I literally just finished all the DLC last night and this is pretty spot-on. It's still a shame DAI isn't the game I wanted it to be (at least W3 nailed it) but it was still a pretty solid ending that answers a lot of questions I didn't even know I had.
I'm excited to take Tevinter by storm in the next one!
I'm a big Blizzard fan but I've never enjoyed RTSes. I really enjoy the progression aspect of WoW, Diablo, and even Hearthstone. Whether you're leveling up, collecting gear, or discovering new cards - you're building a character or deck.
Whereas StarCraft just seems like a series of missions that mostly just unfold the same way. You start with a little HQ, you send out gatherer units, you use your gathered stuff to build some armies, then you send your armies out to fight other armies and if you win you get to move onto the next mission where you'll build up another base and another few armies and so forth.
Am I missing something?
Well, it's a gameplay loop interspersed with bits of story. In abstraction, it's not really any different from most other video game campaigns. And they do try to vary the actual objectives of the story missions.
The progression in Starcraft is you getting better at the game. Same way Chess is a good game despite not earning xp or perks for your pieces that carry over into new games. They're saving that for Chess 2.
The Starcraft II campaigns have a bunch of progression, when it comes to new units and modifying them as you go on. Your force grows more powerful as you move on through. Heart of the Swarm even had you building up Kerrigan's abilities.
Not far in this one yet, but the previous two have had a bunch of variety as far as missions go, too. Some were build a base and kill some guys. Or try to take down a train. Or fly this battlecruiser through hostile space. Or harvest resources before the planet erupts. Here's a handful of heroes. Here's an infinite amount of banelings. Purge a place during the day, defend your area against zombies at night. Last stand against an overwhelming force. There's a lot of different stuff in these campaigns.
If you're talking about multiplayer, you have a base on various maps and games can unfold in tons of different ways. But building a base and taking out our enemy is essentially what competitive games are like. Variety there comes from what your opponent does.
Yeah, just to add in to what the guys already said, what you're describing pretty much describes the competitive MP aspect though at high level matches there's a lot more to it than that (e.g. timing, optimal tech progression, micro and macro-management).
The campaign however while it does have missions where you're doing the base building that you described it is mostly objective based, has a lot of variety and not all of the missions even have base building. Plus, there is progression that can improve your units and buildings such as improved armor on certain units or improved skills or unlocking of skills (e.g. medics heal faster, reapers gain anti-personnel mines, goliaths can fire at both ground and air units simultaneously) or new units/buildings.
About 11 minutes in, Brad goes over the very beginning of the unit progression.
I'm so disappointed he just glossed over the return of dragoons. I HAVE RETURNED!
Some jerk stole my nuke so I put on my motherfucking grenade launcher and my "fuck you 1-shot-kill" sniper and KILLED EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HIS SOLDIERS THEN DANCED ON THEIR GRAVES!
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