Overall, I still can’t wait for the final StarCraft II installment, Legacy of the Void. Here I felt like I had just completed some enjoyable levels.Īnd they are enjoyable, despite all of my misgivings, I did find my time with the game entirely worthwhile, and the $40 price-point didn’t seem exorbitant even though I feel like I am completely unqualified to even attempt the game’s formidable multiplayer component (though I am grateful that Blizzard seems to have really beefed up the tutorials and practice matches for you to play before you attempt a ranked match). I just didn’t get that same feeling of personal progression I did when I played WoL I felt when I was done with that game I was better at StarCraft. Which isn’t to say that these build and smash missions aren’t fun. There isn’t really any of that in Heart of the Swarm. For example, in one WoL level you had to move your base away from a slow moving wall of lava, which forced you to play very aggressively, or later stages when you needed distinct groups to attack different areas of the map. Some of the narrative elements are weaker this time around, but longtime fans will appreciate. There, later levels challenged the types of simple strategies I used as the game went on. Bottom Line: Heart of the Swarm is a worthy follow-up expansion to StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty.
Heart of the Swarm picks up the story where StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. Through the campaign, you can make several important alterations to your army, changing their abilities in both temporary and permanent ways while leveling up Kerrigan into a close-to-unstoppable hero unit.Īdmittedly, this could have probably been alleviated slightly had I played at a higher difficulty level, though I still felt that the level designs themselves didn’t really force me to play better, which isn’t something I could say about Wings of Liberty. Players can now purchase Heart of the Swarm in retail stores throughout the. Where Wings of Liberty focused almost entirely on the Raynor’s Terran forces (with a small Protoss side-campaign), Heart of the Swarm is an almost entirely Zerg affair, as you control Kerrigan through her battle to recapture the swarm. You probably won’t leave the game thinking the whole thing was awful, but you probably also won’t get that emotionally invested either.Īs well, the game rolls back a few of the (pretty important) status-quo changes from the Wings of Liberty campaign, so if you were into that, this might feel a bit like backtracking. Blizzard had a lot of meaty possibilities in Kerrigan’s arc, but they are treated mostly superficially. The story in HotS has interesting material to work with, but aspects of the plot and characters come across as pretty goofy and hamfisted. I'll have to find out when I replay.This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. I would've liked to have more encouragement to expand past 2 base, and maybe it's that way on brutal. I played it on hard, and I didn't have any difficulty. I didn't really like the way the evolved strains looked, it was a missed artistic opportunity in my book, they spent too much time on making them distinguishable from the other strands that they all look kind of over done. Kerrigan was a hero I actually used in combat throughout the campaign, unlike SC1 especially, I loved how they did it.Ĭinematics looked 10x better than they did in Wings, (except for the ones on Zerus where the ugly pixelated orange flower is on two adjacent trees). There were no 2 hour missions to wade through, and the diversion missions were well done throughout. Overall, the missions were very fun and well laid out.
I was disappointed they included the evolution missions in the count of 27, because they only took about 5 minutes a piece, and I would've loved more opportunities to actually use the evolved units. I actually felt connected to Kerrigan by the end of the game, something that I couldn't say for almost any other game. I thought the character development and believability was amazing.