Last time I went on a long tangent explaining the troubles I had just getting to the point of being able to play Heart of the Swarm. That same night I started the campaign, and finished it after about 12 hours on normal difficulty (which some people say is too easy, but I don’t care that much).

For those of you that read this website but somehow don’t know, Heart of the Swarm is an expansion for StarCraft 2 and the second in its 3 part story were you play as Sarah Kerrigan and control the Zerg.

This isn’t strictly a review of the game, but more of a rant about it. There will be spoilers, so if you mind knowing about the story behind the game, stop now and go play it yourself (or watch a LP of it).

First, Stuff I Like

Ranting aside, HotS is a good game and a good expansion, as it improves on almost everything Wing of Liberty did. The best thing about the campaign is its mission variety – they use a lot of different mechanics and not just standard RTS build base, destroy the enemy routine.

There was a tower-defense like mission when you need to activate towers in order to destroy a bunch of battle cruisers before they reach you base. There was an Alien vs. Predator like mission when you start as a Zerg larva on a Protoss spaceship and need to consume animals in order to grow into a stronger form, while infesting the entire thing. Another mission include a DOTA like scenario where you have base which produce small AI controlled fighters while controlling the battle cruiser Hyperion ans you need to push the enemy towers then get into their base and destroy the main space station.

Its clear Blizzard put a lot of thought into the different mechanics used in missions, borrowing heavily from other games and MODs.

Another good thing about the game is the progression system. Unlike in WoL where you have to buy upgrades, here you can pick-and-chose what you like for each unit and can change your mind at anytime. Beside unit upgrade, you get to level-up Karrigan and acquire abilities for her, which include active spell-like abilities, passive boosts as well as abilities that change the way the game is played (e.g. self-serving gas extractors, instant-built Overloards). As with the unit upgrades, you can change your mind between missions and choose different skills.

Beside the upgrade system, the game contains 7 evolution missions that allow you to acquire a more powerful version of an existing unit (instant-built Zerglings, restricting Ultralisks). Each unit has two variants and the evolution mission let you test each of them before you decide which one you keep for the main campaign. Unlike with the upgrade, once you made your decision you cannot go back.

The last things I’ll note in the “like it” sections are the Zerg characters, specifically Abathur and Zagara. Yes, the original StarCraft had the Overmind and some Cerebrates, but they acted a lot like humans.  With those characters, Blizzard made an effort to present characters that are alien and show the Zerg for what they really are (also, Abathur talks a lot like Mordin Solus from Mass Effect). I don’t have much more to say about this, just that you’ll have to check it out yourself.

What Went Wrong

On the flip side to my previous point, all the human characters are garbage. They’re either not flashed at all, or act in a way that destroys everything that was good about them in previous titles of the series (except for Mengsk. He is awesome).

I don’t get Kerrigan. She was the best character in SC. She was smart, cunning, has all those great plans and strategies that really earned her the title “Queen Bitch of the Universe”.

Now she is a love sick puppy, hell bent on revenge. Why? Before, Kerrigan would have never done something without some greater agenda or motivation. I get that she lost her memory for her time as the Queen of Blades, but my impression from the original StarCraft and BW; she wasn’t this person because of the infestation but rather by her own merit. The infestation just removed some of her inhibitions, gave her a new purpose.

Then, she gets to be the Queen of Blades again, but continue to act like a scared little girl. This doesn’t even align with her conversations within the campaign hub – she teaches Zagara what it means to be a Zerg queen – and does so before the re-infestation. I think Blizzard was a bit lost here. The retained some of what made Kerrigan great, but didn’t go all the way with it.

This is true for Raynor as well; he just completely betrayed everything he stood for. It is just a shame.

On to my next issue: Blizzard, please stop putting your World of Warcraft shit in my military science fiction game. I don’t want elder-gods, space-wizards and ancient prophecies. StarCraft was about War. Yes, a war fought against crystal-covered aliens on one side as a giant mound of flesh on the other, but still war. There was some techy stuff like the psi-emitters, and some fantastic bits like Tassadar’s super saiyan transformation to crash the over mind, but all of those where just tidbits. They didn’t define the campaign.

Now, the entire campaign is centered on god-like beings, prophecies, getting mystical power-ups and so on. Its bull shit. I know they wanted to do this expansion with more RPG elements, but they didn’t have to take Warcraft 3’s storyline as well.

I can accept a powerful endgame enemy that is discovered and we need to prepare for, fine. But don’t put your entire story progression on it. The majority of the story should have focused on the war in the Koprulu sector, with some limited exposure for other possibilities. But now it is just like the Reapers in Mass Effect, and that isn’t interesting.

One final note, along the same lines – Mengsk’s death was stupid. I wanted something much more elegant, like stabbing him with her bone-wings or Raynor shooting him in the end. Instead she turned him into a bomb with psionic power – that is bullshit. Blizzard, stop it! I don’t want those kinds of magic powers. There is a good reason Psi Storms are awesome, and that is because they were unique, the ultimate expression of psychic power. All other psi stuff needs to be more subtle, not emulate WoW’s mage spells.

Well, that is it. My conclusion remains that this is a good game. But it’s not really the StarCraft I’m looking for. I will play Legacy of the Void, because it will probably be really good, but I’ve lost most interest in the story itself.

Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think in the comments below.