The history of StarCraft started nearly 17 years ago. It was then one of many real-time strategy games, albeit flavored with excellent multiplayer, a powerful sci-fi storyline and carefully balanced races. 2015 year. The once popular genre is breathing heavily, represented mainly by casual for mobile platforms and indie strategies. But the StarCraft brand is still strong, with a loyal fan base surrounding it as they await the finale of this epic saga. And these seventeen years of waiting were worth it.
StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void is the finale of a story that began in 1998. The composition of the heroes has changed little since that time: under the command of the players again are James Raynor, Sarah Kerrigan, Zeratul and Artanis, whose hands decide the fate of the universe. The second addon continues the events of StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm : the Dominion lies in ruins, Sarah and an army of zerg are looking for the mysterious Dark God - Amun, and the protoss under the command of hierarch Artanis are preparing for the return of their homeworld - Aiur. The game begins with the invasion of Aiur. Beware, there may be minor spoilers further down the text.
The invasion turns into a nightmare, when the fallen xel'naga Amun subjugates virtually the entire army of the protoss with the help of a neural network that connects them. Artanis, whose troops have suffered serious damage, is forced to retreat and find a way to defeat the Fallen and reclaim both his army and his homeworld. The entire main Legacy campaign, in fact, is focused on the war between Amun and Artanis.
In total, there are nineteen tasks of the main campaign in the game, plus three more tasks of the prologue and epilogue - a total of twenty-five missions. The main campaign ends the story of the Protoss, while the epilogue ends the entire storyline of the series, bringing the three races together and forcing them to work together. Unlike Wings of Liberty or Heart of the Swarm, where three or four missions fall on one planet, more than two missions take place in Legacy on a rare planet: Artanis, with the remnants of his army, is rapidly moving through the sector, almost nowhere lingering for a long time.
At first, the approach to planning the main part of the plot is unsettling. After the previous two games and the "Premonition of Darkness" prologue, players again find themselves at a broken trough: the army consists of three types of units, half of the buildings are missing, and you can get new units only by completing tasks. The decision is a little strange, but it fits into the general concept of "invaded the planet - lost an army - began to recruit a new one."
Much more surprising - sometimes unpleasant - is the very approach of the authors to the content of missions. There are quite a few tasks in Legacy of the Void, the general meaning of which boils down to one phrase: "Find and capture / destroy 3/5 of the objects, without this we will not be able to advance further!" Moreover, there are really enough such missions, and at some point even bewilderment arises: how much is already possible!
But Blizzard hasn't forgotten about the variety for which the previous installments were famous. Here you grab five energy cores to enter the ancient temple. In this task, the entire army is available to you, all the capabilities of the ship - in general, everything that your heart desires. The next mission, already directly in the temple, takes away from you both the base and support from space, leaving only a couple of heroes and a whole crowd of villains in your hands.
And there are enough such non-standard situations in the game. For example, how do you like the mission, where the main base moves around the map... along the rails between asteroids? Or a race with an orbital laser? The scenery, like the missions, is replaced one after another, and at a certain moment you begin to understand that it is pointless to scold StarCraft for having to clear some energy cores from enemy interference.
As in previous parts, between missions, players are free to roam their ship - in this part, the "Spear of Adun", the remnants of the technological greatness of the protoss. Here you can communicate with the crew, choose the types of units that will go on the next mission, the bonuses that the ship will give. The system has hardly changed: after collecting a certain amount of a special resource, solarite, during missions, you can improve the ship's reactor and unlock new skills.
In total, "Spear" has four active skills and two passives, and in each line you can choose one of three unique skills - that is, a total of eighteen different skills. These skills are a kind of replacement for the hero units that are actually absent in the game. With the help of one of them, for example, you can fry a whole crowd of enemy creatures to a crisp, and with the help of the other, you can speed up the passage of time for a building tenfold and quickly build an army. The skills of the ship, like the units, are unlocked as you progress through the storyline.
In terms of changing the units for "its own type of gameplay", the game is also doing well: Blizzard clearly listened to the requests of the players and provided the opportunity to "roll over" the type of troops before each task. Each unit in Legacy of the Void has three different variations, each with a unique ability. So, stalkers can be replaced with dragoons who disappeared after the first part. Dragoons, unlike their colleagues, do not know how to teleport and generally move rather slowly, but they are much stronger and stronger than their "jumping" counterparts. And the emitters of the Void (they are also "heating pads"), which in the original amplify the beam with every second, can turn into hellish starships, splitting and touching several targets at once.
Another important component of the "peaceful" moments on the ship is the dialogue between the characters. Artanis has a motley and colorful team: the tech-obsessed engineer Karax, who has been in the stasis of the century, adviser and keeper of Rohan's knowledge, the matrices of the dark templar Vorazun, who loves to argue on any occasion, as well as one sarcastic and cynical Templar named Alarak, who is the complete opposite of himself Artanis.
Artanis is an idealist who tries to save everyone and everything, throws pompous phrases right and left, and in general often behaves like the hero of some cheap action movie. Alarak, on the other hand, is cynical and malicious, loves to put Artanis in his place, who once again in dreams rushed off to win Aiur alone. Alarak appears, unfortunately, closer to the middle of the game, so by that time Artanis may seriously bore you with his pathos and idealism.
By the way, another fact is revealed in the dialogues between the characters: the protoss have no sense of humor at all, which is why the dialogues from the previous parts look more lively and natural in order.
If you put aside the story campaign mode and look at everything else, you will find some nice innovations and changes. One of the main ones is the cooperative mode, in which two players control the heroes of StarCraft and perform different tasks (we have already considered one of such tasks in our stream ). Players will have six tasks on different planets: you have to fight enemies and complete side missions. Sometimes you have to stop shuttles trying to escape, sometimes destroy trains, as in the Wings of Liberty story campaign.
Heroes in the course of completing tasks are pumped, you can hire powerful units and use more effective skills. This mode is not bad, but it lacks content: not only the maps and tasks themselves, but also the heroes.
The second important innovation is the "Archon" mode for multiplayer, which allows two players to control one base. This mode will not be new to the veterans of the series: it has already appeared in the Brood War add-on to the first part (only called Team Melee). But "Archon" is slightly different from what we saw in the original: the base can only be commanded by two people (and not four, as before), so the players will have to act much more harmoniously. This mode is great for training and demonstrating any tactics, but is unlikely to be a hit. But the very idea of cooperative management of one base is, of course, curious.
The balance of multiplayer has also been seriously revised. The changes are visible to the naked eye: workers at the start are given more than before, minerals at the starting bases - less than before, which will complicate the game "on defense", each faction received reinforcements (two units for each). Here, by the way, another gift from the developer Friv5Online Games Studio awaits you: the zerg were returned to the lurking spiders, well-known from Brood War, which, being buried, turn the ground armies of enemies into neat rows of minced meat. But, as before, the multiplayer mode is a test for the strong in spirit. Or for Koreans.
Legacy of The Void showed how a big story should end. Of course, the story of StarCraft does not end there: next year a mini-campaign about Nova will be released, and the developers will obviously be supporting the game with new maps, balance adjustments and other things for a long time. And in another ten years, we may see StarCraft 3. But this particular, without any modesty, the great story has come to an end. It's sad, but it's a pleasant sadness.