Yo, new video up. Once again, I apologize for my mediocre voice acting and stuttering of the cutscenes
Edit 1
While missions 3-6 will be up within the next few days, the rest of the missions will take a bit longer to record and upload. I need to update the editor which will take over a week if my internet doesn't cooperate.
Edit 2
And once again, new video up. Here you go
Edit 3
These edits are starting to pile up. Here's mission 4. Forgot to post about it last night
I may need to add a dialogue section for one of the future missions, just to give a little insight on their past experiences and things like that to expand your knowledge on them. I'll have to see if I can fit it anywhere.
Maybe do what StarCraft: Odyssey does and have lore pop-ups every time the heroes mention something about themselves or the world they live in. Or, put hidden lore objects in your maps that you can find kind of like what you did in mission 11 I think.
I don't know. Some people may not know that you can pause using F10, but a few people have asked me to make the cutscenes pausable.
That would also make it so the cutscenes are unskippable since they want to be able to pause by pressing ESC. I think you can also pause by pressing the Pause/Break key which is also a good way to pause the game.
A rebellion is an anti-government movement. That means they're trying to resist if not outright overthrow the government. As far as I can tell, they haven't been doing that. In fact, there has been barely any mention of the government in the story at all. We aren't shown that the CPG outright opposes the government which is why I don't think rebel group is the right term.
The CPG is more akin to a charity organization or an independent military. All they're doing is helping people that the government failed to help or chose not to help. They aren't necessarily working outside the bounds of what is considered 'legal'.
I said in the video that the word militia works better. It is defined as a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency. I think it fits rather well. And what makes it better is how a militia can also be part of a rebellion but it isn't restricted in that it can also be part of the government. It's the context that matters.
I read your comment on YouTube and will respond to it here for convenience.
I pause during cutscenes by pressing F10. I can't pause with ESC since it'll just skip the cutscene. (Wait other people can't pause during cutscenes?)
As for the way I read dialogue during cutscenes, I apologize for ruining the flow with my constant pausing to view the message log. I deliberately read the dialogue slowly since I'm trying to VA it. Using voices that you don't use in normal conversations tend to make your reading a lot slower. If I read it regularly the way Jayborino does it I'd probably finish quickly and have to wait for a bit before the next lines comes on screen.
My biggest problem is how long some of the lines are. If you've noticed, I only really falter on lines that are super long like Baldwin's explanation of what the CPG is.
Here's a little thing I learned from the professors I had in highschool: Only put two or three lines of text at a time in your slide show presentation. If you can't shorten the material to be only a few sentences long then just make lots of slides. The reason for this is because the brain processes information in chunks. Small chunks can be processed in a rapid rate while large chunks have to be broken down into smaller ones which makes processing it take longer. The same applies when reading dialogue.
While you can very easily sight-read everything in a three-line dialogue box in the amount of time that it's on screen, reading it aloud makes it tricky. There's additional processing time used for converting words you read into the movements your mouth has to make to speak them. In any case It's generally better to have lots and lots of short lines than one extremely long one. It makes it easier to speak those lines as well as to just read them.
Now, I'm not saying you have to do this. Much of the problem is me as well. I tend to stutter a lot, messing up my train of thought.
I've seen this problem a number of times, unfortunately. Just to clarify, it's not Red-lerred7. It's actually Redler Red7. There's a space in the middle that I'm not allowed to put in my user name. I'd have capitalized the letters but I'm so used to just having them be lower case that I forgot.
Yes. I was absolutely not playing it as intended. I could have probably gotten away with doing what I did on normal had I chosen to play that difficulty but on hard I was punished severely for it.
And what really made it worse was how easy Jayborino made it look. While no doubt I could devise an unorthodox strategy to win the mission (like in Maw of the Void where I could drop pod cloaked ghosts on the objective and nuke it to win a 40 minute mission in 10 minutes) with such limited tech options, I'm forced to micro my way through. I'm not really good at micro. I ended up misjudging the difficulty and the required level of skill and effort to win. Set myself up for frustration, I tell you.
As for the boss fight, by all means make it last ten minutes. I just don't want to be doing the same thing for upwards of 5 minutes at a time. I said that I liked how it ramped up as the boss lost health. My complaint was that Krayen couldn't lower her health fast enough. Let me rephrase that.
I wish it ramped up faster. I want things to change up as you kill the boss. I want a lot going on. That bit where she was throwing seven infested terrans at a time while shooting you before burrowing under ground? I really liked that for the first few waves. But then I had to do that over 10 times with little to no variations. That's what I meant when I said it was boring. It was just really really repetitive. Once you get a rhythm going, there isn't really anything else going on until the next phase begins. Make it as long as you want. Just have more phases that change things up more.
You still play better than me, buddy. Given the limited options, you still micro-ed your way through everything. I, on the other hand charged in like wild animal hoping to overwhelm them with numbers. A very Zerg-like strategy but not really viable when they have lots of choke points and perdition turrets
EDIT 1
Heads up. I'm uploading my playthroughs of the first six missions. Expect them to come out in the following week
I play once on normal and again on hard to see if my strat still works on a higher difficulty. I'll probably record it on hard mode if I ever get to doing that. Also, finding them isn't necessarily hard. You're just pressed for time so scouring the map for bonus objectives isn't really advisable, especially on your first play through.
Edit: I recently finished mission 6. To avoid double posting, I'm appending my thoughts to this post
A06 - So this mission was... well, hard. It's hard mostly because I avoided playing it the way I would play Heart of the Swarm - that is to say, rushing through the map with as little amount of units I can get away with until I get a big enough economy going to mass produce Roach-Hydra-Ling.
You cannot get away with that in this map. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The first micro section doesn't really have much going for it. Krayen, for the time being, is overpowered, oneshot-ing marines and such. The Zerglings you save are really only useful for killing buildings faster.
The macro section that followed was really fun and challenging. It was a little frustrating too but that was entirely my fault. Like I said, I tend to rush around with the units I start with while I drone or tech up. Of course since there's not that much resources or tech available, I'm at the awkward position of having to make Zerglings and Swarm Queens. Both units are very good but I just can't produce enough of them to my liking. If the queens had spawn larva or if the hatcheries made more than 3, I think I'd be in a better position.
The first bombing area was pretty straight forward. Go in, kill some dudes, get your stuff, get out. I played it pretty safe, not really pushing out until I had a sizable number of Zerglings and Queens. I could have probably pushed a little more aggressively since every unit in the area other than that Firebat and Hellbat would fall fairly easily to a swarm of Zerglings. Regardless, I got through with plenty of time to get some upgrades and more units.
A funny thing though. During one of my many failed attempts to record this mission, I was able to get all of my units to the second Hatchery but all of my Drones except for one (un)lucky survivor failed to get through the door in time. That lone Drone survivor got morphed into a Spawning Pool to make more Queens and Lings.
The second section was perhaps the most frustrated I've been playing this game since Amber Sun 9. Remember when I said the macro section was frustrating? This is the reason.
There was a spike in difficulty in this section that I did not expect. For one, there are more things you need to destroy in this area than the previous one and at the same time the area is significantly bigger, with the various objectives spaced out farther. There's a certain order you have to do this area or else you might end up having your entire army still fighting it's way to the gate while the timer is at 15 seconds.
Yes, that happened to me. Similarly, Krayen ended up getting sniped by a thor, many of my zerglings queens and roaches got fried by two perdition turrets strategically placed inside a choke point, and all my drones got killed by a large attack wave while I was on the other side of the map. A lot of things went wrong, necessitating a lot of save-loading. Very frustrating.
The third area I actually got through on my first try, which is actually the try that will be shown when I finally upload the video for this mission. I had a decent number of Queens and Roaches and pretty much steamrolled through every single enemy entrenchment with very few lost units. It was honestly kind of a step back from the difficulty of the previous area. I finished it fairly quickly, freeing the last Zerg and killing the last Terran building before getting attacked even once.
The boss fight, I feel, was kinda boring at the start. While it's understandable that it would ramp up in difficulty as it got lower and lower health but I feel like it had too much health. To me, boss fights should take, at minimum, 30 seconds, and at maximum, 5 minutes to kill - if not to kill at least to change things up. That bit with the Banelings was great. If that came up a little sooner instead of the last 2 minutes I'd have had a much better time.
Of course her health might not have been my biggest issue. It's probably just Krayen's terrible offensive capabilities.
Krayen was kind of a disappointing hero for me. I'm more used to offensive heroes like Kerrigan or Reeves. Krayen's more of a support hero. You can't defend your base or take down a defensive line with him alone. You instead use him to heal your forces and help target down priority targets. You use him to make a passable army into a formidable one.
And therein lies my problem. I'm forced to use a support to kill a boss. Yes, Krayen has good sustain thanks to his heal and yes he is able to kill the boss just fine. It's just that it takes him so long.
Anyway, rant over. Moving on.
That second micro section at the end where you had to help your Zerg forces push towards the Leviathan was one the second thing that frustrated me to no end. My recording of just that section is 25 minutes with loading times just from the amount of times I had to reload my save. It didn't occur to me at the time that I'm supposed to help my forces push. I thought they'd just distract the Terrans for me while I make my escape. Then, of course, I run into a huge mass of units that kill me before the drop pods come down on them and after maybe five or so times of dying from them I thought that maybe I was doing something wrong.
Fast forward to the last 5 minutes of my recording. I was tired. I was angry. I wanted nothing to do with the mission any more. I wanted it over. Finally, I managed to get six queens to that death ball and held for long enough that the combined forces of my queens and the drop pods were able to take all of them out, letting me reach the end of the section for the first time ever.
Should I have felt happy? Maybe. I didn't really feel accomplished. I just felt dead. Whatever fun the mission had was lost on me. I was too frustrated at that point to really care. And I don't really want to play this mission again, at least not on hard difficulty which was what I foolishly decided to play this mission on for my first play through.
I don't know what to say. Normally I'm a lot more... nice about how I talk about missions. And I know much of the frustration I felt was entirely my fault. But I cannot bring myself to like this mission. It was fun for a while. It was fun for a bunch of whiles. But taken as a whole, this mission just wasn't for me.
Glad you liked them. Personally, your videos work better for story and general gameplay. Seeing you play through these maps made figuring out the best strategies to do them fairly straightforward. My reviews have a bigger focus on gameplay and strategy. I'm not at a disadvantage of playing them blind and have a reference point for how I want to go about things. Granted, I fare slightly better in the blizzard campaign missions because there are significantly more references than one video by one Youtuber doing it blind.
But you're kinda right. It's really hard to understand how good these maps are without playing them yourself. I'm really happy since I recently got a lot of free time, allowing me to actually play them.
So, just finished mission 5. Right now, it's my favorite mission. Like with all macro missions, if you know what you're doing then you can win.
So, I cheated a little and checked the editor for where the survivors are. Ridiculously well hidden, I have to say. In any case, when I gained control, I hotkeyed my production, made an SCV and a Medic, and immediately made my way to the first two survivors. It made the early game a lot less hectic since I could focus on getting a better economy rather than making more units.
Once again, Reeve's stun blast was valuable as the biggest threats to the APC were Zerglings getting a full surround on it. They clumped up together and were dealt with quite easily. Later, when I had more units, I used the stun on Abberations since they were priority targets. Later in the mission, when multiple APCs were being sent in quick succession, I literally only sent Reeves, Baldwin, two Marauders, and three medics to cut off the next APC while the rest of my army followed the current one. Like I said, I love Reeves' stun
For base defense I was a little annoyed. That Perdition turret on the top of the ramp was too close to the edge. Even if it killed the units giving vision to it, they'd just have to move a tiny bit to get vision again. I ended up letting it fall and instead relied on a Bunker full of marines a little bit into the high ground and two Perdition turrets a few spaces in front of it. I also put four Widow Mines on either side of the perdition Turret. I realize now that using mostly Widow Mines would be ideal since the enemy doesn't bring detection. Six Widow Mines near the entrance of either base it basically a guarantee that nothing will touch you (unless they send Ultralisks and I don't think they do)
As for the terrain, once again, very atmospheric. You can practically feel the heaviness of the air as everyone is trying to evacuate. The one thing I didn't like was how hard it was to find survivors. The hiding places just blended in with the environment so well.
Overall still a fun mission. My favorite one so far. Can't wait to play the next one
Hmm, good point. It wouldn't be all that unbalanced if the enemy had everything. After all, they are the RSSI. Having them use only mercenaries kinda fits.
In any case, those look like a good selection of research options. There are clear advantages and disadvantages to having one over the other but the disadvantages aren't crippling. The Cellular Reactor one is the only thing I'm kinda iffy about since that's generally the better option by a large margin. Having a big death ball of mech units with no energy could make Regen Bio-Steel slightly better but Science Vessels use energy for their repair beam.
As for just having everything be merc units, the increase in effectiveness in using those units aren't that big making it very balanced to have them. Unfortunately, the Siege Breakers really are just over powered. Maybe lower their base siege damage to 60 instead of 100? It fits better since a regular Siege Tank deals 35 base siege damage and the Siege Breaker is supposed to be 2/3 more powerful. 35+35(2/3)= 58~
I like that idea more actually. Maybe have a choice for each level of tech. So like three choices for Barracks, Factory, and Starport respectively? You could go Hammer Securities, Siege Breaker, Hel's Angels, Ghost, Science Vessel.
Oh man having mercenaries as your default units would be so over powered though. Tanks with 100 base damage while in siege mode? Vikings that deal 40 damage to armored? I'm all in for that.
On second thought, it's probably a bad idea. It'd be horribly unbalanced
Oh man if we're gonna have to choose between Planetary Fortress and Perdition Turrets I might scream. They're both so good. Similarly, Vanadium Plating or Ultra Capacitors are kind of overpowered regardless of which one you pick.
But if it's based solely on unit composition there might be a bit of trouble. There aren't enough units in the Terran tech tree that fill similar roles to the other. Like you said, Ravens or Sciences Vessels and Ghosts or Specters. You can argue Helion or Vulture but Helions turn into Hellbats, making both the Firebat and Vulture kinda redundant.
The Wraith is also completely phased out now because of the introduction of the Liberator, a fast anti-air unit that can also shoot ground and costs basically as much as a Wraith. The only difference is that a Wraith can cloak but in your maps there's so much detection that there isn't much you can do with cloaked units.
And please for the sake of convenience, don't put units with the same build hotkey in the list of available tech in production structures. The hotkey for Diamondbacks and Widow Mines are the same and it's really annoying having to reassign keys it all the time.
So, I'm a little late to the band wagon here but I just finished the first two missions of this campaign. I gotta say, playing it for myself is a lot different from watching Jayborino play it.
Both Missions - The terrain is wonderfully detailed and your choice of music fits quite well. The difficulty feels just right for the start of a campaign.
A01 - This was a very atmospheric mission with some very well done cutscenes. Unfortunately, my graphics card is mid-tier at best and lags when the camera pulls up too high.
The micro section is fairly easy, especially with Reeves' stun ability killing pretty much everything it hits. The tool tip isn't very accurate for this mission, though. I was very liberal with my use of his ability and got to the end with half my energy still in reserve.
The macro section was pretty fun as well. I actually kept my entire army on hold position in the space in front of my base. All of the Zerg attack waves ignored them and I was able to kill almost all of the Nydus Worms
right as they spawned. I used mostly Marauders in my army since they're great at killing buildings like Nydus Worms and no air attacks will ever go near them (Mutalisks just head straight for my base and into my turrets)
The boss monster was also a treat to fight. I wasn't sure if the thing was armored but fifty Marauders tore through it like it was nothing.
A02 - A very nice cave installation mission. Umoja's white tileset contrasted nicely with the rest of the grey cave system in the second half.
The micro section at the start was interesting. Once again, making use of your heroes' abilities made it fairly easy to deal with whatever attack wave they send at you. I also found that I can skip some attacks by camping a unit by the door while the rest of my army destroys the lock. The lock is destroyed, the door is opened, and I move the unit through, triggering the cutscene and skipping the attack wave.
The short amount of time between you getting your base and the timer starting was just enough for me to fill one bunker with marines and train an small group of marauders. When the timer started, I immediately made way for the eastern generator and blew it up. Then I moved to the north western generator, continually making more marauders to reinforce my existing army. I think I attacked a little too early as I lost a lot of units trying to kill the generator. I went back to base and rebuilt my army before going to the western generator and wiping out those bases. After that, I took those expos and kept making units. By the time I confronted Rhik, I had so many Marauders that none of his defenses mattered.
Overall, very fun missions and a good start to the campaign. I might go and record some runs and post them on Youtube, though I'll wait until I've played all 6 missions of Act 1.
Edit: I played the next two missions. Just appending this post instead of making a new one
A03 - I'm not a really big fan of micro missions. I still have fun playing them, but would much rather play macro missions. That said, I still enjoyed playing this as the ideas and gameplay presented in it was interesting. Just not enough for me to give comment on. I liked the stone Zealots though. Nice use of those artifact guardians from Smash and Grab.
A04 - My computer lagged like a mofo during the opening cutscenes. StarCraft 2 is not optimized for sweeping panoramic shots of mountains in the distance. The dust clouds did not help. While actually playing the mission I got a stable 60 fps though. As for the gameplay, this mission was a spike in difficulty I did not expect - and to make it worse, it's with an off race.
The micro section with the War Hounds was frustratingly tedious at first but surprisingly easy once you figure out the timings. I ordered all my extra units to move back to the very start of the mission while I continued on with my heroes. I went counter-clockwise starting from the objective directly east of where you begin the War Hound section. Took out two of the objectives before I even encountered my first War Hound. Then ran straight for the next objective and killed the War Hound in my way, moving into a corner to avoid the patrolling strike team. I followed behind the team and let them circle around before taking out the last three in quick succession. Very fun once you know what you're doing.
The macro section was hard mostly due to tech restrictions. Stalkers with no blink mean it's really hard to micro them away from death. Similarly, they'll path-block Zealots trying to kill something. It was essential for me to have a hot key for melee and ranged units so I'd lead in with the zealots firsts and reinforce with the stalkers from behind. That said, this map made brilliant use of this challenge. Lots of choke points make proper positioning key in any attempt to push. It's as much a fight with the terrain as it is with the enemy. And seeing as it's an enemy base, that works out just fine.
The boss was somewhat annoying as the single target missiles did area damage, making it impossible to dodge them completely unscathed. Thankfully, you can easily dodge it by queuing a bunch of back and forth move commands. The multi-target missiles are really easy to dodge unless your character happens to be behind the boss in which case moving slightly to the left does nothing since you'll have clicked the boss instead of the ground slightly to the left of your unit. That's the same problem with the barrage attack since you won't have to move that far to dodge it but the boss keeps eating your move clicks.
The seconds phase of the boss was interesting. A little inconvenient that Voradin started in the same hotkey as Khaduros but nothing too bad. I mostly just shift-queued all of my orders to Voradin while I micro-ed Khaduros. Won the second phase within two cycles.
Both maps The terrain and music was still great. I'd have loved to play mission 4 on the highest settings if my computer could handle it. Sadly, it can't and it makes me sad.
Over all, great pair of maps. Really excited to play the next two
@DudkiSC2: Go
Oh no. More horizontal camera angles. My computer will not like rendering this at all
Edit 1
And the fifth of my six videos is up. I loved this mission.
Edit 2
And my sixth and final video is up. That's the end of my backlog. More will be posted soon but it will take me some time to record and upload them.
Yo, new video up. Once again, I apologize for my mediocre voice acting and stuttering of the cutscenes
Edit 1
While missions 3-6 will be up within the next few days, the rest of the missions will take a bit longer to record and upload. I need to update the editor which will take over a week if my internet doesn't cooperate.
Edit 2
And once again, new video up. Here you go
Edit 3
These edits are starting to pile up. Here's mission 4. Forgot to post about it last night
Maybe do what StarCraft: Odyssey does and have lore pop-ups every time the heroes mention something about themselves or the world they live in. Or, put hidden lore objects in your maps that you can find kind of like what you did in mission 11 I think.
That would also make it so the cutscenes are unskippable since they want to be able to pause by pressing ESC. I think you can also pause by pressing the Pause/Break key which is also a good way to pause the game.
@DudkiSC2: Go
A rebellion is an anti-government movement. That means they're trying to resist if not outright overthrow the government. As far as I can tell, they haven't been doing that. In fact, there has been barely any mention of the government in the story at all. We aren't shown that the CPG outright opposes the government which is why I don't think rebel group is the right term.
The CPG is more akin to a charity organization or an independent military. All they're doing is helping people that the government failed to help or chose not to help. They aren't necessarily working outside the bounds of what is considered 'legal'.
I said in the video that the word militia works better. It is defined as a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency. I think it fits rather well. And what makes it better is how a militia can also be part of a rebellion but it isn't restricted in that it can also be part of the government. It's the context that matters.
I read your comment on YouTube and will respond to it here for convenience.
I pause during cutscenes by pressing F10. I can't pause with ESC since it'll just skip the cutscene. (Wait other people can't pause during cutscenes?)
As for the way I read dialogue during cutscenes, I apologize for ruining the flow with my constant pausing to view the message log. I deliberately read the dialogue slowly since I'm trying to VA it. Using voices that you don't use in normal conversations tend to make your reading a lot slower. If I read it regularly the way Jayborino does it I'd probably finish quickly and have to wait for a bit before the next lines comes on screen.
My biggest problem is how long some of the lines are. If you've noticed, I only really falter on lines that are super long like Baldwin's explanation of what the CPG is.
Here's a little thing I learned from the professors I had in highschool: Only put two or three lines of text at a time in your slide show presentation. If you can't shorten the material to be only a few sentences long then just make lots of slides. The reason for this is because the brain processes information in chunks. Small chunks can be processed in a rapid rate while large chunks have to be broken down into smaller ones which makes processing it take longer. The same applies when reading dialogue.
While you can very easily sight-read everything in a three-line dialogue box in the amount of time that it's on screen, reading it aloud makes it tricky. There's additional processing time used for converting words you read into the movements your mouth has to make to speak them. In any case It's generally better to have lots and lots of short lines than one extremely long one. It makes it easier to speak those lines as well as to just read them.
Now, I'm not saying you have to do this. Much of the problem is me as well. I tend to stutter a lot, messing up my train of thought.
@OutsiderXE: Go
I've seen this problem a number of times, unfortunately. Just to clarify, it's not Red-lerred7. It's actually Redler Red7. There's a space in the middle that I'm not allowed to put in my user name. I'd have capitalized the letters but I'm so used to just having them be lower case that I forgot.
@DudkiSC2: Go
Yes. I was absolutely not playing it as intended. I could have probably gotten away with doing what I did on normal had I chosen to play that difficulty but on hard I was punished severely for it.
And what really made it worse was how easy Jayborino made it look. While no doubt I could devise an unorthodox strategy to win the mission (like in Maw of the Void where I could drop pod cloaked ghosts on the objective and nuke it to win a 40 minute mission in 10 minutes) with such limited tech options, I'm forced to micro my way through. I'm not really good at micro. I ended up misjudging the difficulty and the required level of skill and effort to win. Set myself up for frustration, I tell you.
As for the boss fight, by all means make it last ten minutes. I just don't want to be doing the same thing for upwards of 5 minutes at a time. I said that I liked how it ramped up as the boss lost health. My complaint was that Krayen couldn't lower her health fast enough. Let me rephrase that.
I wish it ramped up faster. I want things to change up as you kill the boss. I want a lot going on. That bit where she was throwing seven infested terrans at a time while shooting you before burrowing under ground? I really liked that for the first few waves. But then I had to do that over 10 times with little to no variations. That's what I meant when I said it was boring. It was just really really repetitive. Once you get a rhythm going, there isn't really anything else going on until the next phase begins. Make it as long as you want. Just have more phases that change things up more.
@JayborinoPlays: Go
You still play better than me, buddy. Given the limited options, you still micro-ed your way through everything. I, on the other hand charged in like wild animal hoping to overwhelm them with numbers. A very Zerg-like strategy but not really viable when they have lots of choke points and perdition turrets
EDIT 1
Heads up. I'm uploading my playthroughs of the first six missions. Expect them to come out in the following week
EDIT 2
Yo, I got the first video up. Watch if you want.
@DudkiSC2: Go
I play once on normal and again on hard to see if my strat still works on a higher difficulty. I'll probably record it on hard mode if I ever get to doing that. Also, finding them isn't necessarily hard. You're just pressed for time so scouring the map for bonus objectives isn't really advisable, especially on your first play through.
Edit: I recently finished mission 6. To avoid double posting, I'm appending my thoughts to this post
A06 - So this mission was... well, hard. It's hard mostly because I avoided playing it the way I would play Heart of the Swarm - that is to say, rushing through the map with as little amount of units I can get away with until I get a big enough economy going to mass produce Roach-Hydra-Ling.
You cannot get away with that in this map. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The first micro section doesn't really have much going for it. Krayen, for the time being, is overpowered, oneshot-ing marines and such. The Zerglings you save are really only useful for killing buildings faster.
The macro section that followed was really fun and challenging. It was a little frustrating too but that was entirely my fault. Like I said, I tend to rush around with the units I start with while I drone or tech up. Of course since there's not that much resources or tech available, I'm at the awkward position of having to make Zerglings and Swarm Queens. Both units are very good but I just can't produce enough of them to my liking. If the queens had spawn larva or if the hatcheries made more than 3, I think I'd be in a better position.
The first bombing area was pretty straight forward. Go in, kill some dudes, get your stuff, get out. I played it pretty safe, not really pushing out until I had a sizable number of Zerglings and Queens. I could have probably pushed a little more aggressively since every unit in the area other than that Firebat and Hellbat would fall fairly easily to a swarm of Zerglings. Regardless, I got through with plenty of time to get some upgrades and more units.
A funny thing though. During one of my many failed attempts to record this mission, I was able to get all of my units to the second Hatchery but all of my Drones except for one (un)lucky survivor failed to get through the door in time. That lone Drone survivor got morphed into a Spawning Pool to make more Queens and Lings.
The second section was perhaps the most frustrated I've been playing this game since Amber Sun 9. Remember when I said the macro section was frustrating? This is the reason.
There was a spike in difficulty in this section that I did not expect. For one, there are more things you need to destroy in this area than the previous one and at the same time the area is significantly bigger, with the various objectives spaced out farther. There's a certain order you have to do this area or else you might end up having your entire army still fighting it's way to the gate while the timer is at 15 seconds.
Yes, that happened to me. Similarly, Krayen ended up getting sniped by a thor, many of my zerglings queens and roaches got fried by two perdition turrets strategically placed inside a choke point, and all my drones got killed by a large attack wave while I was on the other side of the map. A lot of things went wrong, necessitating a lot of save-loading. Very frustrating.
The third area I actually got through on my first try, which is actually the try that will be shown when I finally upload the video for this mission. I had a decent number of Queens and Roaches and pretty much steamrolled through every single enemy entrenchment with very few lost units. It was honestly kind of a step back from the difficulty of the previous area. I finished it fairly quickly, freeing the last Zerg and killing the last Terran building before getting attacked even once.
The boss fight, I feel, was kinda boring at the start. While it's understandable that it would ramp up in difficulty as it got lower and lower health but I feel like it had too much health. To me, boss fights should take, at minimum, 30 seconds, and at maximum, 5 minutes to kill - if not to kill at least to change things up. That bit with the Banelings was great. If that came up a little sooner instead of the last 2 minutes I'd have had a much better time.
Of course her health might not have been my biggest issue. It's probably just Krayen's terrible offensive capabilities.
Krayen was kind of a disappointing hero for me. I'm more used to offensive heroes like Kerrigan or Reeves. Krayen's more of a support hero. You can't defend your base or take down a defensive line with him alone. You instead use him to heal your forces and help target down priority targets. You use him to make a passable army into a formidable one.
And therein lies my problem. I'm forced to use a support to kill a boss. Yes, Krayen has good sustain thanks to his heal and yes he is able to kill the boss just fine. It's just that it takes him so long.
Anyway, rant over. Moving on.
That second micro section at the end where you had to help your Zerg forces push towards the Leviathan was one the second thing that frustrated me to no end. My recording of just that section is 25 minutes with loading times just from the amount of times I had to reload my save. It didn't occur to me at the time that I'm supposed to help my forces push. I thought they'd just distract the Terrans for me while I make my escape. Then, of course, I run into a huge mass of units that kill me before the drop pods come down on them and after maybe five or so times of dying from them I thought that maybe I was doing something wrong.
Fast forward to the last 5 minutes of my recording. I was tired. I was angry. I wanted nothing to do with the mission any more. I wanted it over. Finally, I managed to get six queens to that death ball and held for long enough that the combined forces of my queens and the drop pods were able to take all of them out, letting me reach the end of the section for the first time ever.
Should I have felt happy? Maybe. I didn't really feel accomplished. I just felt dead. Whatever fun the mission had was lost on me. I was too frustrated at that point to really care. And I don't really want to play this mission again, at least not on hard difficulty which was what I foolishly decided to play this mission on for my first play through.
I don't know what to say. Normally I'm a lot more... nice about how I talk about missions. And I know much of the frustration I felt was entirely my fault. But I cannot bring myself to like this mission. It was fun for a while. It was fun for a bunch of whiles. But taken as a whole, this mission just wasn't for me.
I'm sorry you had to read that wall of text....
@JayborinoPlays: Go
Glad you liked them. Personally, your videos work better for story and general gameplay. Seeing you play through these maps made figuring out the best strategies to do them fairly straightforward. My reviews have a bigger focus on gameplay and strategy. I'm not at a disadvantage of playing them blind and have a reference point for how I want to go about things. Granted, I fare slightly better in the blizzard campaign missions because there are significantly more references than one video by one Youtuber doing it blind.
But you're kinda right. It's really hard to understand how good these maps are without playing them yourself. I'm really happy since I recently got a lot of free time, allowing me to actually play them.
So, just finished mission 5. Right now, it's my favorite mission. Like with all macro missions, if you know what you're doing then you can win.
So, I cheated a little and checked the editor for where the survivors are. Ridiculously well hidden, I have to say. In any case, when I gained control, I hotkeyed my production, made an SCV and a Medic, and immediately made my way to the first two survivors. It made the early game a lot less hectic since I could focus on getting a better economy rather than making more units.
Once again, Reeve's stun blast was valuable as the biggest threats to the APC were Zerglings getting a full surround on it. They clumped up together and were dealt with quite easily. Later, when I had more units, I used the stun on Abberations since they were priority targets. Later in the mission, when multiple APCs were being sent in quick succession, I literally only sent Reeves, Baldwin, two Marauders, and three medics to cut off the next APC while the rest of my army followed the current one. Like I said, I love Reeves' stun
For base defense I was a little annoyed. That Perdition turret on the top of the ramp was too close to the edge. Even if it killed the units giving vision to it, they'd just have to move a tiny bit to get vision again. I ended up letting it fall and instead relied on a Bunker full of marines a little bit into the high ground and two Perdition turrets a few spaces in front of it. I also put four Widow Mines on either side of the perdition Turret. I realize now that using mostly Widow Mines would be ideal since the enemy doesn't bring detection. Six Widow Mines near the entrance of either base it basically a guarantee that nothing will touch you (unless they send Ultralisks and I don't think they do)
As for the terrain, once again, very atmospheric. You can practically feel the heaviness of the air as everyone is trying to evacuate. The one thing I didn't like was how hard it was to find survivors. The hiding places just blended in with the environment so well.
Overall still a fun mission. My favorite one so far. Can't wait to play the next one
@DudkiSC2: Go
Hmm, good point. It wouldn't be all that unbalanced if the enemy had everything. After all, they are the RSSI. Having them use only mercenaries kinda fits.
In any case, those look like a good selection of research options. There are clear advantages and disadvantages to having one over the other but the disadvantages aren't crippling. The Cellular Reactor one is the only thing I'm kinda iffy about since that's generally the better option by a large margin. Having a big death ball of mech units with no energy could make Regen Bio-Steel slightly better but Science Vessels use energy for their repair beam.
As for just having everything be merc units, the increase in effectiveness in using those units aren't that big making it very balanced to have them. Unfortunately, the Siege Breakers really are just over powered. Maybe lower their base siege damage to 60 instead of 100? It fits better since a regular Siege Tank deals 35 base siege damage and the Siege Breaker is supposed to be 2/3 more powerful. 35+35(2/3)= 58~
@JayborinoPlays: Go
I like that idea more actually. Maybe have a choice for each level of tech. So like three choices for Barracks, Factory, and Starport respectively? You could go Hammer Securities, Siege Breaker, Hel's Angels, Ghost, Science Vessel.
Oh man having mercenaries as your default units would be so over powered though. Tanks with 100 base damage while in siege mode? Vikings that deal 40 damage to armored? I'm all in for that.
On second thought, it's probably a bad idea. It'd be horribly unbalanced
@DudkiSC2: Go
Oh man if we're gonna have to choose between Planetary Fortress and Perdition Turrets I might scream. They're both so good. Similarly, Vanadium Plating or Ultra Capacitors are kind of overpowered regardless of which one you pick.
But if it's based solely on unit composition there might be a bit of trouble. There aren't enough units in the Terran tech tree that fill similar roles to the other. Like you said, Ravens or Sciences Vessels and Ghosts or Specters. You can argue Helion or Vulture but Helions turn into Hellbats, making both the Firebat and Vulture kinda redundant.
The Wraith is also completely phased out now because of the introduction of the Liberator, a fast anti-air unit that can also shoot ground and costs basically as much as a Wraith. The only difference is that a Wraith can cloak but in your maps there's so much detection that there isn't much you can do with cloaked units.
And please for the sake of convenience, don't put units with the same build hotkey in the list of available tech in production structures. The hotkey for Diamondbacks and Widow Mines are the same and it's really annoying having to reassign keys it all the time.
@DudkiSC2: Go
Oh, you posted while I was editing my earlier post. Well feedback for the mission 3 - 4 is on my previous post.
So, I'm a little late to the band wagon here but I just finished the first two missions of this campaign. I gotta say, playing it for myself is a lot different from watching Jayborino play it.
Both Missions - The terrain is wonderfully detailed and your choice of music fits quite well. The difficulty feels just right for the start of a campaign.
A01 - This was a very atmospheric mission with some very well done cutscenes. Unfortunately, my graphics card is mid-tier at best and lags when the camera pulls up too high.
The micro section is fairly easy, especially with Reeves' stun ability killing pretty much everything it hits. The tool tip isn't very accurate for this mission, though. I was very liberal with my use of his ability and got to the end with half my energy still in reserve.
The macro section was pretty fun as well. I actually kept my entire army on hold position in the space in front of my base. All of the Zerg attack waves ignored them and I was able to kill almost all of the Nydus Worms right as they spawned. I used mostly Marauders in my army since they're great at killing buildings like Nydus Worms and no air attacks will ever go near them (Mutalisks just head straight for my base and into my turrets)
The boss monster was also a treat to fight. I wasn't sure if the thing was armored but fifty Marauders tore through it like it was nothing.
A02 - A very nice cave installation mission. Umoja's white tileset contrasted nicely with the rest of the grey cave system in the second half.
The micro section at the start was interesting. Once again, making use of your heroes' abilities made it fairly easy to deal with whatever attack wave they send at you. I also found that I can skip some attacks by camping a unit by the door while the rest of my army destroys the lock. The lock is destroyed, the door is opened, and I move the unit through, triggering the cutscene and skipping the attack wave.
The short amount of time between you getting your base and the timer starting was just enough for me to fill one bunker with marines and train an small group of marauders. When the timer started, I immediately made way for the eastern generator and blew it up. Then I moved to the north western generator, continually making more marauders to reinforce my existing army. I think I attacked a little too early as I lost a lot of units trying to kill the generator. I went back to base and rebuilt my army before going to the western generator and wiping out those bases. After that, I took those expos and kept making units. By the time I confronted Rhik, I had so many Marauders that none of his defenses mattered.
Overall, very fun missions and a good start to the campaign. I might go and record some runs and post them on Youtube, though I'll wait until I've played all 6 missions of Act 1.
Edit: I played the next two missions. Just appending this post instead of making a new one
A03 - I'm not a really big fan of micro missions. I still have fun playing them, but would much rather play macro missions. That said, I still enjoyed playing this as the ideas and gameplay presented in it was interesting. Just not enough for me to give comment on. I liked the stone Zealots though. Nice use of those artifact guardians from Smash and Grab.
A04 - My computer lagged like a mofo during the opening cutscenes. StarCraft 2 is not optimized for sweeping panoramic shots of mountains in the distance. The dust clouds did not help. While actually playing the mission I got a stable 60 fps though. As for the gameplay, this mission was a spike in difficulty I did not expect - and to make it worse, it's with an off race.
The micro section with the War Hounds was frustratingly tedious at first but surprisingly easy once you figure out the timings. I ordered all my extra units to move back to the very start of the mission while I continued on with my heroes. I went counter-clockwise starting from the objective directly east of where you begin the War Hound section. Took out two of the objectives before I even encountered my first War Hound. Then ran straight for the next objective and killed the War Hound in my way, moving into a corner to avoid the patrolling strike team. I followed behind the team and let them circle around before taking out the last three in quick succession. Very fun once you know what you're doing.
The macro section was hard mostly due to tech restrictions. Stalkers with no blink mean it's really hard to micro them away from death. Similarly, they'll path-block Zealots trying to kill something. It was essential for me to have a hot key for melee and ranged units so I'd lead in with the zealots firsts and reinforce with the stalkers from behind. That said, this map made brilliant use of this challenge. Lots of choke points make proper positioning key in any attempt to push. It's as much a fight with the terrain as it is with the enemy. And seeing as it's an enemy base, that works out just fine.
The boss was somewhat annoying as the single target missiles did area damage, making it impossible to dodge them completely unscathed. Thankfully, you can easily dodge it by queuing a bunch of back and forth move commands. The multi-target missiles are really easy to dodge unless your character happens to be behind the boss in which case moving slightly to the left does nothing since you'll have clicked the boss instead of the ground slightly to the left of your unit. That's the same problem with the barrage attack since you won't have to move that far to dodge it but the boss keeps eating your move clicks.
The seconds phase of the boss was interesting. A little inconvenient that Voradin started in the same hotkey as Khaduros but nothing too bad. I mostly just shift-queued all of my orders to Voradin while I micro-ed Khaduros. Won the second phase within two cycles.
Both maps The terrain and music was still great. I'd have loved to play mission 4 on the highest settings if my computer could handle it. Sadly, it can't and it makes me sad.
Over all, great pair of maps. Really excited to play the next two