StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

When I play Legacy of the Void, I am amazed at how much fun I get to enjoy the latest version of this six-year-old RTS, an ever-increasing pleasure. Maybe it comes from the way each of the episodes was thought of: Wings of Liberty had to redefine the standards set by Starcraft and Brood War. For its part, Legacy of the Void simply had to be a very good version of Starcraft 2 and it is!

Legacy of the Void offers quite a few new things, especially for those who have been frustrated by the ladder and the high level of competition that previously defined Starcraft 2. Without compromising the competitive side, this expansion offers a lot more to do for casual players once the campaign is over.

Brothers in arms

Co-op missions are a great surprise that's particularly fun to play, especially thanks to the mission design and unique heroes that offer their own additions for all three races. There is one, particularly well thought out, which places you with your buddy in co-op in control of a base in the center of a map and you will have to stop the attacks which come simultaneously from two fronts, whereas you must in at the same time intercept enemy convoys. This is possibly the best mission in the Starcraft 2 campaign since Dusk Till Dawn Zombie Battle in Wings of Liberty.

Army variations and progress bonuses allow you to refine the possibilities each time. Playing as Swann, the Terran Mechanized Engineer, for example, is completely different than controlling any other Terran army might be. Only Swann has access to high-tech armored units and defenses, albeit relatively expensive, which makes his army incredibly powerful, despite the consumption of resources beyond measure. Learning how to use each hero well, and trying out higher difficulty levels, makes co-op really interesting.

Co-op carries over to PvP multiplayer, and while Archon mode probably doesn't change your mind about multiplayer, it's a fun option. Sharing control of a single base (and an army) with a friend is a more sociable, sometimes frustrating, but always fun way to play the same fast, yet ruthless RTS that Starcraft 2 is. can't say I've always been on the same page as my ally, and Archon mode has made me miss more spells than it has allowed me to pass games. Nevertheless, I had fun each time. This doesn't necessarily make Starcraft a more accessible and easier game to play, but it does allow you to enjoy it with friends when playing online.

A new armor kit

Legacy of the Void brings new units to each race, but some have such issues that I haven't been able to use them as much as I would have liked. The Adept forms the basis of the Protoss army early in the game, using his bizarre teleportation to create new strategies, just as the Liberator can for Terrans. But I had a hard time finding a place for the Ravager in my Zerg armies or not getting bored when using the Protoss Disruptor. Interestingly, both of these units require a lot of micro-management and they can be a real annoyance if you don't know how to manage them. For an average player like me, hit-and-run units like the new Cyclone are new ways to get into trouble when I'd better run away with a bit more classic build and Ancient.

Legacy of the Void turns old, familiar units into something much more exciting. I don't know if the Navel Carrier will be used a lot in competitive matches, but I clearly had a good time using its new ability (Freeing Interceptors), to launch waves of suicide bombers shooting all over the place. while my Carriers retreated. And since games get off to a quicker start with Legacy of the Void's new economy and starting positions, I got a feeling of more freedom and opportunity to be able to use some weird and surprising builds.

Why be so serious?

The campaign itself is very good, with a lot of options, all classes, for modifying your armies (choosing between three variations for each unit as the options unlock) and improving your ship, the Lance of Adun. In each of the twenty-two missions, you can request the intervention of super abilities from the Spear of Adun, such as a temporal disruption that freezes enemy units in place while yours smash them to pieces. You can also summon a mechanical clone of an ancient Protoss hero to wreak havoc on the battlefield for a short time.

The single player (or co-op) mode is also where you can find a lot of special units for each faction. The mighty Dragon, who was the base unit of the Protoss army in Starcraft, returns in this campaign, as does the Dark Archon from Brood War, who can control units and turn them against their own army. It's really cool to use these units, especially since they are not balanced for the competitive I, but rather fun for their astonishment.

However, I have to warn you that the Protoss are a beast to play. The game is endlessly serious and serious. The characters use language that would have its place in the bible, or in a faithful adaptation of the Silmarillion, speaking of a war against an ancient evil. It made me miss the days of Wings of Liberty, when I was walking with Jim Raynor aboard the Hyperion.

But the missions nonetheless provide a lot of fun thanks to a mixture of infiltration, search and destruction, as well as passages through checkpoints. They are much more traditional than those of the innovative Wings of Liberty campaign, remaining the showpiece of the series in terms of mission design and campaign structure. However, I was not as bored in the missions of Legacy of the Void as in those of Heart of the Swarm, too focused on the hero. I wish there was something between the walk in normal difficulty mode and the enormous challenge of hard mode. Anyone is able to finish the game in normal mode because it suffices to use their units en masse without necessarily thinking as there are resources to get there. In hard mode, all perks are taken away from you, and the number of enemies in Zerg territory explodes.

I approached StarCraft II: Legacy of The Void, therefore, with a pleasant sense of challenge and sighing already missing Kerrigan. How wrong I was. The epic created by Blizzard kidnaps from the first mission and bewitches the player in a merciless way, dragging him into a whirlwind of apocalypses foiled only at times, accompanying him in bombastic proclamations of honor and glory worthy almost of a chivalric narrative à la Ivanhoe. Artanis, the hero whose deeds, hierarch and de facto leader of the Protoss alliance is being followed, leaves after a disastrous attempt to regain his birthplace in an Odyssey that takes him to every corner of the galaxy in search of allies and new technologies to face the apocalypse embodied by the god Amun.

The quality level of Blizzard productions is now known, so it is definitely not new to expect films that are well managed and capable of giving more than a thrill to the player. To change is the game setting compared to the previous expansion, Heart of The Swarm. If the previous chapter was focused in many cases on Kerrigan protagonist, seeing her involved in some clashes almost worthy of a RPG, the feeling of Legacy of The Void is more focused on the concerted efforts of numerous individuals placed in a desperate situation. It is therefore no longer a matter of the story of a single charismatic character and of his endeavors for personal freedom, but of the deeds of an entire people, even with his heroes and prominent characters.

At the gameplay level this translates into more strategic missions, in which the wise use of each single unit counts more than the tactical positioning of individual heroes. Protoss mobility and their unique stun and infiltration characteristics go well with a game mentality that looks more to the entire battlefield rather than concentrating on mechanisms of simple resource collection and then pouring into a wave against the opponent . In fact, especially in some advanced missions, I was able to experience firsthand that focusing too much on what might have seemed brutal power turned into a Pyrrhic victory, with opponents who managed to easily make their way beyond defenses created with little criteria. In other words, the deployment to the centimeter pays much more than the strategy made famous by Starcraft of the "Zerg rush". After all, I'm Protoss, not Zerg.

The level of difficulty I found well balanced, with some peaks rightly positioned in the endgame, while the first missions gradually introduce the peculiar game mechanics of the Protoss. As in any previous chapter of Starcraft 2 also the Protoss have access to the customization of the units, favoring certain strategies over others. In fact, some units may be specialized to deal only with ground units more effectively than if they adapt to attack both ground and air units. You can also favor firepower or damage resistance, choosing between units with special abilities, or perhaps units without those powers but which counterbalance the handicap being able to come back to life after being defeated. Personally, I focused on this last choice, focusing a lot on the fact that an army able to stay on the battlefield for a long time could make the difference, but I imagine that every choice is valid or suitable according to your style of play.

Of course I will avoid any spoilers on the plot, but I can say without fear that this second and last expansion of Starcraft 2 will answer every question left open by playing the previous two chapters. All too often it happens that a video game saga leaves too many things unresolved, taking inspiration from cinema and television series, but Legacy of The Void skillfully avoids the risk by giving an adequate ending to each faction of the game, allowing in reality, in some moments, also to control units other than Protoss.

Also in the multiplayer component some changes to the game balance have been introduced. Attack speed and general damage have been changed (reducing the first one and increasing the second ones), and some special abilities have also been subtly modified: the impression we have is that we wanted to base the game on a greater and deeper micro-management of forces, disadvantaging and disadvantaging the accumulation of large army clusters. The intention is also to avoid typical downtime at the start of the game and achieve a state of constant conflict. The new units are quite interesting, and following the philosophy just expressed they tend to reward the careful management of the fight instead of simply giving a generic attack order.

MODUS OPERANDI
I unlocked the game thanks to a code received from the developer. I then proceeded to complete the single player campaign in full, having the opportunity to experiment in depth with this part, and I verified what the new features were from the multiplayer point of view. Whether you want to see the end of the story or if you want to dedicate yourself to the competitive multiplayer component, StarCraft II: Legacy of The Void is definitely a great choice.

More than five years ago, Blizzard decided that the long-awaited second installment of StarCraft would be divided into three episodes. This decision aroused much controversy at that time, but it also had its supporters. Thanks to this solution, we were supposed to get three very complex campaigns, each of which would focus on one of the three available factions: terranes, zerg and protoss. With the launch of Legacy of the Void, we finally had the opportunity to see the culmination of the epic trilogy and see if extending the life of the second StarCraft for at least five years was a good idea.

The story presented in Legacy of the Void continues the story of the Heart of the Swarm expansion, but this time we follow the fate of the galaxy from the perspective of the protoss, namely Artanis, the Templar leader. During the first mission, our hero leads his troops to his home planet Aiur to recover it from the hands of the zerg. This is the beginning of an epic story in which we will meet many well-known heroes and try to stop the "big bad guy" from destroying the universe. Unfortunately. While the first part of the series focused primarily on the conflict of three alien races, each of which had different goals and beliefs, the story presented in Legacy of the Void is a well-known story about saving the world. You will not find here any ambiguous situations, difficult choices made by the heroes or original twists. The goal of our hero is to unite all the factions fighting with each other, because only together they can defeat the eternal evil that threatens the fate of the universe. Haven't we heard it somewhere else? World of WarCraft fans get to hear this story roughly every two years with the release of each expansion pack, and Diablo III doesn't deviate too far from this simple pattern. Delegating one person to supervise the scenarios of all Blizzard games was probably not the best decision of the Blizzard, because Chris Metzen - the man responsible for the story layer of all the company's titles - is slowly starting to copy himself.

Despite the painfully predictable and clichéd story, Legacy of the Void could appeal to people who like epic space operas. As for a strategy game, in this case we are dealing with a really large amount of dialogue, and well-made cutscenes appear both before and after each of the 25 missions. In addition, as in the two previous installments of the series, between the tasks we can talk to the crew members of our ship and get to know the history of the race we manage. Unfortunately, it is not without reason that I used the phrase "you might like" at the beginning. The Legacy of the Void scenario could be considered correct, if not for the fact that the dialogues and characters created by the developers are at a reprehensively low level. Their quality is reminiscent of C movies or very poor teen shows. Almost all discussions between the characters are filled with comical pathos, which after a few hours ceases to be funny and begins to evoke an irresistible need to turn off the sound on the computer. Surprisingly, the game also tries to tackle some more interesting topics, such as the problem of clone awareness or the coexistence of different nations. Unfortunately, all these issues are dealt with quickly and smoothly by the hero Artanis, always having a simple solution that everyone agrees with. If you plan to play Legacy of the Void solely for the story, I recommend you be extremely careful. Reading a few spoilers can turn out to be a faster and less painful experience.

Fortunately, the new StarCraft is not a movie or book where the story is what matters most. In this case, equally important, if not the most important, is the gameplay, which is at a much higher level. The missions available in the campaign are inventive and varied. They have been planned so that the player does not get bored and has to alternately defend, attack or explore the map with a small unit of units. The game is also diversified by additional objectives and side achievements that can be completed in each mission. They force the user to play a bit more aggressively and combine more.

However, we already knew all the elements described above from the previous installments of the series. What is new, however, are the extensive trees of troops and the capabilities of our ship. The first tree allows you to modify each of the available units in a very significant way. We can, among others make zealots' attacks be area of effect and colossus lasers leave a wall of fire behind. Fans of the first StarCraft will also be pleased to be able to turn the trackers into iconic dragons, or the colossus into a caterpillar-shaped ripper. Similar modifications have already appeared in Heart of the Swarm , but this time there are more of them, they are much more important and, above all, we can change our decisions before starting each mission. Especially on higher difficulty levels, the ability to freely modify our army is a lot of fun and is of great importance. But that's not all. A completely new feature are the abilities of our ship in orbit, which we can use repeatedly during tasks. They allow you to quickly place a pylon on the area discovered by us, carry out an orbit attack or immobilize all enemy units for a short period of time. As in the case of modifying units, the selection of abilities depends on us and we decide which ones will be most useful to us during the task ahead. The large number of decisions we can make before each mission is definitely an advantage of the latest StarCraft .

The carefully designed missions have their advantages, but unfortunately significantly limit the user's freedom and the possibility of tactical planning. It is difficult to predict enemy moves if they are completely independent of the rules of the game that apply to the player himself. It would not be a problem if there were several such missions, and unfortunately each of the 25 maps was planned this way. The new StarCraft forces you to follow one right scenario, and any deviation is mostly severely punished. However, it also works the other way around. The more detailed your opponent's movements are planned, the easier it is to trick him by taking advantage of all sorts of gaps. In the case of Legacy of the Void, such a vulnerability is the lack of a time limit. Most of the missions do not require any haste, so after creating the appropriate defense, we can produce the maximum number of units unlocked on a given map (they are usually the strongest) and easily defeat each opponent. This becomes especially absurd after unlocking Void Rays. An army composed only of these units becomes an impassable barrier for the computer opponent.

The new StarCraft is not only a campaign, but most of all a multiplayer mode, and we will find a lot of changes, improvements and additions in it. First of all - only "meat", i.e. one-on-one games. If anyone had the opportunity to see them during the beta test - there is no big surprise, but if you are just now launching Blizzard's strategy ... Prepare for a small shock. Probably the most important aspect of the pace of the game is to significantly increase the initial number of workers - thanks to this, from the very first seconds we have solid economic strength, which is enough to create the beginning of an army. Until now, most of the openings for each of the three available races were essentially the same - and the first two or three minutes were just the same. From now on, this problem disappears and, practically from the very beginning, we can start building, instead of summoning new waves of workers. This works perfectly and significantly increases our capabilities, and in combination with new units they simply increase the pool of available tactics.

Exactly - new units. How often they will be used by players is hard to say right now, but you have to give them credit for the fact that they are designed to fill a gap in each race. Personally, I have always spent the most time with protoss, and although I did not like the adept completely, I fell in love with the destabilizer at first sight. We received a total of six new "soldiers" (two for zerg, terran and protoss) and this, of course, also contributes to the deepening of the existing army compositions, which may turn out to be an impassable barrier for new players. StarCraf t has always had a relatively high entry threshold, and the ceiling with Legacy of the Void has increased further, but ... fortunately, novices are not doomed to learn everything on their own. The two new modes make it much easier to master the basics in a relatively "mild" atmosphere than before. Of course, I am talking about the archon mode and the so-called Allied Commanders. In the first one, we join forces with a friend and together control the same base - one person can, for example, focus on economic development, while the other on creating and improving the army. Playing this way allows you to gradually implement all aspects of the game with someone more experienced at your side, and this option will certainly appeal to those who take their first steps in the field of RTS.

The second mode, in turn, focuses on cooperation. By creating a team of two with another player, we are thrown on a selected map on which we are to perform a specific task - e.g. not allowing ships to fly or defeating a certain number of opponents. We can choose a total of six characters that we play during the game - they are simply recognizable heroes that we encountered during the campaign. Each of them has unique skills that allow easier and more comfortable playing with a given race. Of course, we don't get all of them right away - our leaders will gradually advance with each match, becoming more powerful with their armies. The challenges faced by players often require close cooperation (especially on a brutal level, they cannot all be done alone) and are quite varied, although they have one serious problem - they are relatively few. Due to the fact that the challenges are practically the same every time, the Allied Commanders will just get bored after a few hours of playing. Let's hope that in the future Blizzard will expand the pool of heroes and tasks, because the mode has a lot of potential, though not fully used.

It's hard to talk about balance in multiplayer games yet, because it's been a short time since the premiere and it will certainly be changed in the upcoming patches, but the opinions of most players are rather positive. Whether the game will attract new players and keep veterans long, we'll see in the coming months. One factor that can contribute to this is certainly the automated tournaments. They appear at regular intervals and can be played by players of all experience levels. However, you do not have to worry that in the first match we will encounter a player with several thousand hours on his neck. The matchmaking system is still in place in tournaments, so everyone should play against rivals of the same skill level. This is certainly an interesting variation to the slow climb in the ranking.