Despite the scathing reviews of the inept stories that was featured in WoL, in my humble opinion, HoTS was not bad.

This might be due to the lack of contrived humor regarding the retarded news channel whereby Blizzard had to input to justify killing Mengsk's marines maybe?

Still, the plot was as predictable as the cannon rushes on my account. But still, i would rate the campaign as "not bad".

For those who haven't played I suggest not reading this as i'm basically typing my thoughts as i play though the missions.

For those who have and wish to see a fellow starcraft fan's opinion well then click away and enjoy the moments of HoTS relived in font format!

+ Show Spoiler +

Planet 1: Wow. Valerian has absolutely no emotion. Oh the irony, hellbats would make this mission impossible. I guess thats why Raynor is leading and not Valerian.

Archangel reminds me of the Smashcraft game i played in the past. One of the heroes named Omni has pretty much the exact same spells but wayyy cooler.

I know Raynor's gonna be alive but PLEASE let him stay dead that would so be epic

Damn, i knew i should have saved Nova in WoL. (Anyone who reads this, do you get a secret mission if you picked Nova in WOL? would be good to know thanks!)

Planet 2: Alright! Char people! Maybe because their Zerg and the fact that they had no intelligence or free will that i forgive the conversations between Kerrigan and Zagara. Holy hell, Abbatoir is the zerg. You should be playing him instead. Way better personality then the nerd guy in WoL.

You'd think after the 3rd gorgon battlecruiser Mr Warfield would maybe have another plan? Bad general is bad.

IMO, they should have allowed you the choice of sparing the troops rather then a short cut scene but thats just me. Or maybe they just removed that choice think because of the fan outcries. I felt it was interesting though, still this current path is ALOT better than WoL.

Planet 3: Primal Zerg Planet
Wow, Darwin's Island is the birth place of zerg. Lol, the Ancient One looks like a Diablo monster.

De Hakkar is Bruce Lee. Be like water my friend

Oh look my mission is to kill the 3 prime evils and Belial himself.

Planet 4: Protoss Planet

Golden Armada. Well with the current patch I understand why Kerrigan is shitting her pants. Fucking voidrays.

Wow, rule 34 on the protoss chick and the strange snake queen of blades thing inc.

Ridley Scott is gonna sue.

Wow, I guess with Kerrigan being good now Protoss needs a zerg enemy in Legacy of The Void. Way to set it up Blizzard!

Planet 5: OH SNAP STUKOV. HE WAS IN LIKE THE FREAKING OLD CONSOLE GAMES LOL. I thought blizzard forgot about that guy. Does that mean the red archon boss is back too? oh wow so Stukov is canon and dark archons are completely forgotten. wtfblizzreally?

You know i'm wondering, why doesn't kerrigan just take the zerg away from aiur and let the protoss have their planet back. that would ease alot of tension imo

MaestroSC

United States2073 Posts

March 15 2013 05:36 GMT

Dont understand the hate.

I enjoyed it, and enjoyed SC and SCBW and enjoyed WoL... the campaign was def easier than WoL on brutal, but I thought the story was interesting enough for me to keep playing it and wanting to know what happened.

Even then, critiquing HotS campaign is silly, because we are in the middle of a story. We are getting the ending with LotV... and its hard to critique a book/movie only halfway through. IMO

ePdeLay

Australia220 Posts

March 15 2013 09:26 GMT

dark archons will most likely come in LoTv. Clam down yo

Kuni

Austria765 Posts

March 15 2013 10:16 GMT

On March 15 2013 14:36 MaestroSC wrote:
Dont understand the hate.

I enjoyed it, and enjoyed SC and SCBW and enjoyed WoL... the campaign was def easier than WoL on brutal, but I thought the story was interesting enough for me to keep playing it and wanting to know what happened.

Even then, critiquing HotS campaign is silly, because we are in the middle of a story. We are getting the ending with LotV... and its hard to critique a book/movie only halfway through. IMO

If two parts of a trilogy are shallow, then it doesn't matter what the third part will be. Those two parts are still fucked up. You can compare it to reading Lord of the Rings and giving critique about book 1 and book 2. That's perfectly normal and not hard at all.
The missions were fun and diverse, but the story was something to be expected of writers, who work with and are on par with Browder and Kim. It was horseshit. The Korhal finale was pathetic and anti-climactic. Mengsk was a joke. The dialogues were superficial and none of the characters apart from Abathur are memorable. None of the villains had any personality other than "I'M GUNNA KILL YOU KERRIGAN!" and Narud was given one cool looking video sequence, but talked worthless trash the rest of the time and proved to be almost as anti-climactic as the Mengsk finale.
They even made Zeratul into a trash character.

They're telling us "HEY GUYS, Amon is coming back!! Oh and btw, the other villains turn out to be a joke."

esReveR

United States566 Posts

March 15 2013 13:37 GMT

I wish Narud had shape-shifted into Duran at some point in that cut-scene ='( Really loved Stukov making a cameo return though.

SgtSlick

Australia92 Posts

March 17 2013 07:47 GMT

brutal was too easy and the campaign in general was too predictable. Too many missions were similar to WoL missions! Overall thought WoL campaign was far better. Beat the whole campaign on brutal in like 8 hours..

Aerisky

United States12128 Posts

March 17 2013 08:15 GMT

Seems like it was more fun to play than WoL generally (maybe just because a campaign with zerg units is just more fun to mess around with), but I have yet to hear anything good about the story etc.

Grumbels

Netherlands7028 Posts

March 17 2013 23:42 GMT

I don't know what to think of it. I felt like the entire campaign achieved very little, because it is largely concerned with undoing the story events at the end of WoL and the start of HotS. It is divided into chapters with switching perspectives, so it would be too much of a downer ending for Jim Raynor to be captured at the end of WoL, but it's a story event that really is part of WoL. HotS then is mainly Kerrigan restoring to zerg form, recapturing her brood, learning about the Fallen, saving Jim Raynor and killing Mengsk. Mengsk's death is the only thing that actually moves the story forward; we already knew about the Fallen, Narud was quickly disposed of, Zerus is just a plot device to give Kerrigan her powers back. It's all perfectly predictable too.

I found some of the aspects to the story very disturbing though. I think it succeeded into compromising all the characters without really reflecting on this. Valerian has very little personality, but it's not clear to me why he would so easily put his father to death and why others trust him and why he would trust Kerrigan and would agree to using the zerg as a mercenary army to assault in such a way that would kill thousands if not millions. And the latter so easily deciding to control the swarm, to give up her humanity. Jim Raynor trusting Kerrigan when he was betrayed the last time.

I also thought the techno babble for the zerg evolution was a bit annoying, since this isn't really how evolution works. (eating essences isn't evolution) I guess this is acceptable though, after all, it's only a video game story targeted towards younger people.

For the missions, Brutal was pathetically easy and it's a real disappointment and yet another sign that Blizzard often doesn't take the competitive community seriously. Brutal has to be easy enough so that it's doable for people that don't know SC2.

And I guess a lot of the missions were cool, but I don't think there were more or better interesting concepts than the design in WoL.