A while back I picked up StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void. I’ve been waiting for this game for quite a while, as I’ve been a fan of Starcraft for a long time (I started playing it back when I was in high school), and I’ve always been a dedicated Protoss player. Also, the thing that I always enjoyed most was the story-driven campaign play – that is the reason that I keep buying these games – to continue experiencing the story.
In this sense, StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void does not disappoint. I enjoyed the characters, especially Artanis, and the Protoss evolution as a civilization without the Khala was both deep and intriguing. While the writers certainly walked a fine line between exploring the Xel’naga and keeping their mysteries… …I feel like they revealed just a little bit too much. While the story was certainly good and satisfying, I don’t feel like it left as much to talk about afterward.
In terms of gameplay, I really enjoyed the mechanics of story mode. As it stands, StarCraft II as a multi-player RTS doesn’t have the type of strategy I’m interested in, but I do enjoy the unique challenge of each story mission where you have to build toward a specific goal under interesting limitations. One very neat thing about story mode was the unit customization. Each unit type in the game allowed multiple options – ranging from the standard protoss unit in StarCraft II, to a StarCraft I option, or an option representing the influence of the purifiers or the Tal’darim.
The thing that annoyed me the most about StarCraft II though, was the actual software itself. While a typical mission would last on the order of 15-20 minutes, I would easily spend at least 5-10 minutes on loading screens waiting for each mission. Between the battle.net patch, the StarCraft II patch, and the loading screens, I could easily sink an hour into playing a single mission, which became a problem. The source of this was really that the game demanded a different play strategy than I wanted – to get the most efficiency out of the game, I would have had to play it in large blocks (to amortize the time spent patching across multiple missions), however, I typically only had an hour to play at a time, so I ended up having to patch just about every time I sat down to play.
Eventually, I found a large time block and binged my way through the rest of the story. I can’t really say as I enjoyed the experience, nor will I plan on buying another Blizzard game anytime soon, but it was fun while I was playing it.