increasing as the missions went on, but then took a huge nosedive once the Zerus arc finished.

And I agree with that, Kerrigan's abilities and most of the Zerg mutations are EXTREMELY overpowered in the later portions of the campaign; especially the Korhal finale. Kerrigan's apocalypse AoE, spawning 50 primal zerg, the +200 AoE health buff (which is like giving zerg 200 shield), Swarm Hosts popping up anywhere on creep, Torrasque's resurrecting on death, all against a computer AI that doesn't even build armies larger then 20 units, refusing to use spells/abilities as simple as Banshee/Wraith cloak, and mostly attacking with scripted, predictable, events.

WoL at least had the ocassional tough mission. In Utter Darkness and All-In were perfect examples of Brutal mode missions done right. And then there were missions like Engine of Destruction and Supernova which, because of the time restraints, forced people to rush in and play a different style then to just sit back and build a 200/200 A-move steamroll army. HotS...it's toughest mission like I said was the Crysalis defense mission which almost plays out like another All-In. Other then that, nothing else really gave people a rough time. HotS's Brutal modes an absolute joke.