I have played the first seven or so missions of the singleplayer (eu release) on brutal difficulty and am suprised how much my playstyle has to adapt to the missions. Sometimes a single wrong decision seems to be gamebreaking and I kinda have to keep up macrowise, way more then I expected.

In general I can say as soon as I know how a mission "functions" I clear it without bigger troubles but to be frankly it feels harder to pull off than against 60% of the betaopponents I had.

I just wanted to know how your experiences with the difficulty are. Am I supposed to feel challenged? Or are you tearing through the missions thinking: "Easy as pie!"?

Anyways, have fun with the beta guys!

RisingTide

Australia769 Posts

July 27 2010 08:43 GMT

I've done ~22 missions on brutal, and i've got to say that the biggest difficulty is in figuring out the mission. Once that's done, it's usually a cakewalk.

agleed.agleed

Germany110 Posts

July 27 2010 09:03 GMT

how do you use mercenaries, lol?

jamesr12

United States1549 Posts

July 27 2010 09:07 GMT

the biggest tip i have so far is on the missons where theres only 1 base, dont build to many workers, there is no point in oversaturating if you are never going to maynard

Kiante

Australia7069 Posts

July 27 2010 09:20 GMT

i've literally never used mercenaries. As far as i can tell they'd only be useful if you were bad at macro, or got heaps of pickups

RisingTide

Australia769 Posts

July 27 2010 09:33 GMT

On July 27 2010 18:20 Kiante wrote:
i've literally never used mercenaries. As far as i can tell they'd only be useful if you were bad at macro, or got heaps of pickups

Actually the mercs are better than their standard unit type, so in missions where you're probably going to have to depend on a small group of units, mercs are good bang for their buck.

StormsInJuly

Sweden165 Posts

July 27 2010 10:23 GMT

Brutal was surprisingly difficult yeah. I'm trying to get all the bonus objectives and had to restart some levels several times (hardest so far was the "utter darkness" level where you have to kill 2500 zergs

Tozar

United States245 Posts

July 27 2010 10:56 GMT

Don't forget upgrades on Brutal! They are extremely important.

Wolf

Korea (South)3290 Posts

July 27 2010 11:03 GMT

On July 27 2010 19:56 Tozar wrote:
Don't forget upgrades on Brutal! They are extremely important.

Very true. I keep trying to tell my friends at the LAN to do it but they forget T_T

Pezeteros

Greece7 Posts

July 27 2010 12:55 GMT

#10

Playing on Brutal was a pretty pleasant gaming experiene for me.

Wasn't planning on playing on Brutal at the beginning but the Kerrigan avatar was just too sexy to pass, and what the hell, I can just get away with the campaign achievements anyways.

Hadn't played sc1, but would consider myself pretty veteran RTS player (ok not that important for single player but still) and was playing the Beta for a couple months, and got to say Brutal is pretty spot on difficulty for me, or anyone like me if he wants a challenging but far from impossible experience. I'll agree that the most important stuff is figuring the mission out (so if you tried the mission at lower difficulty, picking it up on brutal will be easier), but still like most missions can be beaten up in first try anyways, and you can also make use of the game's very nice auto-save feature to make up for nasty surprises.

Don't play too hardcore so haven't done that many missions, but how I do it is play the mission in Brutal up 1st, and also try to pick some of the normal-hard achievents for the mission as well, without going out of my way as much as to fail the mission trying to do it (many achievements you can do in insane as well, but some are outright impossible to do in brutal, and some other you can do one or the other, but kidna hard to pick up both in the same brutal mission (especially if you play it for the first time). Then I play it again on hard/nomal whatever needed to pick up the remaining achievemtens, looking just to be done with them asap so I can move on. If I fail hard I sometimes had to play same mission 3 times cause like I was careless in hard and lost a building (that was needed for the normal achievement) thus had to play it again on normal.

Be sure to select play again after game end, play thought the archive or to save progress after beating on brutal, load to pick up achievement fast if possible, and then load up again 1st game to go on normally, cause if you load a game to snipe an achievement and then move on then brutal won't be registered in the certain campaign game (obviously you will have the achievemnt towards the Kerrigan avatar, but jsut if you want to be a little more perfectionist).

Having played missions in all Brutal, hard and normal I got to say:

Brutal: Best playing experience easily if you like some challenge. Furthermore game on brutal has a much better feeling of the world. You really feel weak, endangered, and try to be on your toes. when you get zerged, you get ZERGED. You really feel like being in there fighting in a dangerous place. That's it if you actually enjoy single player, and a nice game world/atmospere. I reckon it would be even smoother for me if I didn't waste so much time trying to pick up normal/hard achievements by replaying missions and just played it. Maybe I'll skip other achievemtns and come back to do them later if I get too bored.

Hard: Still has a nice feeling, probably won't fail much but still goes nicely. Would be pretty nice mode to play if you like the lore and want to play the game but be done sooner cause you want to jump into multiplayer faster, or don't have time, or taking vacation ect.

Normal: Normal is outright BORING. it feels like sandbox mode with no suspense whatsoever and so little stuff going. If you only want to see the plot and the stuff fast, I'd rather use cheats tbh, unless you are someone with really limited RTS experience, I'd play it at least on hard.

What I'd like to ask others i how are the managing the order they play the mission. Do they like try to beat all one kind of a series in a row (like all colonial ect) or just jump from series to series. Myself I am doing the 1st approach but dunno if it really makes sense, or it even matter too much.

Ygz

England370 Posts

July 27 2010 13:09 GMT

#11

Brutal all the way, the only way to get a fully immersed experience imo.

How did you find Welcome to the Jungle on Brutal? It's been the most challenging so far.

GreEny K

Germany7312 Posts

July 27 2010 13:54 GMT

#12

I was watching a stream yesterday of the guy who had a SEA copy and he was having problems with 1v1 against AI. I think the game is just more challenging than BW was against AI's at least..

Ygz

England370 Posts

July 27 2010 14:00 GMT

#13

The AI is definitely good at prioritising what units to attack. My Medics go splat if I don't keep a close eye on them, same with my SCVs when trying to quickly repair a Turret/Bunker.

blackodd

Sweden451 Posts

July 27 2010 14:36 GMT

#14

Brutal is great !! I barely make it out alive in every game.

unit

United States2621 Posts

July 27 2010 14:47 GMT

#15

On July 27 2010 22:54 GreEny K wrote:
I was watching a stream yesterday of the guy who had a SEA copy and he was having problems with 1v1 against AI. I think the game is just more challenging than BW was against AI's at least..

yea 12/13yrs can sure do a lot for the AI ^___^

Latham

9570 Posts

July 27 2010 14:49 GMT

#16

Brutal is, well, brutal, just like the name suggests. I'm doing "Welcome to the Jungle" now in brutal. I'm getting raped so so hard it's not funny. I tried so so many things and none of them worked. But I like the challenge. I like how every mission is doable, and the bonus objectives are doable too. I remember CnC3 on hardest difficulty - it wasn't scaled at all. The bonus objectives were undoable in the last few missions of the game :| which really put me off. Glad to see that here they are well chosen, even for us brutals ^^.

Deleted User 31060

3788 Posts

July 27 2010 14:54 GMT

#17

not brutal, but I've only done 7 missions. I'm actually pretty disappointed at the lack of difficulty. For example, on the Great Train Robbery, the only difficulty is in finding all 6 diamondbacks, and not much else.

Oh well, I guess they can't expect everybody who buys the game to have played ICCup

NukeTheBunnys

United States1004 Posts

July 27 2010 15:00 GMT

#18

If you arnt on brutal why are you complaining that the game is not hard enough?

if you want it harder go to a harder difficulty

Tommylew

Wales2717 Posts

July 27 2010 15:08 GMT

#19

On July 27 2010 23:54 Sunyveil wrote:
not brutal, but I've only done 7 missions. I'm actually pretty disappointed at the lack of difficulty. For example, on the Great Train Robbery, the only difficulty is in finding all 6 diamondbacks, and not much else.

Oh well, I guess they can't expect everybody who buys the game to have played ICCup

Your not on brutal and moaning it isnt that hard?? Thats probably a sign to go on Brutal...