Bought it yesterday and played around with it a bit. Here's my first impression.

Is it very different from the original Starcraft?
It's not a modern day remake like Civ Col or Monkey Island SE but it's not an entirely new game either. The campaign is a sequel to SC1, the gameplay is largely identical with some old and quite some new units.

So what is new?
The campaign mode isn't entirely linear and apparently you have some faction alignment choices to make (not there myself). What is kinda nifty is that you earn cash with your missions that you can spend on upgrades which you would have to research in normal MP mode. So instead of researching them you just start of with them but also you can not research them in campaign mode: you need to buy them between missions. Gives the campaign a different feel from the MP game. Storyline of the campaign is really good, as far as I can see now (just started). :)

Also new: challenges. SP missions that are there to prepare you for the MP game. Havent tried them, but they look good and basically are extra SP content. Blizzard added achievements to the game as well, both for SP and MP. New for SC but sort of standard for all games these days.

The game ships with a heap of maps for MP, looks really good. Haven't tried online MP yet, but will for sure once I have the hang of it again.

Should I buy the game?
If you remotely like RTS, you should buy this game! The original SC was the best RTS ever imo, SC II looks like a worthy sequel. Pity it took Bliz 12 years to make it.



Oh and if you bought/buy it, lemme now so you can kick my ass. :)

BUMP

So really nobody into starcraft here? If so just give a shout and join Mel, KingReno and myself on the european realms.

I have a bunch of friends who work on a few SC2 maps called Encounter at Tiamat, Civilization Wars and SC Temples. All are more or less semi-RTS, semi-civilization management with development ages, economy, techs and unit upgrades. I used to play Wc3 with them on a map mod called Civilization Wars which was essentially the same; the designer used to be a CIV beta tester (allegedly the one who suggested chariots deal extra damage to axes for balance).

There's a lot of youths out there and the occasional drama but the games on Wc3 used to be great. Their forum is over at http://forums.claneat.com/ although I haven't kept in touch since SC2 and I can't tell whether the maps are well underway or not. They're mainly on US East, if that still matters. If I were to get on SC2, that's where I would start looking for MP games. Mr_Kyo (US East) and DerSatan (Europe, German) are great guys, they were the best friends I had on Wc3 and I believe they are both playing SC2 now.

I'm going on vacation soon, and I did not want the game to come accross, planing/sleeping.

I should get it a bit later this fall.

In that case you'd better wait before you buy the game as Bliz hasn't made cross realm play possible yet. So if you have a European CD key, you'll have to play the European servers. Same for US etc.

Lots of complaining about this, Quebec for example has French versions that connect to EU servers and English ones that connect to US. Not very smart. Bliz has promised they'd make cross realm play possible but it isnt here yet.

PITA. That means a horde of kids from around here, who speak no english (and inadequate french), get tossed around with dutch, english, german, italian, spanish players and make a great big mess of it all. Joy. I guess waiting a while before getting it isn't such a bad idea. Plus, I get to work on my master's harder ... for another week until Civ5 comes [mischief]

Well not sure, but it seems the game also recongises french coded version and tries to keep the froggies together as I haven't seen a single one untill now.

I could be totally wrong ofc as Europe does seem to have only one ladder system.

But still Bliz should fix this asap, internet made people all over the world connect and now Blizzard comes up with a system that takes us back to the 80's.....

I got it yesterday (Civ 5 will have to wait, I asked for both for my birthday and it looks like my brothers decided I would play SC2 before CivV.)

I've played the first 3 missions and up to now game play is feels exactly the same as starcraft (I'm not sure is this is good or bad). Let's see if there are changes in the next missions.

I would have liked a zoom out - zoom in with scroll wheel a bit like Civ IV. I think active view is too small.

Anyways, it looks like a nicely packaged game.

It is very similar to starcraft especially in the campaign which has a few old SC1 units that you won't find in multiplayer games. (firebat, vulture, medic). Changes aren't really lifechanging over all, but for someone like me who has considered SC1 the RTS ever that's a good thing.

Zoom out would have been incredible, I totally agree with you on that. Who knows maybe we get that in a patch or something.

Now we only have to hope we get that 'play with your friends across the globe option' Blizzard promised us soon so we can play together.

If you want to look in awe at some SC2 pro's I recommend the following SC2 commentators

Husky
HDstarcraft

A great strategist is Day[9], former SC1 US champion. He has a brilliant daily but it's an hour every day so rather time consuming for those not studying/unemployed/careless about sleep deprivation

Day[9]

So Barbu, how's the campaign going?

And what's are your Bnet details so I can add you to my friends list (assuming you're on the Euro servers)