A rehashed 12 year old game with hardly any changes (especially visually) in order to make sure that the Korean tournament crowd will be pleased. A ridiculous relic to put it mildly. PS: I am particularly amused by the cut scenes that -naturally- have nothing to do with the actual game.

Anyone giving this game a 10 needs to take a look at this game without buying into hype. Pretend it's called Blarghraft and re-assess it. It's at best a 7 if you're in to terribly outdated gameplay, graphics, music, story, etc. There is nothing about this game that feels fresh or intriguing. It's an SC expansion that could've been released a decade ago and been decent at the time. Now it's just an average generic RTS with nothing that stands out from the myriad of RTS clones devoted to its own namesake. Except for a cliched story with middling voice acting there's nothing to rate SC2 on. It feels like Activision just put an old title through the assembly line to churn out something to put on the store shelves with the only innovation coming in ways to milk money off the title.… Expand

A one for expenditure, but no points for effort. They took all the points that made SC 1 good, and removed them, and tried to cover for it with some prettied up graphics, and then split the game into three to make an even more obscene profit by releasing the same game engine again and again and call them new games rather then expansion packs. Activision is the devil.

I'm very dissapointed with this game. WC3 made several improvements over SC, notably adding heroes and a 4th race. Many SC fans weren't enamored with the hero concept, but SC3 easily could have improved on WC3 by going up to 5 races and making individual units gain xp. Blizzard did neither, they cut back to 3 races, added/changed a few units, and "upgraded" to a 3D engine. Big whoop. I am honesty not even sure if other than the bnet upgrades this game is even better than the original SC.… Expand

First of all: I have played all portions of the game. SP and MP.

9-10 pts is an exaggeration par excellence. If you take into account what ressources, what experience Blizzard has its just a shame what they serve us with Starcraft 2. Zero innovation and your own personal data collection plattform aka B.Net 2.0 are just two let downs with this one. Additionally it fails where it really shouldn't: MP - various cheats are already in use, very little is done against them. Balancing is a joke at best in every other playmode than 1v1.

The SP part is OK, but nothing you haven't seen so far. Story? Eric Cartman would say: lame!

If I take all of this I can only say I am very dissappointed, a game made for money and not for the gamers - 1 pts for greed and lack of inspiration.… Expand

One word: Ugh. Once again blizzard shows us how far a franchise can fall. Stunningly beautiful cinematics that still fall short due to the poor story. The campaign is decidedly weak, and the multi is so micro-oriented it's painful. SC2 was the game I was most anticipating this year (perhaps this decade), and it falls so short of expectation that words can't express the magnitude of it's failure.… Expand

The only reason that this game will get high scores will be a strong fan base. But in my opinion, this game just doesn't worth it. 60 Euros even for digital download, and I expect that we'll be charged at least another 80 (40+40) euros for the expansions. You won't be able to play with Zerg / Protoss campaign till they're out and you get them. Only Terran campaign is available, and this is a big (-) for / from me. So far, it just looks like Starcraft 2010, with a graphic overhaul, removing/adding some units, and crippling the single-player, dividing it to 3 seperate games. Bad move in my opinion. Bad move Blizzard. Very bad move. It's a shame that 99% of the buyers will jump to the game blindfolded, and it's a shame that many of the reviewers give this game 85+ not considering the pricing of lack of the story.… Expand

Cliche history, short campaign, overpriced, 1/3 of a game for the price of a full game, graphics doesnt scale well (i have a radeon4870, playing int on max at 1920x1200 the game drops to 15 fps when there is 5 or more units doing shit on the screen), pathetic attempt to please the casual masses with a bullshit history line. i wish my money back.

It's rather sad to see how far this franchise has fallen. What you're getting is 1/3 a game with a 5 hour campaign and a buggy multilayer experience bloated with horrible DRM. You must be online 24/7 even for single player or you aren't awarded achievements. No LAN and No CGI Cutscenes are only some of the few of many things not in this game. And if you want to be able to play the protoss and zerg campaigns then you better get out your credit card! They're being sold separate at a later date. No doubt only about 3-5 hour campaigns as well.… Expand

Normally i would rate this game with a 6, but since fanbois are rating it with 10s based on hype i have to rate it with a 0 to counter it. This game is not bad, but it does not deserve the hype. First of all, while it is a polished game, it doesn't justify so many years of developement. Its campaign is short, boring, and most missions require no strategy at all, just spamming the specific unit each mission provides. Gameplay is pretty much the same with the original. Same or slightly different units, same buildings, same techs, same controls, same stats. Providing an existing game with just an updated graphics engine shouldn't take so long... Company of heroes is way better... We only get 1 campaign, which no matter how the fanbois justify it is short and boring, we get no lan, and the price is higher than usual. Blizzard is milking players because it can... Stop supporting this company!… Expand

Compared to the original games, this is a mockery. Battle.net 2.0 is redundant and limited, the world editor has scripting limits and other non-useful things. And the campaign is cliched enough to seem like an old cowboy movie. This is not a good game. This is WoW in space.

As an fervent follower of the Starcraft narrative since Brood War, I was eager to say the least for this game. But oh how my hopes were crushed.

The story line is terrible with boring cliches and poor dialogue combined with ridiculous retcons and reinterpretations of characters and events. You'd think that since they had 10 years they'd have at least had a better grasp of what they were doing. People try to make the excuse that 'so what if it's 1/3 of a game, you still get 29 missions for race, that's more than the original or brood war". Well, the main storyline is really only made up about ten missions or so, the rest are filler. The entire storyline including the other races could have been done for 30 to 40 missions.

The gameplay itself is also quite disappointing after an extended play through. So much more could have been done with the technology that so many other games have taken advantage of, such as cover. The developers even admitted that they kept the game the way it was in order to preserve the e-sports leagues surrounding it. Talk about the greed factor :/

It's strange that age of empires 3 and command and conquer 3 were criticism and their game scores lowered for being behind the times, Starcraft 2 is being praised for it for the most part. If this wasn't called STARCRAFT 2, say Space Wars, it'd be getting alot more criticism for being behind the times.

It's fun, don't get me wrong, but it's not worth $60, and is the most overrated game of 2010, and my biggest gaming disappointment.… Expand

Very disappointing, but not because of the core gameplay. The load times are ridiculous, the menu is confusing and messy, the newsflash cutscenes try to be 'funny' but end up like something that would be in a show for 7-year olds. Worst of all are the regional locks.... making online play with international friends nigh-on impossible. You can't even add people from other regions to your Battle.NET friends list. The game itself, once started, is not so bad.... but woefully uninteresting. It's changed from StarCraft quite a bit, notably units won't just run around in a single file and get killed one by one when assaulting a base, which was never fun. However, some problems that were bad already in StarCraft still exist, such as SCVs getting stuck behind buildings if they are built too close to something else. There is less micromanagement, but in the end it's mostly just a graphical update with a few different units and few interesting features. Overall, the problems don't necessarily stem from the game itself but rather its presentation. The single-player campaign isn't bad, and it has a few attempts at original and good missions while still leaving in nods to the original game, but it doesn't really shine as an outstanding example of story-telling and originality. I got the collector's edition, which is quite impressively designed but beware; the art book has several pictures that are clearly just scaled up from a low resolution, and as a result they look pixelated in the final product. This is extremely poor work on their part. I cannot honestly give this a high score. With some luck, Blizzard will fix their menus and optimize the load times, while also removing the regional locks. That would go a long way to making the game more playable both offline and online. The lack of LAN play, the requirement to stay connected to Battle.NET and regional locks all contribute to making this game inferior to the set standards and expectations.… Expand

To me it feels like a kids game. I'm not seeing the depth that everyone else seems to notice. Also not seeing what is so great about it. I definitely wasted $60. I'll go back to playing SupCom and Company of Heroes (which are both much better).

Game will melt down your PC will also cause intrusive DRM ttat will require you to log in to play the game. Match making system is flawed. You always get matched with inexperienced players if you are inexperienced like me. Various features removed from blizzard.

This game is nothing but a cash cow. Here is my review: Pros: --Runs pretty well --Decent art on the static screens in the ship --Resembles old Starcraft somewhat Cons: --Boring, trite story that is less interesting than your average Saturday morning cartoon, with even worse dialog: (things like: "the end of all things is nigh!!" "It is your destiny!!" and "Your efforts are futile!"...) 9 year olds will eat it up, and so will the legions of mouth breathers and diabetics who will spend time with this game. --No LAN play...seriously?!? --Facebook and Realname? Wow I can smell the corporate parties already as their bank accounts fill. Glad I got the collector's edition and sold off the pieces to pay for the game, as it wasn't worth it.… Expand

If I really rated this it would get maybe a 5 or 6, but I'm counter-averaging all the biased perfect 10's. Anyone rating this a perfect 10 obviously doesn't care about the subtle nuances that made Starcraft a great game. No LAN play, the inability to play players from other countries, and a $60 price tag just shows how Activision/Blizzard are content with screwing consumers over. Say Goodbye to tournaments outside of Blizzard's authorization; if you read the EULA you'd realize how many things you simply can't do. Just like how Activison screwed the multi-player on Modern Warfare 2 by porting XBox live to the PC now they've ruined one of the greatest games of the PC gaming Golden Ages by removing the very things that made the game great.… Expand

When I heard that the new Starcraft II was coming I was so happy, but when I bought the game I realized that this game is just a copy of a Starcraft I. I was very disappointed because the only new things are some abilities and a few new units. For me this is the Disappointment of the decade. I used to love games coming from Blizzard games factory but now I get the real picture...

Tried to enjoy it but it's still a bad bad game. A rehashed 12 year old game with hardly any changes (especially visually) in order to make sure that the Korean tournament crowd will be pleased. A ridiculous relic to put it mildly. PS: I am particularly amused by the cut scenes that -naturally- have nothing to do with the actual game.

Where should I start. Most BW fans were disappointed with the game and Blizzard just did a horrible job with this game. BW has a far higher skill-cap and feels more fun, WoL is a watered down version of the game. Even as a non Starcraft/RTS player, you'll probably easily understand the advantages, vulnerabilities and mechanics of WoL, it's just really simple and barely requires mathematics unlike BW. So... you have to pay for another account in a different region...if you're playing on a foreign region then your ping is terrible even though the ping was perfectly fine in the beta. The lack of social interaction is a big issue which they are only now coming to address. They removed units from the game itself from BW and changed the meta to encourage turtling. That being said, it is more balanced than BW and it is better spectator-wise which was the main problem with BW. Now the single-player...is the single-player, with a bad story and less memorable characters than in SC1/BW. All in all, Blizzard tried to capitalize on old franchise (as they did with Diablo 3) and it was just a waste of space.… Expand

12 years and all we get is the same game, with better but not current graphics, and a lot of features removed: fundamentally LAN support and spawn CD, which are what made StarCraft and Blizzard what they are today. Thanks, Blizz, but I won't buy the game when all you're interested in is me signing in into your facebook clone and giving you my RL details. Shame on you.

I was disappointed with this game. I'm a long time Blizzard fan going back to the mid 90's. I played the original Starcraft for hours and hours. After 12 years I expected that there would be some grand story to tell, turns out there wasn't. The game itself is glitch free and plays seamlessly. It's supposed to, I take points off for things not working, I don't add them. That's really the only good thing there is though. The single player campaign is just a small part of a larger marketing campaign that was really a huge let down. The maps are boring and the storytelling is disjointed. They attempt to make it nonlinear but if you do the missions in different orders some parts of the story don't make sense. There is definitely the "right" order, though you're not forced to do it that way. Multiplayer is not my bag personally, but there is nothing new and exciting here. You will play on a map with fewer units than in the campaign against other people in exactly the same way I did 12 years ago against my friends. Except now, you can't spawn a copy to their machine, everyone has to pay $60 or you don't play. Blizzard has become the same as the other major game companies like Activision and EA and is only about the almighty dollar now. Skip this unless you absolutely have got to have more Starcraft multiplayer like it used to be, because that hasn't changed.… Expand

There are too many counters in the game, every time I feel like I have the infrastructure to begin putting up a fight, I produce a few types of units in great numbers and several others in smaller numbers, then get steamrolled as my opponent has built all the exact counters to my units. Also the Light/Heavy armor system is completely broken, allowing for uninhibited trolling of entire armies by a few cheap units, which is not only extremely unbalanced, it isn't fun. This coupled with the extremely competitive ladder system, in which people new to the game stay bad at the game because they aren't allowed to play with players who are good, and keeps highly skilled players playing solely against other highly skilled players, segregates the SC2 population into cutthroat pools of angry players. This makes player abuse not only something that creates negative and unhappy attitudes among the people on the "new" battle.net, it is something that players who are at a skill level any lower than that of the competitive Korean leagues of SC1 will encounter on a basis something on the order of nearly every match. I will say that the graphics are a major improvement over SC1, and that will make SC1 fans rejoice, including a system that allow a player to select an nearly unlimited number of units at a time, and a system which allows players to select buildings as if they were units, allowing players to queue up many units at a time without clicking on each individual building. These new features, which should have been included in the first game, aren't enough to redeem Starcraft II enough to live up to the name of its predecessor.… Expand

This is a horrible successor to the first game. The balancing is way off, and even at the lowest settings more than 30 on-screen enemies brings my computer to an absolute crawl. What a waste.

To be fair, this game kept me entertained for a good while. It falls short in a number of places however. The battles are high speed, short and very difficult to manage for anyone without years of RTS experience. The resource gathering method is a little... how do you say... outdated? Managing workers is more of a hassel than anything else in this game. Microing them when they are under attack is not fun, and you can lose them all in a matter of seconds, which completely ruins your chance of winning the game. Also not fun. Scouting is near impossible in this game. You will find yourself most of the time simply trying to make educated guesses on what your opponent is building. An incorrect guess can lead you to a loss. This is especially irritating when one or two stealth units kills your entire army and base. The early tier units completely overpower anything late tier. It is not surprising to see even a top level player build 10-15 barracks or gateways and just pump mass garbage units. Stategic element is lacking. The most strategic thing you will do in this game is drop units on an enemy mineral patch. It's all about speed. You see the same build orders game after game. No real variants on the ladder. Some units just aren't worth building. The SC2 battle.net forum is catered for little kids and Christians. Perhaps the worst part of the game however, is the fact that you spend most of the game staring at your base. Active engagements seldomly take place, and the god awful ramp mechanics make penetration into the enemy base more irritating and frustrating than anything else, and also highly favor the defender. Save the money. Buy new brake pads or something.… Expand

I cannot for the life of me fathom this game's reception. Starcraft II is a cobwebbed relic of the 90s, absolutely identical to Starcraft save updated graphics and a few replaced units. Starcraft II is a game that ignores every single innovation to the RTS genre over the past decade: squad-based units, cover systems, lessened emphasis on base building, progressive unlockable abilities, directional damage and flank attacks, and a much scaled back system of resource gathering. None of these excellent innovations are present or even alluded to in Starcraft II, which is sad given that some of them were present even before the original Starcraft hit the shelves. This is literally a game from a decade ago, and plays exactly like a game from a decade ago. If that's what you want, come on down!

It's a shame that exceedingly average games like Starcraft II steal all the press and attention, when truly excellent and forward-thinking RTS games like Company of Heroes and Supreme Commander get pushed to the side and hardly noticed. Do gamers really want the same thing, over and over again? Starcraft II seems to suggest they do. (Rhyme!)

There is simply nothing memorable about this game. In twenty years, the only thing I will remember about Starcraft II is that it was a Starcraft game. The very name appears to require praise. It does get me thinking though, as I mentioned before: is this really what RTS gamers want? They just want more of the same 1990s RTS games that involved little more than a build order and mass production of three units clumped together in a ball which will die en masse before victory is won? This game seems to suggest this, or else Blizzard's Fan Legion is far more formidable than anyone had realized. But I don't believe that. I suppose I'm just the new-fashioned person, and the other 1,295 reviews are the old-fashioned guys. Well, admitting a difference in taste is never a bad thing. However, that does not change the fact that Starcraft II is an embarrassing chronoburn, an ancient artifact of a bygone era which laughs in the face of its own genre while simultaneously championing it, but somehow managed to achieve widespread acclaim today from gaming establishments which have spent the past ten years bemoaning the lack of creativity and innovation in the RTS genre and subsequently grading down countless RTS games for their lack of either. But - Look! - here comes Starcraft! We just HAVE to give it a 100%, because it's STARCRAFT! We need to toss out the RTS grading rubric we have used for the past decade, because STARCRAFT is here!! Oh boy!… Expand

Excellent production values? Yes. Anything original and fresh? No. Bad game? No. Overrated? Yes. Starcraft 2 is the game without soul. 12-years old core gameplay. 3D graphics that almost looks like high-res 2D, so what's the point in making sophisticated graphics engine? Story is extremely predictable and cheesy. "Non linearity" is fake and leaves no chance for coherent storytelling. Choices you make don't really do much. Too much "magical" fantasy stuff for a sci-fi game. Still too much micromanagement for 2010 game. And price is really to high for a one chapter of a game you basically don't even own. I believe this game deserves 7 or 8 but something has to be done to offset fake fanboy ratings.… Expand

Blizzard had 12 years to think about this game and this was all they came up with? I was a huge fan of the first. I wasn't expecting them to just release the same game with a coat of paint splashed on it but handicapping it by removing LAN game capability and requiring the always on internet connection. I don't see any innovation at all. The graphics would have been impressive 5 years ago. I don't see how anyone could justify giving this game a 10/10. Perhaps they should be disclosing some sort of compensation they are receiving from Blizzard.… Expand