StarCraft Adventures

Bumping this post because the creator of the campaign just posted a topic finishing this series and I wanted to send everyone my thoughts on it where it could be most relevant(hopefully this is allowed and if not, my apologies).

(Note: Campaign was updated while I was writing this, so some parts might be outdated).

Campaign Review: StarCraft Adventures

"The Insurgent"(I):

Episode 1 - "Reconnaissance": A basic yet good first mission that gets you warmed up for the rest of the campaign in my opinion. I was caught off guard after I got my base setup due to the simplistic presence of the map, but once I was on the attack the enemy wasn't much shit for me.

Episode 2 - "Desert Conquest": Same thing with getting caught off guard, but more so with the cave near the starting base. I liked the day log in this mission as it reminded me of StarTrek, although being the slow and methodical player I am, the day counter went up to a pretty high number while I was playing which made me wonder how long exactly this story took place over the course of time.

Episode 3 - "The Last Colony": This mission was longer yet surprisingly more easy than the first two for me, but that might be because of the Siege Tank Hero(Jackson) or that I was more aware of what to expect now that I'm a bit of the way into the campaign. I found the natural expansion to be quite useful.

Episode 4 - "Intrusion": I enjoyed the labyrinth-like design of the terrain as it was both fun to run around in as well as offering something unique that the Blizzard Campaigns didn't do. Spider mines were pretty enjoyable for me to use here.
Episode 5 - "Underground": I liked the way the map design and story set up this mission as your units walking through these large and dangerous hallways as it seemed to have added a sense of mystery to the campaign that I often times don't see a lot in other custom content for StarCraft. I found it more fun to go the second direction after the first.
Episode 6 - "Rescue in Blue Pearl": The mission transitioned from me defending against the Terran Invaders' drops on my islands to them defending against my own which I enjoyed a lot. It was decided to do a D-day style assault for me to complete it.

Episode 7 - "Survival": The huge waves of Hostile Zerg were a challenge for me to defend against as I would lose lots of my units the moment I moved them out of position. I was not able to hold the area north of the Engineering Bay.
Episode 8 - "Burning City": I thought the concept of breaking a blockade to get to the other side of the map was pretty unique and cool, although it was hard for me at first due to my forces constantly getting flanked and locked down. I liked the fact that there's extra dialogue for wiping clear the entire map.

Episode 9 - "Assault on Khalos": It was nice for me to see that there was a natural expansion near Dr. Magnus' Science Group as well as another natural near Jackson's Expedition so that the player has more flexibility to decide which area they wanted to attack first. I might've had an easier time with this mission if I had attacked the science group from the left.

Episode 10 - "First Approach": I liked the concept that I was able to give resources to the Friendly Zerg so that they could morph more units although there were times that when I was playing that the Zerg wouldn't defend against the Protoss Camp's attacks even when its units were burrowed right next to them. The buffed stats on the enemy was a challenge for me to play against.

Episode 11 - "Sabotage": The start of this mission took me a few tries to get passed, but once I was able to hold my ground I slowly got to take out the Orbital Station Army and destroy their Field Generator. Getting Vespene was key for me.

I enjoyed the campaign's level design and thought that it did a good job at scaling the difficulty. Some aspects about its design reminded me of the official Blizzard Campaigns which I am a big fan of. The story in my opinion felt like it had a good amount of effort put into it and the voice acting was a fun time to listen to. I also took a liking to the writing as I thought it was both humorous as well as being good at explaining things to me so that I would become more engaged with what was going on and didn't become too confused. It feels as though to me that the terrain had a more tranquil vibe to it than what I'm used to due to doodad placements and the presence of a fair number of critters.

"Top of the Rocks" (II):

Episode 1 - "The Harvest": This mission was pretty straight forward like the first mission of "The Insurgent" and I had an easy time trying to beat it(even although I wanted to explore for other areas and optional dialogue). I liked the use of the Lurker Hero Unit as well as the idea of the Zerg Heroes raiding an area for cookies.

Episode 2 - "The City of Cnossos": I liked the RPG feel of this map as well as the optional objectives scattered throughout the city area. Freeing the critters from the enemy base was interesting and reminded me of Episode 8 of Star Wars.

Episode 3 - "Unleashed'': The appearance of Roarling had me interested, but for whatever reason I can't seem to recall ever finding or killing him. Other than that, I thought the map was pretty standard.

Episode 4 - "Fortress of Polaris": This was the first map that gave me trouble trying to beat as I tried numerous times to wipe out the two Protoss bases next to mine and was met with serious opposition consisting of large amounts of Dragoons. After trying to gather all the Nanobytes (Hero Reavers) resulted in little luck, I ended up going straight for the objective by dropping all my units on the low ground Terran Command Center at the lop left and rushing a handful of Zerg Drones with the Reserve Key to the installation(I plan on going back to this mission later to see if there is something that I missed).

Episode 5 - "Inside the Fortress": I liked the complex trigger usage of this mission although after playing this mission for over 2 hours trying to find all the secrets, I wasn't able to rescue the Zerg Hydralisks behind the room with the Spider Mines. It seemed like Boogie was supposed to be able to do something with the eggs to get in one of the rooms and clear the mines himself, but I wasn't able to figure out what exactly it was.

Episode 6 - "Fishing Day": Unlike Mission 4 I was actually now able to wipe this map, although it did take some time. I wasn't able to get much use out of Horner's reinforcements although they were appreciated(having a Zerg Insulator to keep the Element 115 cold was also pretty cool[emphasis on "cool"]).

Episode 7 - "Law of the Jungle": After attempting this mission for hours, I was unable to fight my way through anywhere in the enemy prison due to the amount of Units being thrown against me. I then had Zion (Dark Templar Hero) sneak around the edges of the prison to get to his carrier which was later used with a few Zerg Guardians to break the defenses at the top right of Taurok's Cell(also had to do a quick swipe with an Overlord).

Episode 8 - "Entering the Epicenter": It was enjoyable for me to see the mechanic of needing to pay a neutral computer in order to keep them on good terms. The ability to produce Terran Units this mission was very helpful along with the abundant amounts of resources scattered throughout the bottom of the map.

Episode 9 - "Metamorphosis": The sparseness of the map as well as the use of Spider Mines made this mission a fun challenge. I found that I was able to keep the Brown Protoss Ally alive even although if it was just barely.
Episode 10 - "Red Eyes": I attempted to wipe out this entire map, but was not able to do so because of the amount of large attacks being launched at all my bases(this was also made harder by the constant nuke drops). I once again had to cheese the objective by attacking Magnus's Starports after destroying all of the Synod.

The campaign for me overall was a solid one and very challenging in the later missions. The vastness of the maps as well as the huge attack waves made it so that I found Zerg Nydus Canals very helpful. I liked all the different Zerg characters that were used although I wasn't able to see what happened with some of them like Azul and Roarling. The name changes that were used in some of the missions were able to give my immersion when there was meant to be given a different impression of some of the units. I enjoyed playing.

"Restoration" (III):

Episode 1 - "Initiation Rite": I consider this map to be pretty straight forward even though the terrain layout is slightly different from what I've seen in most campaigns(I like the design of the ruin walls protecting the outside of the Yellow Star base). I like the way the story begins as it is simple yet builds a lot of intrigue.

Episode 2 - "Path of Light": The beginning of this mission was slightly confusing due to me trying to sneak attack Yellow Star on the path leading to the starting base and allow the rest of my starting force to pass(this was mostly because the enemy was able to detect my Dark Templar moments after the attack began[I can't remember if it was a ComSat or an Overlord]). I decided to simply rescue the starting base with the Dark Templars and come back for the units later before fighting my way around the map(moving all my men around everywhere took a long time, but was still fun).

Episode 3 - "Ancient Knowledge": This map was structured really well in terms of gameplay as it was easy enough for me to beat, yet I still had to pay attention to what was going on as the enemy attacks in multiple directions and makes use of the terrain well. I decided against expanding to the Vespene Geyser as it was very close to where the enemy sent its primary attacks from and instead expanded north so that I could attack to its bridge before fighting my way to and destroying the main Yellow Star base.

Episode 4 - "Tesseract": This mission took me a long time, but I had more than enough resources to complete it without problem. There were areas that were too tight for me to send the armies of the size that I was so I ended up using multiple small armies to attack all across the map.

Episode 5 - "Horner's Tribulation": The setpieces on this map were enjoyable although I wasn't quite sure what the Mercenary meant when they were talking about how to avoid the Spider Mines(if that was what they were talking about). The traps on this map made things slightly more difficult and even more so at the end.

Episode 6 - "Vulcano": I lost a lot of units on this map by both defending and attacking the enemies(I've forgotten to record how many units were killed for me and the AI). This was the first map of this episode that I wasn't able to clear out as I started to run out of resources near the end and couldn't attack the Infected Zerg on the northern and southern mesas.

Episode 7 - "Dunes of Blood": Even after taking the two free expansions on the map, I wasn't able to take out either part of Ravoc's Guerrilla after attempting to for a few hours(although I still plan to attempt to later as I still feel that it is possible). I decided to weaken Ravoc's Guerrilla(Orange) defenses as much as I could to allow my probes to sneak in and extract the files.

Episode 8 - "The Prophet": Real intense start for me mostly because of the small amount of mineral fields. It seems like the best strategy here would be to go for the kill on green's base fast as it was easy for me to get overwhelmed by superior numbers.

Episode 9 - "Memorial": I was confused by the objectives at first, but if the player is paying attention to the story, then they'll know which base to hit out of the 4 for the Wurjite, which is a design decision I really enjoy(although I didn't figure this out until I tried attacking the other bases). Although the enemy makes good use of spell casters, the player might find it useful using their own.

Episode 10 - "Light and Sword": I lost all the free expansions I took except for the one with the gas geyser, which I held onto with a lot of Photon Cannons as it was the most essential to me(I was surprised by how quickly the enemy was reinforcing). This mission turned into a meat grinder for me with an estimated body count of over 2,373 kills(I felt this along with the huge and complex map design made this a worthy final mission).

Most of the enemies in this campaign seemed to be designed with spreaded out bases so it took me some time trying to move across the battlefield and take them out(although I don't think this is bad level design). The enemies also seemed to send a constant stream of attacks as well as early attacks so I needed to have men stay on guard and keep my bases defended at all times. The early nuclear strikes also meant that I myself had to pay attention to what was going on as opposed to just relying on guards and static defense. The second half of the campaign gave me lots of trouble trying to beat(I had to rely on trial and error a lot by making numerous saves). This was largely because I was outmatched as the enemy has access to more of the tech tree as well as upgrading faster than I was able to.

The story was pretty good as it seems to create a slight tension between some of the characters, primarily Damocles. It left me wondering what was going to happen and gave more of a drive to wanting to complete the campaign. I like the way that the characters were introduced as it wasn't how I'm used to seeing characters being brought into stories. The character behaviors also got me more invested into them as I was curious to know more about them and their intentions. These characters(outside of myself) also all seem to have unique voices which I felt made them more interesting.
The terraining and doodad placement is also very good as I felt that it looked pretty realistic as it allowed me to become more immersed with what was going on. I had fun exploring and figuring out how to establish my bases in these maps. Besides from just the look, the terrain also offers a fun way of playing a traditional StarCraft campaign as I was able to put to use usual strategies in different ways(for example, in Restoration (III), Episode 6: Vulcano I used multiple clumps of Photon Cannons to defend the expansion where I took out the Infected Zerg[White] as I needed to keep a constant income so I could continue to defend heavy attacks while still having enough units do heavy attacks without spending too much). It's always fun for me to see new environments, although map design looks sometimes geometric on the map preview(this isn't a problem though). It is personally recommended to other people to try it out.10 out of 10.

StarCraft Adventures

Completed

Ongoing

Upcoming