4/5 ★ – Becix's review of StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void.

[SPOILER ALERT!] This was a long campaign. I liked it more than both HotS and WoL, both from a narrative and from a gameplay perspective. *THREE THINGS I LIKED* + Playing this in brutal, I had a lot of tension on that helped to better immerse myself in the universe. Protoss in this game undergo a really tragic odyssey, seeing their own kind being corrupted by an evil god and their own people being destroyed by his forces. Shakuras exploding was really of effect, Zeratul dying too. And brutal difficulty made me feel the tension that the different races of the game were feeling. + The missions of the game are really well structured, diversified and funny to play. They were really functional to the plot and there were not pointless missions like in WoL. Just like in HotS, Artanis has to make a new army to destroy a big enemy. The epilogue missions were good too, with the hardest mission of the game being there (even harder than the last mission of the regular campaign!) + The army customization was the best of the three games. It didn't limit your forces' might as in HotS by giving you limited upgrades for your units (all units already have the possible upgrades!), and lets you modify which units you can use mission to mission, letting you try everything and increasing a lot the pool of strategy you can use. Some units are surely less useful than others, but many of them are on an equal level and are equally funny to use. *THREE THINGS I DID NOT LIKE* - Amon's a pretty basic villain, Marvel-like. This did not bother me, since he's an evil god being evil. But the things that bothers me is that his motivations would've been interesting, if only they were better explained. Why does he want to stop the infinite cycle? Is that because dying and resurrecting is too painful for him? That would be interesting, but let me feel more his emotions, his motivations! He's handled in a pretty bleak way. - Again and again, the goddamn retconning. Just as I didn't like really much primal zergs, I didn't like a bit the Purifiers. Just now we come to know that the Judicators made secret IA experimentations that were abandoned and make illegal on a distant planet. But that's just dumb. Protoss, as they were presented up now, were a really conservative species with high technology but still high spirituality. Them developing an advanced I.A. thing is just a bit off. Let the terrans mind the I.A. And why judicators would develop those? This wasn't really explained either. It just felt like a retconning thing because they didn't know what other protoss factions add and to make some fanservice by adding a Fenix-I.A. And again: when the hell the I.A. was made? Just after Fenix died as a Zealot? So you're telling that during a goddamn zerg infestation the Judicators were making I.A. experimentations in a far, forgotten planet? Even if in SC1 they were highly focused on Aiur and on trying to process Tassadar and Zeratul? Especially when the two protoss campaigns are really near in time one another, soon after fenix becomes a dragoon, Tassadar dies and the SC:BW campaign starts. Another retconning is that Tassadar was an Xel'Naga. That is a big retconning. It's clear that this wasn't the case in SC1, or even in WoL. It's just a big bomb dumped there, and never explained. It would've been a nice plot-twist, if there were forshadowing in SC1, but story-writers never thoght the story would go so far. - Overall, the SC II is not so original or overwhelming. Brood War was much more interesting and cool, even if SC itself is a bit of a rip-off of Warhammer 40k. But Brood War made everything interesting by adding conspiracies, treasons and many different alliances in 30 missions. A big god-like enemy such as Amon is hard to use effectively. Indeed it ends like a fairy-tale, "all lived happily ever-after". It feels like SCII has nothing to tell anymore, Zergs are good now, Protoss are unified and again live on Aiur, the evil dictator Mengsk is died and his son is making a new era of Peace and Prosperity. All characters are bland an plainly good-aligned. The only really interesting one is Alarak that is more grey and realistic (he even refuses to join the unified protoss). In terms of plot and storytelling, everything is mediocre. But SCII has been a big part of my life, and I'm overall attached to it. The campaign itself is really well-designed, missions are fun and SCII remains one of the best RTS games out there, so I give it 4 stars instead of 3/3.5 because of these totally subjective things.