Starcraft 2 Campaign Missions
- Starcraft 2 Campaign Missions
- Starcraft 2 Campaign Missions 4
- Starcraft 2 Mission Order
- Starcraft 2 Campaign Missions Xbox One
- Starcraft 2 Mission Tree
- (This is a re-upload of the first part of my playthrough because the intro cinematic/cutscene had a content ID match, so the intro custscene has been removed.
- Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty – Campaign walkthrough & strategy guide. By GamesRadar US 31 July 2010. Mission 1 - Liberation Day Mission 2 - The Outlaws Mission 3 - Zero Hour Mission 4.
- We've played one-third of one-third of StarCraft II's single-player campaign recently. Blizzard gave us a full day with the most recent playable build of the game, a seven-mission long journey.
With the release of Heart of the Swarm, there are 20 new campaign missions (along with 7 Evolution Missions) available for players to access in Starcraft 2. In this Heart of the Swarm campaign guide, players will find video guides for all of the missions as well as all of the Heart of the Swarm achievements.
Our Heart of the Swarm Campaign Guide is now complete, and comes with text and video walkthroughs for all 20 Heart of the Swarm missions on brutal mode as well as all of the achievements associated with each mission.
The Wings of Liberty Campaign follows the exploits of the Terran outlaws Jim Raynor and Tychus Findlay. Specifically, the player is assumed to have the role of Raynor from a third-person perspective. The first three missions must be completed in orde.
Note that the category of achievements in the 'Mastery' tab will be included on the strategy and achievements page for that particular mission (these can be seen on the 'Mastery' tab of your achievements page in Heart of the Swarm). Video guides for all of these Mastery achievements can be found within the individual page linked below.
Additionally, we have included a list of Kerrigan's abilities as well as recommendations for the best builds for use with Kerrigan. Finally, a page detailing and discussing the best Evolution Strain and Mutation Upgrades is included below as well. Following the strategies in our campaign guide are much easier if you use the recommend Kerrigan builds and Evolution Pit upgrades for your army.
Kerrigan Builds & Upgrades, Evolution Missions, Mutations, & Achievements
Kerrigan Abilities - Contains a list of all the Kerrigan abilities and a discussion on which Kerrigan traits and skills are the best options and which ones pair well together.
Evolution Pit Mutations and Best Mission Choices - Includes a list of all the mutation upgrades and evolution strains available in the Evolution Pit. Discussion includes the best choices for the evolution missions as well as the best combinations of mutations and evolutions.
Heart of the Swarm Campaign Achievements List - A full list of all 1520 achievement points available in the Starcraft 2 HotS campaign. Includes descriptions of how to unlock all the Story Mode achievements as well as links to our full guides for all the Mastery achievements.
HotS Campaign Units List - There are a few units which are only available in the Heart of the Swarm campaign. These units along with their stats and abilities are covered here. Additionally, many of the standard Zerg units have been modified from the multiplayer version of the game for the Heart of the Swarm campaign. These differences along with the possible mutations and evolutions are all covered here.
Umoja Missions
Lab Rat Brutal Mode & Achievements - Easy starter mission with simple achievements.
Back in the Saddle Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes the Archangel boss fight, Brutal Legend, and Nick of Time achievements. Brutal Legend is the hardest non-mastery achievement in-game.
Rendezvous Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes a video and text guide for Premature Evacuation, one of the more difficult achievements to unlock in Heart of the Swarm.
Char Missions
Domination Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes Baneling Nest locations for Poached Eggs as well as a video and text guide for the Shutout achievement.
Fire in the Sky Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes the Going, Going, Gorgon! achievement, locations for the Zerg Biomass, and the locations of the Orbital Commands for Command & Conquer.
Old Soldiers Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes the Science Facility locations, the Home Wrecker achievement, and the Recalled Down the Thunder achievement.
Kaldir Missions
Harvest of Screams Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes a video guide and walkthrough for both Brutal Mode as well as an easy way to complete the 'Psi-lence is Golden' achievement.
Shoot the Messenger Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes step-by-step strategies for beating this mission on brutal mode as well as strategies and videos for unlocking My Cool Bay Explosions, Warp in Peace, and Extreme Nexism.
Enemy Within Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes video guides for both Brutal Mode as well as the Monster Smash achievement.
Zerus Missions
Waking the Ancient Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes video guides for Brutal mode as well as the Whack-a-Brakk achievement.
The Crucible Brutal Mode & Achievements - Step-by-step guide included for Brutal Mode (along with video) as well as strategy and video for the Short Life Expectancy achievement.
Supreme Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes strategies and ability lists for all the bosses, as well as video guides for both Brutal Mode and the 'Whose Queen Remains Supreme?' achievement. Xel'Naga artifact locations also included.
Skygeirr Missions
Infested Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes strategies for beating Infested on Brutal mode as well as unlocking the Once, Twice, Three Times Malady achievement.
Hand of Darkness Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes a brutal mode walkthrough as well as a simple trick for easily unlocking the Dominion Domination achievement. Includes locations for the Brutalisks and Command Centers.
Phantoms of the Void Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes video and text-based strategy for both brutal mode as well as the No-toss achievement. Xel'Naga crystal locations also marked.
Space Missions
Starcraft 2 Campaign Missions
With Friends Like These... Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes video and text walkthroughs for both Brutal mode and the Ludicrous Speed! achievement, as well as a map marking the location of all the mineral fields.
Conviction Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes video and text strategies for Conviction on Brutal Mode, Secret Documents locations, and a guide to the Fast Break achievement.
Final Missions
Planetfall Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes a step-by-step brutal mode guide as well as video walkthroughs for Brutal mode and the 'Crash the Party' achievement.
Death From Above Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes a brutal mode step-by-step guide as well as video walkthrough. There is no hard-mode Mastery achievement for 'Death From Above'.
The Reckoning Brutal Mode & Achievements - Includes step-by-step strategies for brutal mode (including a very easy strategy that anyone can execute) as well as video guides for both brutal mode and the 'Speed Bump' achievement.
StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void has a late-game mission that encapsulates what its campaign should be. You control the alien Protoss, fighting alongside both a Human and a Zerg base. An overwhelming enemy launches attacks, and other characters discuss how to stop them. Yet you’re the protagonist, shifting your troops from one spot to the next will allow defenses to win, while each successful attack provides a space for you or your allies to move forward. It’s a gloriously chaotic, chatty mess.
The problem: It’s just one mission. The bigger problem: It’s just one mission in an epilogue, after 20 missions of the main single-player campaign being about the Protoss dithering around alone, with Kerrigan’s Zerg and Raynor’s Humans barely around. It can be a slog, which is a surprise given Blizzard’s history of success at making real-time strategy campaigns.
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What you’ll like
A Blizzard tradition
Blizzard’s success in RTS design relies on the combination of two things: a propulsive story and clever mission design. Both have existed in Blizzard games since the original StarCraft and Warcraft 3. The first two installments of StarCraft 2 each had simple, personal stories — Raynor wants to track down Kerrigan, and Kerrigan wants to track down Raynor — which were good enough to hang the games on to, letting the mission and campaign design do their work.
Check out our StarCraft II multiplayer review here.
The mission design of Legacy of the Void stands alongside its predecessors. Few of the missions are straightforward, RTS-style build-base-and-smash-enemy. They try to keep you moving, usually by spreading objectives across the map, forcing you to weigh a smash-and-grab versus maintaining a strong defense.
Clever mission design
Some of them are exceptionally clever. My favorite had your base on a moving platform, which shifts up and down around a space station on a track, seeking resources and defenses to maintain a battle fleet that would do the bulk of the fighting. Another standout involves an invincible duel between two characters, who gain strength from the presence of nearby allies.
Even the traditional hero dungeon of taking a couple of super-characters like Artanis gets a pleasant remix in a late mission in which all of the Protoss characters split up into three wildly different, fast-paced sections. Yet Legacy of the Void can be a little too reliant on the straightforward base defense mission, particularly in the endgame.
Above: Big battles are signature Blizzard RTS design.
It’s when these missions connect to the wider campaign that issues arise. Legacy of the Void, like both Heart of the Swarm and Wings of Liberty before it, offers a slow campaign of acquiring new units and customizing them. Those customization options are fascinating, as well, with different Protoss factions offering different options, like the Dark Templar Stalker units as a basic assault unit, while the Aiur faction offers a StarCraft I-style Dragoon instead. But Void lacks the experimentation missions of Swarm, where you got to toy with each decision before setting it up. It feels like an option in a game here, instead of a small part of a greater whole.
What you won’t like
Starcraft 2 Campaign Missions 4
A muddled story
Indeed, Legacy of the Void’s campaign never really coheres in the way its predecessors did. Its core problem is that it attempts to achieve two separate goals with one glaring flaw. The goals: Create a Protoss campaign that focuses on them in the way that the previous two installments focused on Humans and Zerg; and craft a climactic final chapter of the StarCraft 2 trilogy of the great war against Amon. The weakness: The Protoss are really boring from a character perspective.
Above: Artanis [right] and Karax hold an “important” conversation.
Across the 20 missions of the main campaign, it barely has a two-dimensional character to be found, let alone three. Every Protoss character seems unable to speak in anything except earnest declarations. A sample conversation between Artanis, leader of the Protoss, and Karax, his engineer, might go like this:Karax: “I’ve discovered a new cool thing that our Solar Core can do! Let me explain it to you!”
Artanis: “That sounds helpful! You should keep trying to find more new stuff!”
Karax: “What a good idea! I’ll get right to work!”
These conversations, filled entirely with exclamation marks, occur after every mission. Sometimes twice, after traveling to a new system. And yes, they’re mostly skippable, but these conversations were a reward, or at least not a chore, in the previous two incarnations of StarCraft 2. More important, this insipid earnestness carries over to every other aspect of the campaign — there’s no entertaining banter in-mission or out.
Above: Kerrigan drives by and waves hello.
Starcraft 2 Mission Order
An earnest apocalypse
I can forgive Protoss dullness, though, in better circumstances. They are the dour elder race of the StarCraft universe, so of course their game was going to be like this. But combining this self-seriousness with the epic finale of the end of the war with Amon is a recipe for turgid disaster. Planets are destroyed, races are driven to near-extinction, grand alliances are made, but because Void focuses so entirely on the Protoss, all this occurs without a character worth caring about. Raynor and Kerrigan, the main characters of StarCraft, do little more but drive by and wave for a mission or two (which, unsurprisingly, tend to be the most interesting missions of the entire game).
Meanwhile, Legacy of the Void suffers tremendously from the lack of a villain character, which Mengsk provided in the first two incarnations. Amon may be evil, but he’s almost entirely silent, and his motivations are thoroughly boring compared to the grasping, venal, thoroughly human Arcturus. It says a lot, none of it good, about the core campaign of Void that the final cutscene of the StarCraft 2 saga doesn’t even mention Artanis or the mainstream Protoss.
Conclusion
And then StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void concludes with an epilogue that actually includes all three races, and almost all the major characters. It’s the story, and missions, that the game should have been, but it too suffers from being compressed into a tiny three missions.
Some individual missions may stand out, both in the main campaign and in the too-short epilogue, but the baffling divisions make Legacy of the Void the weakest single-player campaign of the StarCraft 2 trilogy.
Score: 73/100
Starcraft 2 Campaign Missions Xbox One
StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void is out now for PC and Mac. The publisher provided GamesBeat with a digital copy of the game for the purposes of this review.