Legacy of the Void

Haven't had a go at any MP yet - I feel like I've been left too far behind and it seems like 1v1 has become even less noob-friendly now with how aggressive they're pushing players to be with smaller mineral fields, automatic mining and so on.
Also, with the changes to the Swarm Host, the addition of the Disruptor, the Liberator and that it seems like they're emphasising constant harassment, which is an awful lot of hassle to do and deal with.
It's a key part of making the game so competetive but jaysus it's an awful source of stress.

It all seems very much geared towards watching the game, top class players, and not really towards your average punter (like me).

On the other hand, Allied commanders looks great - I've watched a few videos of TB and Jesse Cox playing a few missions. That's where they've been missing something for your average Joe since WOL came out.

Loving the campaign, although maybe too many missions are time-sensitive for my liking.

Also, there's been a constant in games released by Blizzard since WOL in how flexible they make choices in game - you can mix and match your skills at will in Diablo 3, you could swap a lot of skills in and out in HOTS and that's even more pronounced in LOTV.

Sometimes it's nice to try things out, but what also happens is that it kills the capacity to enjoy replaying the game because you've probably already experienced every combination of units and strategies.

For example, in anticipation of the release of LOTV, I replayed the whole series, including my first mech-only playthrough of WOL and it was a totally different experience.

Similarly with the Diablo series, I used to start from scratch to try some new build in Diablo 2 (lightning Sorceress vs fire, ranged Amazon vs Spear) but there's no point in doing that in D3 because you always can access all the available skills once you hit lvl 70.

I don't think it follows the gameplay in a thematic sense from the previous games either.

In WOL you had a small rag-tag group pulling together, collecting scrap and that was reflected in how you'd have a small-ish specialised army upgraded to your needs that excelled in the sort of commando missions the campaign offered you.

HOTS had the Queen and endless Swarms - she did most of the levelling up while you mostly had large-scale engagements with, relative to the first game, colossal armies at your disposal. While there wasn't much limiting you in individual unit perks or Kerrigan's powers, you could pick different strains so that was cool.

What I was expecting was somewhere in between with the Protoss - relatively low numbers of heroic style units - zealots would gain "experience" or something like that, and you'd have access to all the heroes you saw in In Utter Darkness.
So in one campaign you might emphasise some heroes, like Zeratul and Artanis, and with them, melee and psionic units like DTs, Zealots, Archons and that kind of thing, whereas you might go with focusing on levelling up your air units, Selendis, Urun and that in another playthrough.

The Spear of Adun is the absolute business from a gameplay perspective in-mission, and I like the exploration of Protoss tech - warping in carrier is nice - but from the base-building RPG-kind of thing it's the shallowest of the three games and that's a bit disappointing.

Highlight of it so far has been the magnificent John de Lancie (Q from Star Trek) as Alarak.

I'm probably about 4/5ths of the way through so far. I'll probably finish the campaign tonight.

My blizzard ID thingy is grogleberry.

Feel free to add me.

I'd say I'll probably stick to the campaign this evening and maybe tomorrow mind you.

Just finished the campaign there.

Magnificent. The epilogue was suitably epic.
In fact pretty much each of the last 10 missions were.

I mentioned my foibles with the tone and all that but within the missions themselves I absolutely loved it. Seriously taxing on brutal.

Theres 19 in the main campaign and 3 in the Epilogue. 3 in the prologue if your only playing it now.

For those with nothing better to do on a Friday evening (:o) Day9 is streaming the campaign on his day off.

I'm interested to see how a top(ish) level player approaches the game.

So far he's struggled through the first prologue mission about as badly as I did.

I too tried it on Brutal without realising you could build more advanced than Gateway units.

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

What are the hardware requirements for this game compared to WOL & HOTS? I'm just hoping my 3 year old computer can handle it

pretty sure if you can run HoTs you can run LOTV, no game engine changes same design really.

Mekhi Salmon Stagehand wrote: »

I'm on the mission where you have to protect the keystone. I think the single player is too easy to be honest. I've managed to beat almost every level on brutal on my first attempt. I've managed to get almost every achievement by accident along the way. I'm not even particularly good at the multilayer. I was diamond in WOL but haven't touched 1v1 since.

My imba build is picking the hyper overcharge, maxing out on probes asap, maxing out on upgrades while using fenix to defend, tech to carriers with repair bots and passive global heal. Mass carriers which can't die with a tiny bit of micro. Too easy.

If you were 1v1 diamond you're probably in the top 5% of RTS gamers in the world.

I would like a stupid difficulty that requires even more, but brutal is certainly reasonably balanced in comparison to other games.

Nody wrote: »

Air is OP against the AI; same applies in the duo mode where TB and Cox beat the highest difficulty at level 5 (of 15) by one of them going mass void rays only because the enemy don't have enough anti air.

Chain lighting void rays are the business.

It took me a while to figure out what I needed to win the final main campaign mission but the Taldarim Voids were the key to it. They just massacre large groups of enemies of any type.

Their immortals are ludicrous as well.

If we get an Alarak character in Allied Commanders he'd just be hilariously overpowered.