Yeah, you're supposed to just creep the map and spam hydras, there's no reason to do anything else on that mission. ok, maybe a few queens to spread the creep faster and autoheal the hydras.
@@bleflar9183 i just build a whole lotta spore crawlers and use the Hydras and roaches as support to take down the backup. Spore crawlers don't apply to the population cap.
The "greatest" RTS ever doesn't even warrant enough money to make another RTS. Starcraft 2 is an absurdly fast game that has needless micro (inject larvae anyone?) to the point that it's almost unplayable. There's a reason why 1v1 multiplayer is mostly ignored and most people play the campaign once or twice then go to custom maps. Blizzard grabbed Broodwar, doubled its speed, doubled the amount of workers, added macro mechanics further boosting resources, added AI that clumps, and tons of big AoE attacks. In Heart of the Swarm (1st expo) the Swarm Host slowed the game down and the devs immediately jumped into action and "fixed" that in Legacy of the Void (2nd expo) by literally reducing resources at bases and increasing game speed even further. When Korean pros are complaining the game is too hard to play and multitask then you've got a problem. www.kotaku.com.au/2015/09/even-the-koreans-think-starcraft-2-is-too-hard/ I don't know about you but if I wanted a fast paced game where you can die and/or lose your army in 3 seconds flat I'd play an FPS. At least the reflex feels more natural than watching your marines cross the map in under 40 seconds, have a 10 second fight, and the game ends. The fact no sequel will be made and no other RTS is planned should speak volumes that this genre is not working in general. P.S. You're not going to see a Starcraft 3 RTS because it's a fairly inaccessible and hard game to play and most people don't end up playing those games. The RTS genre has basically been killed and Starcraft 2 did nothing to change it. Honestly, I'm shocked so many people defend Starcraft 2 to this degree.
@@BrunoAnton your comment has nothing to do with mine, but i'll reply anyway. My comment was about the video, which doesn't cover multiplayer at all. So, i agree Starcraft 2 competitive multiplayer is problematic and has lots of unnecessary clicking and stuff, but that wasn't that much better in Starcraft 1. (i was Master's once in SC2) I think Starcraft 2 has actually improved quite a bit recently, and the game doesn't end immediately with one engagement anymore, at least if you're Master+ level. now the pro games are 15 minute slugfests with fights everywhere all the time, which is great. But yes, Starcraft is and always has been the most hardcore and hardest esports, that's what it strives to be. Your skill ceiling is near unlimited, you can always improve. And basically, it's hard to design an RTS that's not like this, because by definition you can do numerous actions in real time every second. But i would be down for another RTS that's lighter on clicking and macro and lays more focus on good decisions that don't require a lot of clicks, like Warcraft 3. By the way, my other favourite single player RTS is They Are Billions, which i think is incredibly innovative and cleverly designed. But it too is extremely APM-intensive, if you play without pause. There, the pause feature is one clever way to get out of the APM trap, though of course that's hard to achieve with multiplayer. Though i play no pause anyways, because it's more challenging and more like SC2. I think it's very hard to design an RTS with resource management without being APM-intensive and hardcore, that's what RTS is, in essence. Unless you're Warcraft 3 or even Tooth and Tail, or you don't have base building and mass units at all, like Company of Heroes. But then, it's already very different from the traditional RTS genre.
In regards to your issues with Starcraft 2’s story, I feel like these problems are more of an issue with Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void. Looking back I consider Wings of Liberty to be well made in essentially every aspect, including the story which I consider to have some great story and character beats
Yes and no. WoL's biggest weakness is the main character, Raynor. His character arc is non-existent and even degenerative from the previous game. Even if you didn't play the original, his choices regarding kerrigan defy all logic
Old video, new comment, and probably you know this by now. Zeratul told Kerrigan she won't see him again as in I won't come to you to teach/lecture you things. In the Legacy of the Void prologue both Zeratul and Kerrigan were looking for the same thing, a prophecy, and thus inevitably run into each other, and as enemies, as they wanted the same thing but wouldn't work together. So yeah...
Still, the bad guys were secretly the good guys the whole time and the good guys just didn't understand that there was a bigger threat. Rinse and Repeat. Every Blizzard story since 1996 with Blizzards first Expansion Pack. Even in games where it makes no sense with literal Demons being "misunderstood".
@@xdevantx5870 ehhh... Idk if the Zerg are really "good" in the end. They're still ruthless and bloodthirsty and have absolutely nothing resembling empathy. The little glimmers of empathy we ever see from the Zerg are due to Kerrigan's _human_ influences. Now, did the Zerg turn out to not really be in support of literally ending all of existence, _including their own?_ Yeah. Sure. I'll give them that. But there's a world of difference between "not wanting to kill literally everything forever to serve evil god who also enslaved and manipulated our entire race into slaughtering billions or trillions of people" and "just misunderstood, guys. Actually the good guys over here. Ignore all the fleshy Giger horror porn everything is made out of and all the spikes and acid poking out all over the place, we are just gentle sould over here, guys. Pinky promise."
One little critism about the Hydralisk's speed, when you have the knowledge of all zerg units getting a movement buff while on creep you make sure to spread that creep as far and wide as possible to make the most out of that buff.
I feel like the unfortunate murder of the Command and Conquer series really contributed to the decline in popularity of singleplayer RTS games. If Starcraft 2 is the queen of the Genre then Command and Conquer is easily the king. Or was... until it was murdered by that court jester we know as EA.
@@Omgtired As a competitive game, SC2 is the best. As a RTS game, SC2 is the worst. WC3 is close to SC2, but not quite as extreme. SC:BW is a better competitive game than C&C games (due to the long term effort on balancing patches, if nothing else). SC:BW and C&C titles are more true to the RTS genre.
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance has always been my favourite RTS. It is less focussed on rapid micro-managing and is more about large strategic movements, resource management, base building and planning in advance, with a longer average game time and a great variety of playstyles available, with no single strategy being "the best". The factions, as well as simply having different units, have distinct playstyles and different strengths and weaknesses which you really need to capitalise on in order to win. The addition of not only a naval theatre but an air theatre adds far more variety to the combat, and co-ordinating attacks with all three theatres is challenging and satisfying. It also has a fairly unique take on intelligence, where gaining and maintaining intelligence is vital to success. There is a real feeling of tension whenever your commander is under threat, because regardless of how well you are doing, if your commander dies you lose - a few times I have been defeated by players that were seemingly beaten because they sniped my commander, and a few times I've been the player snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. The spectacular scale also makes battles far more grand and satisfying to watch than the much smaller ones in games such as StarCraft or Dawn of War. The campaign is mediocre at best, however, which is a problem with most RTS games - it really shines in the large multiplayer games where you have thousands of units in play at a time.
What I meant by "different playstyles" is that the differences in playstyle go deeper than "this faction needs to expand this way" or "this faction needs to build more/less of this thing". The fundamental strategy and way you think for each one is different. StarCraft was designed from the ground-up to be competitive, whereas Supreme Commander is asymmetrical by nature. For example, one of the factions (the Cybran) has little staying power but excels at guerilla warfare (ambushes, hit and run, etc) whereas another (the UEF) is the polar opposite, excelling in big battles but struggling to respond effectively to guerilla tactics. One faction (the Aeon) has highly specialised units, forcing you to maintain a diverse military and be able to use the wide variety of units together effectively, whereas others such as the UEF and Seraphim allow for fairly homogenous militaries. Each faction has unique challenges to go along with its unique strengths, and they fundamentally change the way you think about tactics and strategy. The way the endgame (experimental) units function are also fundamentally different, as it is the area where the four factions have the least in common. The main reason why Supreme Commander's resource management is different is because it uses a system based on your income of energy and mass (the two resources) rather than how much you have stored. Storage is simply a backup in case things go wrong. Things are constantly producing and constantly consuming both energy and mass which requires you to actively keep up with both rather than just going "I want more of the resource so I will build more". This means that targeting enemy resource generation is far more harmful than in other games because getting rid of just a few mass extractors or power generators can kill their entire economy and cripple them for the rest of the game, as opposed to other games such as StarCraft where it will just slow down unit/building production. Again, another area where Supreme Commander stands out is intelligence, as obtaining and maintaining intelligence through the use of scout/spy planes, radar and sonar is absolutely key. The enemy cannot respond to your attacks in time if he does not know you are coming, and so taking out their intelligence is very valuable, and in turn making sure you maintain your intelligence is vital to responding to attacks and planning out your own offensives.
@@sulphuric_glue4468 I've seen and replied to this argument to death so I'm just gonna reply to SupCom being more assymetrical to Starcraft Tbh SupCom/FA is a very symmetric game. Faction traits do exists, but when it comes down to it, it's basically taking a unit and modifying it to create faction flavor. Take any ordinary tank for instance. You make it very durable, slow and shoots projectiles, that's a UEF unit Take the same tank, but make it cheap, shoost lasers/hitscan weapons, fast and fragile and you basically have a Cybran tank Take the same tank again, make it hover, hit the hardest and you have an Aeon tank The same can't be said for Starcraft, which is an assymetric game by design. The Protoss and Zerg does not have a Siege tank counterpart. How both three factions constructs their buildings are vastly different as well as opposed to an Engineer needing to manually build the structures in Sup Com. I don't wanna sound like I'm trashing on Sup Com, but to say it's more assymetrial than Starcraft is just... wrong tbh But I will say though, SupCom is an entire beast of its own with its merits. I just wish there were more when it comes to story and campaign missions
I'm glad you addressed the bland story. I liked it less and less as it went on, but loved the gameplay. Wish they would've focused more on characters and the conflicts they create.
You know, I couldn't figure out why Tooth and Tail didn't click for me, but I think you just told me. The campaign is just teaching you how to play multiplayer instead of being an experience in its own right. I don't play most games multiplayer; I'm not very good at most of them and I get anxious just thinking about taking a game into a competitive arena because of that. I do like RTSes, tho, so I appreciate good campaigns. I grew up playing Age of Mythology very terribly but still having a good time because of what the campaign was doing (or at least trying to do?). Anyway, this video wasn't even ABOUT Tooth and Tail, but it was an interesting point nonetheless.
In Starcraft 1 I used to tell people who wanted to learn the game: just play singleplayer. You learn the mechanics while enjoying a good story. Afterwards they could still choose whether to join the madness. But they made Starcraft 2 mechanics entirely different between singleplayer and multiplayer, which I think was a mistake.
Did you play the original Red Alert? There were really cool things they did with some of their missions that I feel no other RTS has ever successfully copied or built off of. I'm thinking of the "puzzle" missions, often occuring inside buildings, where you had limited units and you had to find the right path to get them to check points to unlock more troops or set off traps. In particular, I loved how they mixed things up in the Allies campaign where you have to prevent the nuke from launching. The surprise they sprung halfway through the mission was incredibly unique, and still maintains a special place in my memory.
Mutas aren't for flanking, they're for harassing. It's not the same thing. You put a muta ball in where the enemy can't shoot at it and let it have at it. Banelings on the other hand is a way to get a lot of damage ON TARGET, QUICKLY. For example, if you want to attack the enemy, they may unsportingly choose to put buildings in the way. So you send up banelings to kill the building allowing you to get at them. They can also be used to crush down large amount of light units (marines will shred zerglings if both armies are reasonably sized, zealots are a pain, etc.) really fast. They're not however, flankers. Zerglings are great at flanking, but banelings should not go without zergling escort.
Optional missions are the best parts of dow 1 dark crusade at stronghold levels of the game. For example the necron cave or stronghold you must explode in on itself and escape to stop the necron from coming from their catacombs. In the process you discover the depths at which the necrons power is far greater than your own and can easily wipe you out if or when awakened. I decided one playthrough to just go straight for the site at which I’m to place the bomb and then escape. I did reach my max tech tree and max caps but when I planted the bomb a great number of there relic (super) units which are great pyramids spawned on me and on top of my base making it a daring escape that I would have lost if not for my land raider able to pick up my commander. Those other squads of troops weren’t so lucky.
Much as I hate, hate... Fucking hate Warhammer 40k, there's no real arguing this. Dark Crusade was an amazing game. I personally enjor Tiberiuan sun more, but dark crusade was just better.
Badly written, poorly handled, shitty business practices. 40k went from a cute tongue in cheek parody that stole all its ideas etc to this grim herp "Look mama i'm metal too" experience which tries so hard it's shit. It's poorly written, full of inconsistencies, Matt Wards, and uses "the war" to plug every silly over the top and outright stupid plot hole/device that makes no sense. It's not a well-written setting, it's overrated and frankly dumb. It has some cool visuals but that's it, the entire lore etc is there simply to sell new models. Tau at first were null, now they can be freely corrupted by Chaos and they tease the possibility for Chaos Tau models, etc. Its okay to like the board game despite horrible rules that keep getting worse and worse as it goes but still enjoy it because the models (other than space marines) look pretty cool... But its just, so horribly made as a setting.
I agree with most of what you said but I still enjoy 40k a lot. I actually preferred the warhammer fantasy novels a lot more. The issue with 40k is they're obsessed with space marines, and space marines are very shallow. Try reading stuff on the imperial guard. It's not a bad setting, it's just that the people at the helm are complete morons.
a lot of people say the Brood War story was much better than SC2's, but the amount of quality of life improvements are overwhelming. (I played both games, but started with SC2, so SC1 was just really difficult to the extend that I couldnt really enjoy the game over having to beat it^^)
Quality of life IMPROVEMENTS is the wrong phrase here, they gameplay is different, there is nothing inherently better about SC2 over SC1, SC1 is a management game first and foremost, the limited selection groups, simple pathing AI, no automine, etc allow the player a wide range of skill in executing, your units in BW can far out perform someone else's with proper micro, it takes a lot more effort but the varying degree of value based off control is what makes BW awesome. The game is 100% you control a crisis at all times. SC2 through streamlining removes a lot of that depth and instead focuses on unit variety, unit's in SC2 are more complex and counter each other much harder, you're more concern about composition over execution. Both games have high strategy and high execution, but the weighting is what is different between the two. Brood War is much more focused on the mechanical aspect, the execution, where as SC2 is more focused on the strategy (again both have these elements, I'm referring to the more prominent one for each game)
hmm ya I guess it is because I started with SC2 (after several other RTS games, not SC1/Brood War), and I fell in love with it so I got used to the way that game works. SC1 forces you to focus on other aspects of the game much more so I missed the SC2 strategies.
(beginning of video) "Peanut butter is the most perfect food of all time." (18 minutes later, at the end of the video) "So as I said at the beginning, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are the most perfect food of all time."
Age of empires 2 is by far the best rts ever made. 20 years and still goes on and at least 10 years with no support for nothing. Even its studio closed and microsoft forgets about it until 2013. Fans keep it very active and even developed voobly. No other game has that love, years and passion for its community. Starcraft is amazing but it is second far far behind, it has the marketing of blizzard and its esports used to be the best but only koreans care about it
Yeah. I still watch AoE2 tournament all day as long as there are anymore tournament been passionately organized by its community. Pure labour of love of a competitive scene in a great way in its own
I'm very late to this but creeper world isn't a flash game, the flash games of it are glorified demos of the actual games, the fourth one came out recently and is in full 3d
I'm going to respectfully disagree that Legacy of the Void had the best meta-management. From my perspective, its choices were made less meaningful by the fact that you could switch them between missions. Wings of Liberty's decisions were _permanent_ , meaning that you had to really consider your playstyle - there was no going back. I felt it was a more interesting and meaningful decision.
I agree that WoL armory upgrades and tech research were more meaningful for your playstyle, but not that they were more interesting. They don't include strategy-defining mechanics the way the time stop or shield overcharge do. They mostly provide general boosts to your army and favourite units (with the exception of the last two protoss and zerg research).
You may be right on higher difficulties or the other campaigns, but I've played the terran campaign on normal difficulty and if you're good enough at the macro layer, just creating a death blob is still highly effective and can get you through just about every mission.
You know one of the RTS games I love... Close combat 3 and 5.. So much fun... You have an excellent channel sir.. I'm on board.. I look forward to see you grow
I mean, I DID just mass hydras in that mission. In fact, i usually ended up just massing whatever unit was introduced that mission, and met almost no opposition, but maybe it was because the difficulty was too low *Shrug*
Your gripe about the game play aspect of the campaign is partly your fault. Hard but not brutal is the start of the problem. I mean if you played on easy, you can probably complete almost every Terran mission with just MMM. Does that mean the campaign is poorly balanced/designed? I won't think so. Optional objective becomes a real problem in brutal because it forces you to divert resources (which, btw, include the army you currently have), which makes you more vulnerable. For comparison, try playing the missions w/o going for the optional objective versus going for them, see how the difficulty compares. Mind, there are some missions where they are, in fact, trivial. Like babysitting Odin one, as it's literally on the way. I'd say about a third of them don't really add any extra difficulty, a third are pretty easy even if you need to go out of your way while the last third is a serious enough diversion of resources that impact your ability to complete primary objective. In fact, it's possible that the reason you sometimes struggle with main objective is because you've diverted resources to the optional ones but don't quite realize it. You do lose tempo every time you go out of your way for one of those. Again, best way to tell is comparing how hard the level is w/ versus w/o doing the optional objectives. Fact of the matter is, the challenge of optional objective is not necessarily in the difficulty in completing them in and of itself, but the cost it exacts on your overall game plan to complete the primary objective. And if you really want to go hardcore, try to complete all level specific achievements on brutal while also doing optional objectives. For honest disclosure, I'm gonna tell you I only did it for one of the campaigns(on my main race, and at that, I think a handful I wasn't able to). The game does get more fun, but also more frustrating, as you ramp up the difficulty. By the same token, the hybrids are also more "fun" on harder difficulties. It's true that they are a bit lacking in specialization, but the four types are somewhat distinctly different. Aside from the flying one, army compo required to take them down don't really differ, but each would require a different micro approach.
And as from a like percieved standpoint. Hybrids erroding the 3 principles of micro, macro and meta makes sense in universe with just how much of a threat they are if left unchallanged. Which is i think what blizzard was actually shooting for with them. also great comment overall, hearthally agree with a large part of it.
9:00 *The Zergling Rush is NOT problematic.* Rushes are supposed to keep players on their toes, a win is a win as long as it follows the rules in the game. Blizzard just wants to see more massive macro clashes which is stupid. According to the law of diminishing returns, the more we see the matches played out similarly every time, the less satisfied we're in the long run. And stupidly, *SC2 is NOT built for massive clashes because:* - you have the same 200 pop cap from BW yet everyone has to have up to 70-90 workers, making less supply available for your army - Game AI makes units stupidly bunch up together (deathballing), unlike in BW, making the already downisized army scale _seem_ even smaller - positioning becomes less of an issue since everyone balls up and makes AOE attacks too effective, making one wonder how such big armies have little presence after each big battle. - "big" battles are over too quickly anyway because of hard counters - hard counters make for "if you don't have a certain unit built at a certain circumstance, there's no coming back, other, less effective units can never help you out" - hard counters make macro management of economy + timing for making certain units the core focus of winning games, and diminishing the focus on tactics and micro. - The fast game pace makes coming back from a setback unfeasible. So Blizzard wants quicker matches for a game based on macro which means you repetitively play "quick" games of macromanagement? Quick rote plays, so we get to repeat the same stuff more often that's what they want? Are they insane? - This game does away with a lot of micro, but reinstalled micro by making each race do periodical multitasking chores like chrono boost/MULEs calldowns/Larvae injects that you HAVE to do because the opponent has them too.
Hint for you: the real MVP of the day/night zombie horror mission is the Reaper. Their anti-unit shots obliterate the infected you're fighting at night, their grenades are holy death against buildings, and their speed combined with their jump ability makes them comparable to Hellions for mobility, especially since they barely have to stop to kill a building. Seriously, 1 bunker with 4 marines and a firebat at each base entrance, then just pour out reapers by the billion and you'll beat the mission with no difficulty faster than you ever could with the Hellions.
I actually love the campain of this game, i think it(for a game that is centered around gameplay) did amazing. I would even argue legacy of the void is one of the best warrior fantasies ive ever seen represented.
This video was really good as always, you always have good topics to talk about! :D For me, RTS's were a thing of my youth, but never one of sucess - even then, my reflexes were too slow to handle them, and I hated everything else being faster than me, even just AI. But I did get into watching Starcraft 2 games back when that was really popular, and that was very satisfying to watch and gave me a lot of interest into RTS's with cool and/or asymettrical concepts.
Best rts? Well, when everyone was playing sc1, i was all into Total Annihilation. Later on all in FAF lobbies and dow 1 ss multiplayer. Neer considered sc as best series, westwood rts was much more intence and supcom is much more massive, sc nukes are silly in comparisson. Sc2 story delivery is actyaly great, i can also relate to dow2cr campaign and reccomend it as one with alluring story delivery. And what impressed me most is homeworld series. Sc story is not disaster, my feelings when playing homeworld are.
AoS was a line war, a separate genre predating the genre we, ironically, now refer to as AoS. It wasn't until RoC that we saw an explosion of competitive PvP AoS variants. The core features of the genre didn't exist. There was no PvP, there was no levelling, there were no skills, there was no real single unit focus. While we acknowledge AoS as father of modern dota-style games, and honour it as a genre namer, it absolutely is not the first dota-style game. If you showed a LoL or DOTA2 player the original AoS map they would find it unrecognizable as an AoS. If you showed them even DotA 1 they would 100% recognize it.
SC2 is a good game for a certain type of gamer - the ultra-competetive, 300 APM type. I personally dislike blobby gameplay, the lightning fast pace and godawful story in the main campaign. What I liked in SC2 were crisp unit controls and good variety in campaign missions. It's one of the few decent "new" RTS games out there, but I wouldn't call it the best one.
Unless you are in the top 1% of the top 1% apm doesn't matter at all, let alone 300 apm. The pacing isn't even particularly fast. I'd suggest that you are having difficulties with strategy and tactics, and because you have seen Reaver War or some Emperor play you assumed that you were lacking in mechanical skill. Perhaps you were unaware that pure strategic plays like The Stove are also highly regarded. In general mechanics is a crutch for poorer strategic and tactical play, not the other way around.
lol sc2 was designed to do away with a lot of the APM spam that existed in competitive broodwar. there were pro-level players who averaged between 60-100 APM per match.
nori The pacing isn't fast? Are you kidding, I'm practically panicking every match trying to keep up with all the tasks I need to perform. There's almost always more you could be doing. Sure I play ~100 APM, but even at 300 I doubt I'd ever say "I've done everything I need, let's just take it easy" (aside from the very early game). Even pro matches have frequent mistakes. Harass or scouting units being killed because you weren't keeping a close enough eye on them, too many workers dying because you didn't pull fast enough, etc.
Starcraft objectively has the best RTs gameplay of any ompetitor, and that is not a point of argument. SC2s story is a garbagefire, but that doesnt exactly make it unique among games.
+Malus I manage to be in tje upper echelons of gold with 30 APM. Is it optimal? Fuckno. But its possible. If you learn a decwnt buildorder and some counters you can get as far as this, and engage with the actual strategy part of the game
I agree. Call me a Blizz fan boy, or whatever, but I have always liked Blizzards stories and I felt like the campaign was just a mean to get from story beat to story beat.
I know I'm late, but I appreciate the story rant. It does have redeeming qualities, but the sc 2 story is so much worse than the brood war story, which is why I fell in love with the series in the first place
Yeah, the quality of the writing in SC2, while not bad, was not at all great. And how many super duper extra evil doomsday demon plots does Blizzard have to do? The better parts of the story was when the stakes were lower. When Matt said that they did the right thing when they busted the jail, that showed you a lot of what Matt was all about. When Kerrighan slowly grew more Zerg-like over the campaign, that was a cool touch, but when the rest of the story was as banal as it was, the actually good bits of writing gets overlooked. That being said, it's not about APM. It's much more about planning and strategies than it is about clickety-clacking. If you don't sit down before the game starts and create an idea of what threat you're going to present to the enemy, how you're going to put the brakes on their growth, what technologies you need and when, your expansion policy, your attack/harass plans, etc. you're not going to win many games. Having the skill to execute your plans is necessary, but you don't need to be very fast to execute a basic build-order. 40 APM or so is enough, and that's a bit over a click or button press every other second. A 100 APM is more than enough to go to diamond league, so long as you can read the enemy, plan ahead and execute.
@@HrHaakon I dunno, I'd say the SC2 writing is pretty terrible. It definitely feels straight out of the cartoon WoW world. Dark god demons and oversized super weapons. It's an almost completely different setting from the gritty perpetual war of the original. The cinematics are very well done though which helps cover it over somewhat. They can get an emotional response, then you think, wait that was dumb and it made no sense.
There is another detail I really like, is how you can modulate the challenge of the game with your meta choices. For exemple often you'll have to choose between a passive boost for your units/hero or some sort of active effect or micro intensive skill. It's great for player like me that totally SUUUUUCK at micro because I can simply focus on making proper army composition and let the passive effect do the trick. Meanwhile a more micro oriented player might have a worse macro but pick more micro intensive unit and leverage their powers to great effect. And you can make your game more challenging by simply picking all the micro intensive effects you see, building spellcasters and having to handle a nightmarishly complicated army that'll totally crumble without proper micro. It doesn't necessarily make the campaign harder, you'll probably stomp it anyway, but depending on how engaged you want to be in controlling those units it makes for great customization.
Have you tried Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge? It was a great RTS game. Well balanced with interesting campaigns and regular gameplay (including multiplayer). (Not including those who used IFV president cheats, although seeing them every once in a while was actually kind of funny).
Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm really glad your quality has improved so much since this. You're currently tied in first place as the best youtuber of your genre, but and this video shows how far you've come.
I think the best TTS ive ever played (purely on game play not story) was Age of Kings AKA Age of Empires 2. Or maybe even Empire Earth. Def didnt have a memorable story but oh man was the game play awesome. So much you can do so many stratagies. It also had a better macro to micro management balance.
about zeratul meeting kerrigan. what was he supposed to do? "oh sorry tal- whatever your name was but i told kerrigan i wouldnt meet her again have fun dying. lmfao."
-.- i loved c&c and c&c3 but i dont get why u say without c&c u wouldn have starcraft... i ve played great rts before and after c&c1, and all had similar mechanics.
Think of it like 2 BIG BANG the 1st can be Starcraft or CC your pick the 2rd was Command and Conquer 3 I heard of Starcraft but never play cuz I saw the skill level was that high CC3 on the other hand "simple to play Hard to master"
Yeah, no. Warcraft did just fine on its own to spawn a space RTS. I liked C&C and Red Alert as much as anyone else, but the two franchises were competitors, and Warcraft/Starcraft seems to have won in the end, thanks to EA ruining C&C with that abomination Tiberian Twilight.
no your confusing stories blizzard wanted to link the RTS they were working on at the time "warcraft 1" with games workshops Warhammer fantasy but the deal fell through leaving warcraft to look quite similar to Warhammer however starcraft was completely unrelated although it seems likely that after copying warhammer for one game they decided to copy wh40k for starcraft
Broodwar still has a decent player base and its been out since like 1998? Still playing it to this day. Used to play it online via dial up. The good ol' days xD
I only Agree with the third and the fourth argument about the campaigns. First off the only person that really forgave Sarah is Jim. Everyone else hates her. Or she hates them. And even she says that she's beyond redemption. She's self aware. For the Second one. Personally Tosh was Ok. His charm was his mysterious Nature, The relation between Mira and Matt is for me at least amusing. The third one is completely fair. Do you know how Blizzard could have made Amon Creepy and Cool? If he had Lovecraftian aspects. Imagine Amon as a being of Immense magnitude that has a motive that we cannot comprehend. And somehow all of the races are connected to his plan.
Sorry, but Brood War is clearly superior, no matter how you spin it. SC2 is an excellent game, but Brood War is a titan, constituting a league of its own. If we’re taking exclusively about RTS campaigns then, no doubt, it’s WarCraft III with its revolutionary presentation, outstanding plot, and the ultimate immersive experience. SC2’s story is a disaster. Irredeemable, absolute disaster,
Ah, another individual who's so stubborn that they believe their opinion to be fact. Have you even looked into the reasons why people might prefer sc2 over bw?
When Starcraft 2 was announced I couldn't help but shrug, the gameplay looked like starcraft and in a post Dawn of War and Company of Heroes world I found my self not caring in the least about the old formula. That said your review has at least convinced me that I should probably give the single player a chance. What it didn't convince me was that its the best RTS ever or even holds a candle to CoH.
The thing about warcraft 3 was the food limit stat per unit balance. I never understood what was fun about click create unit, and then sending unlimited units in starcraft, etc.
eventhough it is late but the zergling rush part is not true. just because the number of worker added doesnt mean its gone. last time its called 6 pool, nowadays its called 12 pool. and yes. zergling still flood in god damn base
Hey Adam: I´ve enjoyed your videos, and I have fun watching videos about game design. Just one suggestion. Could you speak slower and clearer? I had to turn on the subtitles at some points of the video to understand one or three words because I couldn´t udnerstand. Heck, I could also understand better by slowing down the video on 0.75x speed. But still, your videos are awesome!
RTS, Great Campaign. Have you ever heard about Homeworld? Granted, its old (1999, 200 and 2003) but 2 of its games got a remaster on 2015 and a prequel was released on 2016.
Can I recommend a game to explore in a video? Age of Empires II HD. An actual classic RTS that got three new expansions over a decade after its release. Amazing game with great campaigns and solid mechanics.
As a single player campaign SC2 definitely has some merits, but it seems like a big mistake to overlook the competitive aspect of RTS, since Starcraft: Brood War was widely considered one of the prioneers of esports and SC2 was built with competitive balance in mind. Unless speaking strictly of the competitive metagame, meta mechanics do not play into the PvP aspect of the game at all, and much more importantly, the campaign fails to properly train a player in preparation for the skirmish gameplay. A player going from campaign to online could easily find themself dead in minutes due to simply not being able to build any of the units they're familiar with (most notably Terran Firebats, Medics, Diamondbacks, Goliath, Science Vessels). I overall agree that the game has the best campaign (except story) out of all RTS and you would be hard pressed to find one that remotely compares, you just can't weigh it only on that merit.
i wish rise of legends was not obscure. its unique steam punk french magic Arabians, and aztec alien races were extremely inspired and incredibly designed for its time
Legacy of the Void implies that the "overmind retcon" is an in-universe retcon with the friendly Xel'naga impersonating Tassadar (this is 100% true) and possibly feeding false information to Zeratul (this is only implied) for the greator good. It works because they enough room for interpretation that if you liked the overmind retcon, the game lets you keep that but if you don't like it, the game gives you an out.
You really exaggerating Starcraft2's campaign here. Missions were copycat of SC 1 and WC3's missions while unit treatment was bad still. They could made the campaign better like in the Dawn of War 2 by simply letting loose the connection of unit profile between campaign and multiplayer+skirmish games. Instead they wrapped things in a very brute way and just hit the lights off for the villain so we can't see how badly packaged he was. I really see that not lettüng individual units to gain exp and be more veteran like C&C, Sup Com FA, Warlords Battlecry(my favourite), Original War, Ground Control, or Dawn of War 2 which was the best iteration on levelling units up. For example getting ancient power for dreadnought or veteran teammates for Tarkus, or getting the ability to keep your stealth on while placing and detonating bombs and mines for Cyrus was a great accomplishment and improvement on tactics in DoW 2 campaign. Instead in SC 2 we got reskinned regular units with either more health or other stupid extra trait that is not really changing the unit's role in your army composition. What I really felt when I played SC 2 was eben all the experience and money one can get like Blizzard, People can still be shortsighted and lacking imagination.
Twisted Insurrection is a free mod for Tiberium Sun, what if NOD won the first game Mental Omega 3.0 is for Red Alert 2, but you need both the base game and Yuri's Revenge
Actually, Wings of Liberty is the best RTS campaign ever. The story is still decent if you ignore the optional protoss missions. The research and tech choices are far more fleshed out, and are more meaningful due to not being to swap once you've chosen one option over another. Being on board the Hyperion was pretty awesome too. Plus, the special achievements for each mission where only achievable on Hard difficulty and above (unlike Normal in the later two campaigns). From Heart of the Swarm onwards, the story went from science fiction to shit fantasy, and Blizzard clearly was interested in playtesting MOBAs with all the hero-only missions and the huge focus on Kerrigan's abilities. The level where we had to fight the Primal Zerg bosses was excruciating. Well maybe Reign of Chaos or Frozen Throne could be contenders, but look what a mess Blizzard created with Warcraft 3 Refunded!
"[...]people looking for microintensive skirmishes have moved onto action RPGs or one of many dota style games, which of course started out as a mod for warcraft three." Which itself was a port of Aeon of Strife, a Starcraft Brood War map. On a Starcraft based video, one would like to think you would at least get that right.... Not expecting much from this video...
Warcraft 3+ expansion and Starcraft+expansion are my 2 favorite games because of nostalgia. But i didn't play Starcraft 2. I don't know why? Still i was interested and decided to watch playthroughs and i was baffled. Why were everybody a good guy?
Honestly, I think it would be best to at least MENTION Homeworld. Its campaign does EVERYTHING right and more - not to mention that the story is some of the best ever made. Oh well, that's going to be the nth time I complain about how undeservingly forgotten this game is...
I know i am way too late, but still... one campaign that really made me replay it multiple times was Company of Heroes 2 Ardennes assault campaign, witch do to it's really punishing meta gameplay, made mo constantlyquestion every decision i made on the battlefield. The only downside was that now i was forced to preserve every single soldier, making some of the best tactics a meta suicide.
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Argh!!! The hydra mission was supposed to teach you to spread creep EVERYWHERE, since hydras move twice as fast on creep.
I laughed
Yeah, you're supposed to just creep the map and spam hydras, there's no reason to do anything else on that mission. ok, maybe a few queens to spread the creep faster and autoheal the hydras.
Wait, you were suposed to make hydras? Crap, so looks like i cheated to get mutalisks early for nothing.
@@bleflar9183 i just build a whole lotta spore crawlers and use the Hydras and roaches as support to take down the backup.
Spore crawlers don't apply to the population cap.
DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN JUST DESTROY THE THINGS THAT SPAWN THE SHUTTLES :O by doing kinetic blast and burowing (you cant do that in co-op )
The coolest thing about StarCraft II is how a match can last 5 or 50 minutes.
2 hours thats how long it took me to beat the last mission
the title should be 'The greatest RTS campaign ever', since you talk only about the campaign, not about multiplayer.
I don't think he played much of the ladder...
the meta of comp play is spoken about
Many people exclusively play campaign in RTS, so it's not entirely unfair imo.
The "greatest" RTS ever doesn't even warrant enough money to make another RTS. Starcraft 2 is an absurdly fast game that has needless micro (inject larvae anyone?) to the point that it's almost unplayable. There's a reason why 1v1 multiplayer is mostly ignored and most people play the campaign once or twice then go to custom maps.
Blizzard grabbed Broodwar, doubled its speed, doubled the amount of workers, added macro mechanics further boosting resources, added AI that clumps, and tons of big AoE attacks. In Heart of the Swarm (1st expo) the Swarm Host slowed the game down and the devs immediately jumped into action and "fixed" that in Legacy of the Void (2nd expo) by literally reducing resources at bases and increasing game speed even further.
When Korean pros are complaining the game is too hard to play and multitask then you've got a problem.
www.kotaku.com.au/2015/09/even-the-koreans-think-starcraft-2-is-too-hard/
I don't know about you but if I wanted a fast paced game where you can die and/or lose your army in 3 seconds flat I'd play an FPS. At least the reflex feels more natural than watching your marines cross the map in under 40 seconds, have a 10 second fight, and the game ends. The fact no sequel will be made and no other RTS is planned should speak volumes that this genre is not working in general.
P.S. You're not going to see a Starcraft 3 RTS because it's a fairly inaccessible and hard game to play and most people don't end up playing those games. The RTS genre has basically been killed and Starcraft 2 did nothing to change it. Honestly, I'm shocked so many people defend Starcraft 2 to this degree.
@@BrunoAnton your comment has nothing to do with mine, but i'll reply anyway. My comment was about the video, which doesn't cover multiplayer at all.
So, i agree Starcraft 2 competitive multiplayer is problematic and has lots of unnecessary clicking and stuff, but that wasn't that much better in Starcraft 1.
(i was Master's once in SC2)
I think Starcraft 2 has actually improved quite a bit recently, and the game doesn't end immediately with one engagement anymore, at least if you're Master+ level.
now the pro games are 15 minute slugfests with fights everywhere all the time, which is great.
But yes, Starcraft is and always has been the most hardcore and hardest esports, that's what it strives to be. Your skill ceiling is near unlimited, you can always improve.
And basically, it's hard to design an RTS that's not like this, because by definition you can do numerous actions in real time every second.
But i would be down for another RTS that's lighter on clicking and macro and lays more focus on good decisions that don't require a lot of clicks,
like Warcraft 3.
By the way, my other favourite single player RTS is They Are Billions, which i think is incredibly innovative and cleverly designed.
But it too is extremely APM-intensive, if you play without pause.
There, the pause feature is one clever way to get out of the APM trap, though of course that's hard to achieve with multiplayer.
Though i play no pause anyways, because it's more challenging and more like SC2.
I think it's very hard to design an RTS with resource management without being APM-intensive and hardcore, that's what RTS is, in essence.
Unless you're Warcraft 3 or even Tooth and Tail, or you don't have base building and mass units at all, like Company of Heroes. But then, it's already very different from the traditional RTS genre.
In regards to your issues with Starcraft 2’s story, I feel like these problems are more of an issue with Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void. Looking back I consider Wings of Liberty to be well made in essentially every aspect, including the story which I consider to have some great story and character beats
Tipical anglos.
Yes and no. WoL's biggest weakness is the main character, Raynor. His character arc is non-existent and even degenerative from the previous game. Even if you didn't play the original, his choices regarding kerrigan defy all logic
Old video, new comment, and probably you know this by now.
Zeratul told Kerrigan she won't see him again as in I won't come to you to teach/lecture you things.
In the Legacy of the Void prologue both Zeratul and Kerrigan were looking for the same thing, a prophecy, and thus inevitably run into each other, and as enemies, as they wanted the same thing but wouldn't work together.
So yeah...
Still, the bad guys were secretly the good guys the whole time and the good guys just didn't understand that there was a bigger threat. Rinse and Repeat. Every Blizzard story since 1996 with Blizzards first Expansion Pack. Even in games where it makes no sense with literal Demons being "misunderstood".
@@xdevantx5870 ehhh... Idk if the Zerg are really "good" in the end. They're still ruthless and bloodthirsty and have absolutely nothing resembling empathy. The little glimmers of empathy we ever see from the Zerg are due to Kerrigan's _human_ influences.
Now, did the Zerg turn out to not really be in support of literally ending all of existence, _including their own?_ Yeah. Sure. I'll give them that. But there's a world of difference between "not wanting to kill literally everything forever to serve evil god who also enslaved and manipulated our entire race into slaughtering billions or trillions of people" and "just misunderstood, guys. Actually the good guys over here. Ignore all the fleshy Giger horror porn everything is made out of and all the spikes and acid poking out all over the place, we are just gentle sould over here, guys. Pinky promise."
One little critism about the Hydralisk's speed, when you have the knowledge of all zerg units getting a movement buff while on creep you make sure to spread that creep as far and wide as possible to make the most out of that buff.
I feel like the unfortunate murder of the Command and Conquer series really contributed to the decline in popularity of singleplayer RTS games. If Starcraft 2 is the queen of the Genre then Command and Conquer is easily the king. Or was... until it was murdered by that court jester we know as EA.
A huge problem with many genres is EA gobbling up studios then forcing them to hang themselves.
Don't worry there is a mobile version for C&C coming soon!
no it never was lets be honest, sc:bw, sc2, wc3 are far more superrior to any command and conquer game.
@@Omgtired As a competitive game, SC2 is the best.
As a RTS game, SC2 is the worst.
WC3 is close to SC2, but not quite as extreme.
SC:BW is a better competitive game than C&C games (due to the long term effort on balancing patches, if nothing else). SC:BW and C&C titles are more true to the RTS genre.
@@justanoman6497 lol, and how can you support that? Makes no sence to me
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance has always been my favourite RTS. It is less focussed on rapid micro-managing and is more about large strategic movements, resource management, base building and planning in advance, with a longer average game time and a great variety of playstyles available, with no single strategy being "the best". The factions, as well as simply having different units, have distinct playstyles and different strengths and weaknesses which you really need to capitalise on in order to win. The addition of not only a naval theatre but an air theatre adds far more variety to the combat, and co-ordinating attacks with all three theatres is challenging and satisfying. It also has a fairly unique take on intelligence, where gaining and maintaining intelligence is vital to success.
There is a real feeling of tension whenever your commander is under threat, because regardless of how well you are doing, if your commander dies you lose - a few times I have been defeated by players that were seemingly beaten because they sniped my commander, and a few times I've been the player snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.
The spectacular scale also makes battles far more grand and satisfying to watch than the much smaller ones in games such as StarCraft or Dawn of War.
The campaign is mediocre at best, however, which is a problem with most RTS games - it really shines in the large multiplayer games where you have thousands of units in play at a time.
What I meant by "different playstyles" is that the differences in playstyle go deeper than "this faction needs to expand this way" or "this faction needs to build more/less of this thing". The fundamental strategy and way you think for each one is different. StarCraft was designed from the ground-up to be competitive, whereas Supreme Commander is asymmetrical by nature. For example, one of the factions (the Cybran) has little staying power but excels at guerilla warfare (ambushes, hit and run, etc) whereas another (the UEF) is the polar opposite, excelling in big battles but struggling to respond effectively to guerilla tactics. One faction (the Aeon) has highly specialised units, forcing you to maintain a diverse military and be able to use the wide variety of units together effectively, whereas others such as the UEF and Seraphim allow for fairly homogenous militaries. Each faction has unique challenges to go along with its unique strengths, and they fundamentally change the way you think about tactics and strategy. The way the endgame (experimental) units function are also fundamentally different, as it is the area where the four factions have the least in common.
The main reason why Supreme Commander's resource management is different is because it uses a system based on your income of energy and mass (the two resources) rather than how much you have stored. Storage is simply a backup in case things go wrong. Things are constantly producing and constantly consuming both energy and mass which requires you to actively keep up with both rather than just going "I want more of the resource so I will build more". This means that targeting enemy resource generation is far more harmful than in other games because getting rid of just a few mass extractors or power generators can kill their entire economy and cripple them for the rest of the game, as opposed to other games such as StarCraft where it will just slow down unit/building production.
Again, another area where Supreme Commander stands out is intelligence, as obtaining and maintaining intelligence through the use of scout/spy planes, radar and sonar is absolutely key. The enemy cannot respond to your attacks in time if he does not know you are coming, and so taking out their intelligence is very valuable, and in turn making sure you maintain your intelligence is vital to responding to attacks and planning out your own offensives.
@@sulphuric_glue4468
I've seen and replied to this argument to death so I'm just gonna reply to SupCom being more assymetrical to Starcraft
Tbh SupCom/FA is a very symmetric game. Faction traits do exists, but when it comes down to it, it's basically taking a unit and modifying it to create faction flavor.
Take any ordinary tank for instance.
You make it very durable, slow and shoots projectiles, that's a UEF unit
Take the same tank, but make it cheap, shoost lasers/hitscan weapons, fast and fragile and you basically have a Cybran tank
Take the same tank again, make it hover, hit the hardest and you have an Aeon tank
The same can't be said for Starcraft, which is an assymetric game by design. The Protoss and Zerg does not have a Siege tank counterpart. How both three factions constructs their buildings are vastly different as well as opposed to an Engineer needing to manually build the structures in Sup Com.
I don't wanna sound like I'm trashing on Sup Com, but to say it's more assymetrial than Starcraft is just... wrong tbh
But I will say though, SupCom is an entire beast of its own with its merits. I just wish there were more when it comes to story and campaign missions
RTS games still make the most enjoyable singleplayer campaigns for me
Writing a good RTS story is like writing an entire cinematic universe.
I'm glad you addressed the bland story. I liked it less and less as it went on, but loved the gameplay. Wish they would've focused more on characters and the conflicts they create.
You know, I couldn't figure out why Tooth and Tail didn't click for me, but I think you just told me. The campaign is just teaching you how to play multiplayer instead of being an experience in its own right. I don't play most games multiplayer; I'm not very good at most of them and I get anxious just thinking about taking a game into a competitive arena because of that. I do like RTSes, tho, so I appreciate good campaigns. I grew up playing Age of Mythology very terribly but still having a good time because of what the campaign was doing (or at least trying to do?).
Anyway, this video wasn't even ABOUT Tooth and Tail, but it was an interesting point nonetheless.
In Starcraft 1 I used to tell people who wanted to learn the game: just play singleplayer. You learn the mechanics while enjoying a good story. Afterwards they could still choose whether to join the madness.
But they made Starcraft 2 mechanics entirely different between singleplayer and multiplayer, which I think was a mistake.
Did you play the original Red Alert?
There were really cool things they did with some of their missions that I feel no other RTS has ever successfully copied or built off of. I'm thinking of the "puzzle" missions, often occuring inside buildings, where you had limited units and you had to find the right path to get them to check points to unlock more troops or set off traps.
In particular, I loved how they mixed things up in the Allies campaign where you have to prevent the nuke from launching. The surprise they sprung halfway through the mission was incredibly unique, and still maintains a special place in my memory.
that puzzle mission is a pretty standard mission type i thought, seeing it in sc2 and wc3
Mutas aren't for flanking, they're for harassing. It's not the same thing. You put a muta ball in where the enemy can't shoot at it and let it have at it.
Banelings on the other hand is a way to get a lot of damage ON TARGET, QUICKLY. For example, if you want to attack the enemy, they may unsportingly choose to put buildings in the way. So you send up banelings to kill the building allowing you to get at them. They can also be used to crush down large amount of light units (marines will shred zerglings if both armies are reasonably sized, zealots are a pain, etc.) really fast. They're not however, flankers. Zerglings are great at flanking, but banelings should not go without zergling escort.
"Yes, Lord Inquisitor, this video right here."
I’ve recently discovered this channel, and I’ve gone through and watched every video. Thank you for such insight and high-quality content.
Optional missions are the best parts of dow 1 dark crusade at stronghold levels of the game. For example the necron cave or stronghold you must explode in on itself and escape to stop the necron from coming from their catacombs. In the process you discover the depths at which the necrons power is far greater than your own and can easily wipe you out if or when awakened. I decided one playthrough to just go straight for the site at which I’m to place the bomb and then escape. I did reach my max tech tree and max caps but when I planted the bomb a great number of there relic (super) units which are great pyramids spawned on me and on top of my base making it a daring escape that I would have lost if not for my land raider able to pick up my commander. Those other squads of troops weren’t so lucky.
Dark Crusade is awesome; played some AOE 2 in my youth, but i t was DOW:DC that made me realize just how fun the RTS genre could be.
That's not how you spell 'Dark Crusade'
I know what you mean. If I wanted to play a game from 30 years ago I'd play the first starcraft game.
Much as I hate, hate... Fucking hate Warhammer 40k, there's no real arguing this. Dark Crusade was an amazing game. I personally enjor Tiberiuan sun more, but dark crusade was just better.
hey now, why do you "hate hate fucking hate" warhammer 40k?
Badly written, poorly handled, shitty business practices. 40k went from a cute tongue in cheek parody that stole all its ideas etc to this grim herp "Look mama i'm metal too" experience which tries so hard it's shit. It's poorly written, full of inconsistencies, Matt Wards, and uses "the war" to plug every silly over the top and outright stupid plot hole/device that makes no sense.
It's not a well-written setting, it's overrated and frankly dumb. It has some cool visuals but that's it, the entire lore etc is there simply to sell new models. Tau at first were null, now they can be freely corrupted by Chaos and they tease the possibility for Chaos Tau models, etc.
Its okay to like the board game despite horrible rules that keep getting worse and worse as it goes but still enjoy it because the models (other than space marines) look pretty cool... But its just, so horribly made as a setting.
I agree with most of what you said but I still enjoy 40k a lot. I actually preferred the warhammer fantasy novels a lot more. The issue with 40k is they're obsessed with space marines, and space marines are very shallow.
Try reading stuff on the imperial guard. It's not a bad setting, it's just that the people at the helm are complete morons.
Look I may be early but the Brood War purists are going to fight you for that claim
I'll say for the record that brood war is great please don't hurt me
a lot of people say the Brood War story was much better than SC2's, but the amount of quality of life improvements are overwhelming.
(I played both games, but started with SC2, so SC1 was just really difficult to the extend that I couldnt really enjoy the game over having to beat it^^)
Quality of life IMPROVEMENTS is the wrong phrase here, they gameplay is different, there is nothing inherently better about SC2 over SC1, SC1 is a management game first and foremost, the limited selection groups, simple pathing AI, no automine, etc allow the player a wide range of skill in executing, your units in BW can far out perform someone else's with proper micro, it takes a lot more effort but the varying degree of value based off control is what makes BW awesome. The game is 100% you control a crisis at all times. SC2 through streamlining removes a lot of that depth and instead focuses on unit variety, unit's in SC2 are more complex and counter each other much harder, you're more concern about composition over execution. Both games have high strategy and high execution, but the weighting is what is different between the two. Brood War is much more focused on the mechanical aspect, the execution, where as SC2 is more focused on the strategy (again both have these elements, I'm referring to the more prominent one for each game)
hmm ya I guess it is because I started with SC2 (after several other RTS games, not SC1/Brood War), and I fell in love with it so I got used to the way that game works. SC1 forces you to focus on other aspects of the game much more so I missed the SC2 strategies.
Starcraft Brood War is The Greatest RTS Ever! ^^ SC2 is dumbed down too much mechanics wise...
(beginning of video)
"Peanut butter is the most perfect food of all time."
(18 minutes later, at the end of the video)
"So as I said at the beginning, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are the most perfect food of all time."
Age of empires 2 is by far the best rts ever made. 20 years and still goes on and at least 10 years with no support for nothing. Even its studio closed and microsoft forgets about it until 2013. Fans keep it very active and even developed voobly. No other game has that love, years and passion for its community. Starcraft is amazing but it is second far far behind, it has the marketing of blizzard and its esports used to be the best but only koreans care about it
Yeah. I still watch AoE2 tournament all day as long as there are anymore tournament been passionately organized by its community. Pure labour of love of a competitive scene in a great way in its own
Heyyy, creeper world! Love seeing some flash games getting recognition
I'm very late to this but creeper world isn't a flash game, the flash games of it are glorified demos of the actual games, the fourth one came out recently and is in full 3d
I'm going to respectfully disagree that Legacy of the Void had the best meta-management. From my perspective, its choices were made less meaningful by the fact that you could switch them between missions. Wings of Liberty's decisions were _permanent_ , meaning that you had to really consider your playstyle - there was no going back. I felt it was a more interesting and meaningful decision.
I agree that WoL armory upgrades and tech research were more meaningful for your playstyle, but not that they were more interesting.
They don't include strategy-defining mechanics the way the time stop or shield overcharge do. They mostly provide general boosts to your army and favourite units (with the exception of the last two protoss and zerg research).
You may be right on higher difficulties or the other campaigns, but I've played the terran campaign on normal difficulty and if you're good enough at the macro layer, just creating a death blob is still highly effective and can get you through just about every mission.
what do you think about Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, if u have ever played it ?
now we are talking
Ah yes, this game is so under known. It really went under the radar for far too many RTS fans.
Best rts on my opinion. Cant say im good at mp, but i love faf lobbies this days
I love the C&C 3 campaign, it's actually memorable for the story
One vision, one purpose.
age of empires 2 all the way for me
NeverFinished 3Digits fanboys... Fanboys everywhere.
Got here to post that. But in all honesty - dude in the video speaks about campaign only. The title is misleading clickbait.
You know one of the RTS games I love... Close combat 3 and 5.. So much fun... You have an excellent channel sir.. I'm on board.. I look forward to see you grow
What do you think of Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance?
amazing game. campaign sucked though
I mean, I DID just mass hydras in that mission. In fact, i usually ended up just massing whatever unit was introduced that mission, and met almost no opposition, but maybe it was because the difficulty was too low *Shrug*
Your gripe about the game play aspect of the campaign is partly your fault.
Hard but not brutal is the start of the problem. I mean if you played on easy, you can probably complete almost every Terran mission with just MMM. Does that mean the campaign is poorly balanced/designed? I won't think so.
Optional objective becomes a real problem in brutal because it forces you to divert resources (which, btw, include the army you currently have), which makes you more vulnerable. For comparison, try playing the missions w/o going for the optional objective versus going for them, see how the difficulty compares.
Mind, there are some missions where they are, in fact, trivial. Like babysitting Odin one, as it's literally on the way. I'd say about a third of them don't really add any extra difficulty, a third are pretty easy even if you need to go out of your way while the last third is a serious enough diversion of resources that impact your ability to complete primary objective.
In fact, it's possible that the reason you sometimes struggle with main objective is because you've diverted resources to the optional ones but don't quite realize it. You do lose tempo every time you go out of your way for one of those. Again, best way to tell is comparing how hard the level is w/ versus w/o doing the optional objectives.
Fact of the matter is, the challenge of optional objective is not necessarily in the difficulty in completing them in and of itself, but the cost it exacts on your overall game plan to complete the primary objective.
And if you really want to go hardcore, try to complete all level specific achievements on brutal while also doing optional objectives. For honest disclosure, I'm gonna tell you I only did it for one of the campaigns(on my main race, and at that, I think a handful I wasn't able to). The game does get more fun, but also more frustrating, as you ramp up the difficulty.
By the same token, the hybrids are also more "fun" on harder difficulties. It's true that they are a bit lacking in specialization, but the four types are somewhat distinctly different. Aside from the flying one, army compo required to take them down don't really differ, but each would require a different micro approach.
Most likely he played on "casual" difficulty xD If he tries brutal, i bet he can't even move a marine out of the base ahah
And as from a like percieved standpoint. Hybrids erroding the 3 principles of micro, macro and meta makes sense in universe with just how much of a threat they are if left unchallanged.
Which is i think what blizzard was actually shooting for with them.
also great comment overall, hearthally agree with a large part of it.
9:00 *The Zergling Rush is NOT problematic.* Rushes are supposed to keep players on their toes, a win is a win as long as it follows the rules in the game.
Blizzard just wants to see more massive macro clashes which is stupid. According to the law of diminishing returns, the more we see the matches played out similarly every time, the less satisfied we're in the long run. And stupidly, *SC2 is NOT built for massive clashes because:*
- you have the same 200 pop cap from BW yet everyone has to have up to 70-90 workers, making less supply available for your army
- Game AI makes units stupidly bunch up together (deathballing), unlike in BW, making the already downisized army scale _seem_ even smaller
- positioning becomes less of an issue since everyone balls up and makes AOE attacks too effective, making one wonder how such big armies have little presence after each big battle.
- "big" battles are over too quickly anyway because of hard counters
- hard counters make for "if you don't have a certain unit built at a certain circumstance, there's no coming back, other, less effective units can never help you out"
- hard counters make macro management of economy + timing for making certain units the core focus of winning games, and diminishing the focus on tactics and micro.
- The fast game pace makes coming back from a setback unfeasible. So Blizzard wants quicker matches for a game based on macro which means you repetitively play "quick" games of macromanagement? Quick rote plays, so we get to repeat the same stuff more often that's what they want? Are they insane?
- This game does away with a lot of micro, but reinstalled micro by making each race do periodical multitasking chores like chrono boost/MULEs calldowns/Larvae injects that you HAVE to do because the opponent has them too.
Hint for you: the real MVP of the day/night zombie horror mission is the Reaper. Their anti-unit shots obliterate the infected you're fighting at night, their grenades are holy death against buildings, and their speed combined with their jump ability makes them comparable to Hellions for mobility, especially since they barely have to stop to kill a building. Seriously, 1 bunker with 4 marines and a firebat at each base entrance, then just pour out reapers by the billion and you'll beat the mission with no difficulty faster than you ever could with the Hellions.
Woah. Dude. Homeworld
Kek, thanks for reminder, i doubdt autor did play this one series since sc nowhere near on impression and immersion in story
I actually love the campain of this game, i think it(for a game that is centered around gameplay) did amazing. I would even argue legacy of the void is one of the best warrior fantasies ive ever seen represented.
This video was really good as always, you always have good topics to talk about! :D For me, RTS's were a thing of my youth, but never one of sucess - even then, my reflexes were too slow to handle them, and I hated everything else being faster than me, even just AI. But I did get into watching Starcraft 2 games back when that was really popular, and that was very satisfying to watch and gave me a lot of interest into RTS's with cool and/or asymettrical concepts.
I reccomend you try and play the game again its changed alot and you might enjoy it now its also free
For those looking for a good rts checkout war for the overworld, it is quite similar main difference is it has a base building focus
Best rts? Well, when everyone was playing sc1, i was all into Total Annihilation. Later on all in FAF lobbies and dow 1 ss multiplayer. Neer considered sc as best series, westwood rts was much more intence and supcom is much more massive, sc nukes are silly in comparisson. Sc2 story delivery is actyaly great, i can also relate to dow2cr campaign and reccomend it as one with alluring story delivery.
And what impressed me most is homeworld series. Sc story is not disaster, my feelings when playing homeworld are.
DOTA style games didn't start with a mod of WC3 - they started before that with a mod of original starcraft (aeon strife)
AoS was a line war, a separate genre predating the genre we, ironically, now refer to as AoS. It wasn't until RoC that we saw an explosion of competitive PvP AoS variants. The core features of the genre didn't exist. There was no PvP, there was no levelling, there were no skills, there was no real single unit focus. While we acknowledge AoS as father of modern dota-style games, and honour it as a genre namer, it absolutely is not the first dota-style game.
If you showed a LoL or DOTA2 player the original AoS map they would find it unrecognizable as an AoS. If you showed them even DotA 1 they would 100% recognize it.
SC2 is a good game for a certain type of gamer - the ultra-competetive, 300 APM type. I personally dislike blobby gameplay, the lightning fast pace and godawful story in the main campaign. What I liked in SC2 were crisp unit controls and good variety in campaign missions. It's one of the few decent "new" RTS games out there, but I wouldn't call it the best one.
Unless you are in the top 1% of the top 1% apm doesn't matter at all, let alone 300 apm. The pacing isn't even particularly fast.
I'd suggest that you are having difficulties with strategy and tactics, and because you have seen Reaver War or some Emperor play you assumed that you were lacking in mechanical skill. Perhaps you were unaware that pure strategic plays like The Stove are also highly regarded. In general mechanics is a crutch for poorer strategic and tactical play, not the other way around.
lol sc2 was designed to do away with a lot of the APM spam that existed in competitive broodwar. there were pro-level players who averaged between 60-100 APM per match.
nori The pacing isn't fast? Are you kidding, I'm practically panicking every match trying to keep up with all the tasks I need to perform. There's almost always more you could be doing. Sure I play ~100 APM, but even at 300 I doubt I'd ever say "I've done everything I need, let's just take it easy" (aside from the very early game). Even pro matches have frequent mistakes. Harass or scouting units being killed because you weren't keeping a close enough eye on them, too many workers dying because you didn't pull fast enough, etc.
Starcraft objectively has the best RTs gameplay of any ompetitor, and that is not a point of argument. SC2s story is a garbagefire, but that doesnt exactly make it unique among games.
+Malus I manage to be in tje upper echelons of gold with 30 APM. Is it optimal? Fuckno. But its possible. If you learn a decwnt buildorder and some counters you can get as far as this, and engage with the actual strategy part of the game
Starcraft: Brood War might be the best RTS. It arugably is.
The Starcraft 2 campaign is super unique.
Each race is gives a set number of missions with progressively stronger enemies...
YOU KNOWING ABOUT THE CREEPER WORLD GAMES MAKES ME SO HAPPY
KNUCKLECRACKER ARE AMAZING
12:57 WHY WOULD YOU PUT YOUR TWIN BLADES RIGHT ABOVE THE SUPER REACTOR YOU WERE DESTROYING?!?!?
Also good video
Age of Empires 2?
Say what you want..I was never more immeresed in a game story then in SCII.
I agree. Call me a Blizz fan boy, or whatever, but I have always liked Blizzards stories and I felt like the campaign was just a mean to get from story beat to story beat.
pfff
I know I'm late, but I appreciate the story rant. It does have redeeming qualities, but the sc 2 story is so much worse than the brood war story, which is why I fell in love with the series in the first place
Yeah, the quality of the writing in SC2, while not bad, was not at all great. And how many super duper extra evil doomsday demon plots does Blizzard have to do?
The better parts of the story was when the stakes were lower. When Matt said that they did the right thing when they busted the jail, that showed you a lot of what Matt was all about. When Kerrighan slowly grew more Zerg-like over the campaign, that was a cool touch, but when the rest of the story was as banal as it was, the actually good bits of writing gets overlooked.
That being said, it's not about APM. It's much more about planning and strategies than it is about clickety-clacking. If you don't sit down before the game starts and create an idea of what threat you're going to present to the enemy, how you're going to put the brakes on their growth, what technologies you need and when, your expansion policy, your attack/harass plans, etc. you're not going to win many games.
Having the skill to execute your plans is necessary, but you don't need to be very fast to execute a basic build-order. 40 APM or so is enough, and that's a bit over a click or button press every other second. A 100 APM is more than enough to go to diamond league, so long as you can read the enemy, plan ahead and execute.
@@HrHaakon I dunno, I'd say the SC2 writing is pretty terrible. It definitely feels straight out of the cartoon WoW world. Dark god demons and oversized super weapons. It's an almost completely different setting from the gritty perpetual war of the original.
The cinematics are very well done though which helps cover it over somewhat. They can get an emotional response, then you think, wait that was dumb and it made no sense.
There is another detail I really like, is how you can modulate the challenge of the game with your meta choices. For exemple often you'll have to choose between a passive boost for your units/hero or some sort of active effect or micro intensive skill. It's great for player like me that totally SUUUUUCK at micro because I can simply focus on making proper army composition and let the passive effect do the trick. Meanwhile a more micro oriented player might have a worse macro but pick more micro intensive unit and leverage their powers to great effect.
And you can make your game more challenging by simply picking all the micro intensive effects you see, building spellcasters and having to handle a nightmarishly complicated army that'll totally crumble without proper micro. It doesn't necessarily make the campaign harder, you'll probably stomp it anyway, but depending on how engaged you want to be in controlling those units it makes for great customization.
Have you tried Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge? It was a great RTS game. Well balanced with interesting campaigns and regular gameplay (including multiplayer). (Not including those who used IFV president cheats, although seeing them every once in a while was actually kind of funny).
Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm really glad your quality has improved so much since this. You're currently tied in first place as the best youtuber of your genre, but and this video shows how far you've come.
Starcraft 2 was my childhood game and the best I ever played
I think the best TTS ive ever played (purely on game play not story) was Age of Kings AKA Age of Empires 2. Or maybe even Empire Earth. Def didnt have a memorable story but oh man was the game play awesome. So much you can do so many stratagies. It also had a better macro to micro management balance.
I know this video is old but Iron Harvests Kickstarter campaigns MAIN focus and first focus was to make a good RTS game with a SOLID campaign
Hey! Don’t make fun of hearthstone! I like my skinner box!
Kane would like to have a talk about that title.
Just finished the void, no doubt the best history in a RTS.
StarCraft I and Brood War had a really good plot... StarCraft II's plot was really disappointing...
about zeratul meeting kerrigan. what was he supposed to do? "oh sorry tal- whatever your name was but i told kerrigan i wouldnt meet her again have fun dying. lmfao."
But what about Command and Conquer without it
There no Starcraft
-.- i loved c&c and c&c3 but i dont get why u say without c&c u wouldn have starcraft... i ve played great rts before and after c&c1, and all had similar mechanics.
Think of it like 2 BIG BANG
the 1st can be Starcraft or CC your pick
the 2rd was Command and Conquer 3
I heard of Starcraft but never play cuz I saw the skill level was that high
CC3 on the other hand "simple to play Hard to master"
Yeah, no. Warcraft did just fine on its own to spawn a space RTS. I liked C&C and Red Alert as much as anyone else, but the two franchises were competitors, and Warcraft/Starcraft seems to have won in the end, thanks to EA ruining C&C with that abomination Tiberian Twilight.
Where are you getting this that starcraft was spawned from 40k? yes its influenced heavily but spawned from?
no your confusing stories blizzard wanted to link the RTS they were working on at the time "warcraft 1" with games workshops Warhammer fantasy but the deal fell through leaving warcraft to look quite similar to Warhammer however starcraft was completely unrelated although it seems likely that after copying warhammer for one game they decided to copy wh40k for starcraft
Great Vid.
The best RTS I've come across is SupCom Forged Alliance.
Are you going to do a video on SupCom/FAF?
Thanks for uploading.
I am a strong fan of WC3 and Tiberium Wars, but the Meta options provided by SC2 (especially LotV) really kept me wanting to play it again and again.
Broodwar still has a decent player base and its been out since like 1998?
Still playing it to this day. Used to play it online via dial up. The good ol' days xD
I only Agree with the third and the fourth argument about the campaigns.
First off the only person that really forgave Sarah is Jim. Everyone else hates her. Or she hates them. And even she says that she's beyond redemption. She's self aware.
For the Second one.
Personally Tosh was Ok. His charm was his mysterious Nature, The relation between Mira and Matt is for me at least amusing.
The third one is completely fair.
Do you know how Blizzard could have made Amon Creepy and Cool? If he had Lovecraftian aspects.
Imagine Amon as a being of Immense magnitude that has a motive that we cannot comprehend. And somehow all of the races are connected to his plan.
Sorry, but Brood War is clearly superior, no matter how you spin it. SC2 is an excellent game, but Brood War is a titan, constituting a league of its own. If we’re taking exclusively about RTS campaigns then, no doubt, it’s WarCraft III with its revolutionary presentation, outstanding plot, and the ultimate immersive experience.
SC2’s story is a disaster. Irredeemable, absolute disaster,
Ah, another individual who's so stubborn that they believe their opinion to be fact. Have you even looked into the reasons why people might prefer sc2 over bw?
"Before they began to mass produce skinner boxes" 😂 Great throwaway line
Thats a weird way to spell Company of Heroes 1.
For me, nº1 will always be Age of Empires 2
When Starcraft 2 was announced I couldn't help but shrug, the gameplay looked like starcraft and in a post Dawn of War and Company of Heroes world I found my self not caring in the least about the old formula. That said your review has at least convinced me that I should probably give the single player a chance. What it didn't convince me was that its the best RTS ever or even holds a candle to CoH.
CoH is an entirely diffrent genre mate, it's a RTT game, not an RTS.
AoG: implies that MMM doesn't last all campaign
AoG: implies that firebats are good
Me: SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUREEEEE....
Company of heroes was definitly amazing for me. Dark crusade and c@c generals and old c@c on ps1
The thing about warcraft 3 was the food limit stat per unit balance. I never understood what was fun about click create unit, and then sending unlimited units in starcraft, etc.
eventhough it is late but the zergling rush part is not true. just because the number of worker added doesnt mean its gone. last time its called 6 pool, nowadays its called 12 pool. and yes. zergling still flood in god damn base
Somebody that actually knows creeper world... never thought i'd see the day
I actually liked the story. The cinematics are SO COOL. So satisfying to watch.
Hey Adam: I´ve enjoyed your videos, and I have fun watching videos about game design. Just one suggestion. Could you speak slower and clearer? I had to turn on the subtitles at some points of the video to understand one or three words because I couldn´t udnerstand. Heck, I could also understand better by slowing down the video on 0.75x speed. But still, your videos are awesome!
RTS, Great Campaign. Have you ever heard about Homeworld? Granted, its old (1999, 200 and 2003) but 2 of its games got a remaster on 2015 and a prequel was released on 2016.
Can I recommend a game to explore in a video? Age of Empires II HD. An actual classic RTS that got three new expansions over a decade after its release.
Amazing game with great campaigns and solid mechanics.
An actual classic? Star/warcraft isnt classic enough for you?
maxybaer123 This video isn't about Starcraft or Warcraft. It's about SC2.
Supreme commander is better in many ways to me personally. I will answer if anyone cares to know why.
As a single player campaign SC2 definitely has some merits, but it seems like a big mistake to overlook the competitive aspect of RTS, since Starcraft: Brood War was widely considered one of the prioneers of esports and SC2 was built with competitive balance in mind. Unless speaking strictly of the competitive metagame, meta mechanics do not play into the PvP aspect of the game at all, and much more importantly, the campaign fails to properly train a player in preparation for the skirmish gameplay. A player going from campaign to online could easily find themself dead in minutes due to simply not being able to build any of the units they're familiar with (most notably Terran Firebats, Medics, Diamondbacks, Goliath, Science Vessels).
I overall agree that the game has the best campaign (except story) out of all RTS and you would be hard pressed to find one that remotely compares, you just can't weigh it only on that merit.
I have won every campaign 10 times and more and I am not bored
i wish rise of legends was not obscure. its unique steam punk french magic Arabians, and aztec alien races were extremely inspired and incredibly designed for its time
Legacy of the Void implies that the "overmind retcon" is an in-universe retcon with the friendly Xel'naga impersonating Tassadar (this is 100% true) and possibly feeding false information to Zeratul (this is only implied) for the greator good. It works because they enough room for interpretation that if you liked the overmind retcon, the game lets you keep that but if you don't like it, the game gives you an out.
You really exaggerating Starcraft2's campaign here. Missions were copycat of SC 1 and WC3's missions while unit treatment was bad still. They could made the campaign better like in the Dawn of War 2 by simply letting loose the connection of unit profile between campaign and multiplayer+skirmish games.
Instead they wrapped things in a very brute way and just hit the lights off for the villain so we can't see how badly packaged he was.
I really see that not lettüng individual units to gain exp and be more veteran like C&C, Sup Com FA, Warlords Battlecry(my favourite), Original War, Ground Control, or Dawn of War 2 which was the best iteration on levelling units up. For example getting ancient power for dreadnought or veteran teammates for Tarkus, or getting the ability to keep your stealth on while placing and detonating bombs and mines for Cyrus was a great accomplishment and improvement on tactics in DoW 2 campaign.
Instead in SC 2 we got reskinned regular units with either more health or other stupid extra trait that is not really changing the unit's role in your army composition.
What I really felt when I played SC 2 was eben all the experience and money one can get like Blizzard, People can still be shortsighted and lacking imagination.
Tiberian sun and red alert 2 are the best I think
Twisted Insurrection is a free mod for Tiberium Sun, what if NOD won the first game
Mental Omega 3.0 is for Red Alert 2, but you need both the base game and Yuri's Revenge
Actually, Wings of Liberty is the best RTS campaign ever. The story is still decent if you ignore the optional protoss missions. The research and tech choices are far more fleshed out, and are more meaningful due to not being to swap once you've chosen one option over another. Being on board the Hyperion was pretty awesome too. Plus, the special achievements for each mission where only achievable on Hard difficulty and above (unlike Normal in the later two campaigns). From Heart of the Swarm onwards, the story went from science fiction to shit fantasy, and Blizzard clearly was interested in playtesting MOBAs with all the hero-only missions and the huge focus on Kerrigan's abilities. The level where we had to fight the Primal Zerg bosses was excruciating.
Well maybe Reign of Chaos or Frozen Throne could be contenders, but look what a mess Blizzard created with Warcraft 3 Refunded!
Lol, you just didn't spread creep in HotS
No mention of Age of Empires or Total Annihilation (nowadays ZeroK)? They give Starcraft 2 a run at the title.
Just play carriers in world of warships kappa
Company
Of
Heroes
Salutes
"[...]people looking for microintensive skirmishes have moved onto action RPGs or one of many dota style games, which of course started out as a mod for warcraft three."
Which itself was a port of Aeon of Strife, a Starcraft Brood War map. On a Starcraft based video, one would like to think you would at least get that right.... Not expecting much from this video...
Not as bad as I had expected. Surface level review, but not terrible. 6/10
idk about that.. marine medic is pretty faceroll on outbreak. If anything firebats become less viable the better you get
Warcraft 3+ expansion and Starcraft+expansion are my 2 favorite games because of nostalgia. But i didn't play Starcraft 2. I don't know why? Still i was interested and decided to watch playthroughs and i was baffled. Why were everybody a good guy?
I mean, we can all be wrong sometimes.
Nah. I will still play Dawn of War as my favourite RTS by far.
dawn of war 1 or 2?
Chutoy63 1. Mostly when I use mods like UA
nice
UA is fun
yeah Dawn of War 1 and AoE2 are much better games in my opinion.
Honestly, I think it would be best to at least MENTION Homeworld. Its campaign does EVERYTHING right and more - not to mention that the story is some of the best ever made.
Oh well, that's going to be the nth time I complain about how undeservingly forgotten this game is...
I know i am way too late, but still... one campaign that really made me replay it multiple times was Company of Heroes 2 Ardennes assault campaign, witch do to it's really punishing meta gameplay, made mo constantlyquestion every decision i made on the battlefield. The only downside was that now i was forced to preserve every single soldier, making some of the best tactics a meta suicide.
No mention about Dungeon Keeper 1? aight. I dwell back into my troll hut into the nostalgia caverns...
Thanks, I might try out Legacy of the void, despite it's frustratingly bad story :D
I wonder what your thoughts are about warcraft 3
If you think this is the greatest RTS, then you have to meet the father, Supreme Commander
Nah, Command & Conquer is the father.
Never heard of that
The only reason I like starcraft is I played a lot of Emperor: Battle for dune.
Zerg siege isn't Broodlords...it's Lurkers or Swarm Host