LogFAQs > #945793521

Alright, yesterday I spent a few hours finishing up Starcraft 2. I was actually knocking right on the door of the endgame, which is in three parts based around an invasion of a major Zerg planet, with Kerrigan on its surface. You can still buy upgrades between the final missions, but once you've started the first of them there's no going back to do any of the optional levels if you skipped them.

The first map is just a big, open area where you have access to all the unit types and have to push through Zerg-controlled territory. There are NPC units who will join you if you rescue them, but the overall goal is to reunite with the Dominion general under Prince Valerian, the big bad's son who Jim is working with. After a point, I stopped bothering to pick these guys up and just focused on the objective. I built a lot of marines, a lot of banshees, some vultures (they don't use vespine,) and finally gave the ghosts a shot. As predicted, nukes were pretty good for taking down enemy strongholds without a lot of trouble. There are actually frequent Zerg attacks on your base in this one, but you start out with both bunkers and siege tanks, so I only had to add a little more before my defenses were completely adequate to hold them off. The map does feel like a good test of everything you've learned so far.

For the penultimate mission, you can choose between taking out the Zerg's nydus worms (tunnels they use to transfer units across maps en masse) or their fliers. I chose the Nydus Worms because I thought it would be pretty annoying having enemies pop up at random places in the middle of my base. That mission is a no-build one where you have hero units of all the major characters on Raynor's team. It kind of feels like an extended break to let you decompress a little between the last big missions.

The final mission is a long defense map where you wait for the Artifact that's supposed to turn Kerrigan human again to charge up. The zerg attack you with everything they've got. I spent a lot of time at the 200 supply limit unable to build more units, but on the whole the map was kind of tough. I had to restart near the end a couple times.

I think I made the wrong choice by getting rid of the Nydus worms, because the enemy air force was pretty annoying. In particular, they have a flying bomber called the Brood Lord that outranges most defensive structures. It generally works to build missile turrets and bunkers in the more remote parts of the base so that your main standing army doesn't have to rush off when enemies show up there (which also reduces the number of areas the player needs to keep track of at a given time,) but when Brood Lords show up you have to respond. The best answer is to build a lot of wraiths. They can get around quickly and are specialized to taking out air units. The high-powered Battlecruiser also deals with Brood Lords pretty easily, and I did build a lot of those, but they also move slowly and I mostly kept them in the center of the map. Even without the Nydus worms, the Zerg can show up deep inside your base without pushing past your frontal defenses because they have these squid-like air drops. On my first attempt I would just scramble my armies to deal with them, but later on I decided to just build some defensive structures almost everywhere instead.

Kerrigan herself also shows up as a repeatedly spawning and fairly deadly boss. She has a move that can one-shot any mechanical unit for example, even the bulky battlecruisers. That's on top of very high HP and a lot of damage reduction. I would usually just push my main army of battlecruisers on her and accept some losses. Aside from the aforementioned units, I used a lot of marines, some siege tanks, and Thors. I tried out the ghost and nukes on one failed attempt, but didn't bother with them on my successful one.

In the end, the artifact really does seem to turn Kerrigan back, but Jim's buddy Tychus tries to murder her - apparently he struck a deal obligating him to do so before the game began, so that's the final payoff for an arc about his loyalty being questionable. Raynor has to kill his friend to save his GF and by extension, presumably, the galaxy.

The story is very much unresolved as of now, though - for one thing, Emperor Mensk is still in control of the Dominion, and the true threat of the Hybrid has yet to even appear outside of Zeratul's future visions. Those plot lines are obviously the stuff of the two expansions. Maybe I'll come to those in time. For now, though, I think it's time to move on to Halo. I know the online is a big part of the Starcraft 2 experience, but I feel like I'd want to practice against bots for a long time before I was even ready to try that, and I'm behind pace as it is.

Final Thoughts on Starcraft II still to come.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 9/129
Currently Playing: Halo: Reach