Non-RPG General News - Free StarCraft 2

Starcraft 2 is a very classical Game in that way. Like with basically all the Real Time Strategies like Command and Conquer, Warcraft, and whatever else you can thing of in the 90s, you get more and more units during the campaign which imho is a good thing.

However StarCraft 2 is also modern in that it has a campaign where your units might be different depending on your decisions. Also you have some missions where you can chose between two sides. I quite enjoyed that. Furthermore the highest difficulty is really challenging. Played through them with A LOT of saving and loading though, but also gathered all the achievements along the way.

Regarding the different campaigns: The essentially work similar of course. They have another focus though. As far as I remember the Zerg campaign was more focused on the development of Kerrigan.

Kordanor said:

Starcraft 2 is a very classical Game in that way. Like with basically all the Real Time Strategies like Command and Conquer, Warcraft, and whatever else you can thing of in the 90s, you get more and more units during the campaign which imho is a good thing.

Click to expand...

I didn't think Starcraft 2 felt much like a classic RTS at all.

Those older games got more difficult sooner. Wings of Liberty was a cake walk until the final 3 or 4 missions. It also took way too long to introduce all the units which I think compounded that issue for me.

Hrm, I played it at release, so it's quite a while, but as far as I remember it the difficulty was decent quite early, at least playing on high difficulty. If it becomes too difficult then it might be time to reduce it again.

One thing which I do remember is that people were complaining about the difficulty when playing on normal. As normal was for someone with at least some experience in any RTS very easy. Absolutely everyone should start above normal (whatever it was called), or set it even higher right away.

Kordanor said:

Hrm, I played it at release, so it's quite a while, but as far as I remember it the difficulty was decent quite early, at least playing on high difficulty. If it becomes too difficult then it might be time to reduce it again.

One thing which I do remember is that people were complaining about the difficulty when playing on normal. As normal was for someone with at least some experience in any RTS very easy. Absolutely everyone should start above normal (whatever it was called), or set it even higher right away.

Click to expand...

That was one of the issues for me. They had 2 difficulty levels, and I thought the normal setting was very easy. I felt that setting should have been labeled as easy and that there should have been another level in-between that one and "Hard".

That was never an issue in the original StarCraft because there was only 1 difficulty level and it was well balanced.

JDR13 said:

That was one of the issues for me. They had 2 difficulty levels, and I thought the normal setting was very easy. I felt that setting should have been labeled as easy and that there should have been another level in-between that one and "Hard".

That was never an issue in the original StarCraft because there was only 1 difficulty level and it was well balanced.

Click to expand...

Just looked it up again. So there was "Normal", "Hard" and "Brutal". I finished it on Brutal but with heavy saving and loading, which probably is not fun for most players.
"Normal" is extremyl easy. Hard should be just right though.

Kordanor said:

Just looked it up again. So there was "Normal", "Hard" and "Brutal". I finished it on Brutal but with heavy saving and loading, which probably is not fun for most players.
"Normal" is extremyl easy. Hard should be just right though.

Click to expand...

They must have patched in additional difficulty levels later on because there were only 2 at release. Unless "Brutal" was something you had to unlock.

It was available right at release. There were also additional ones, but these were below normal, so I have no idea.
I made this screenshot in August 2010

Release was 27th of July 2010

JDR13 said:

They must have patched in additional difficulty levels later on because there were only 2 at release. Unless "Brutal" was something you had to unlock.

Click to expand...

From what I remember from release there were at least 3 difficulties: Normal, Hard and Brutal. I know I played first on Hard and then on Brutal. There might have been more below Normal.

There are additional difficulty levels for the skirmish modes, and I think they might be named differently as well. For the campaign, I see 4 modes mentioned when I do a Google search.. Casual, Normal, Hard, and Brutal.

I don't remember all those modes being available at release, but even if they were, it doesn't change the issue I had which was the difference between Normal and Hard. I felt like there should have been another level in there somewhere...some kind of middle ground.

Well, having more difficulties is never a bad thing.
But tbh it's hard to get it right for everyone.
Personally I find most games too easy on the hardest difficulty as I like to have real challenges in the games, which I might need to give several tries.
But I don't think that SC2 is a bad offender here. Compared to Divinity: Original Sin 1 for example, which was absurdly easy even in the hard mode and even when adding artificial extra difficulty by not saving/loading in combat and not using special arrows and potions.
ofc difficulty levels and curves in RTS Games are also easier to do as players don't have so much room to break the game.

Archangel said:

You have not answered my question. Each of the 3 campaigns has something between 20 and 30 missions. You said you quit by 3rd. So you say it is all boring and tutorial based on 3 missions out of 80 to 90? Acting like a little kid much?

Click to expand...

Let me clarify. What I mean to say is that my experience with the first few missions of the first campaign felt like a lengthy tutorial that seemed to drag on, not that the entire first campaign itself was a long tutorial. It also had an unfortunate side effect of being boring to me.

Subsequently, I think if the campaign spends 1/2 or 2/3 the time teaching you how everything works, then that's a strike against it in my book.

I can't comment on the other two campaigns because I never played them. Why would I? I never finished the first. To judge them all, despite only playing the original, would be unfair to the game. Additionally, you can't fault someone for not playing the other two if they didn't enjoy the first - that's unfair to them.

There's no need for personal insults. I'm willing to clarify my statement and clear up some confusion. I'm not out to get you because I don't enjoy something you probably do.