For those of you who need more background please read my review of the original Starcraft since it goes into more details.


Too Much Of A Good Thing?

I'm not much of a trendsetter. I don't often play the latest and greatest games because their potential value isn't usually worth the price tag. In addition I really don't succumb much to the hype of a release. I'd rather get a game that has a proven reputation than to put down $50 to be one of the first people to own a new game. The Starcraft Broodwar expansion was one notable exception.

Starcraft Broodwar came out roughly 9 months after the original release of Starcraft. It was highly anticipated and with the Christmas shopping season already in full swing it was a huge hit and popular Christmas gift. Broodwar didn't disappoint the masses. It was quickly accepted into the real time strategy family and became almost a required buy for playing Starcraft on Battle.net.


The Expanded Storyline and Campaign Missions

The story starts out with each of the 3 races struggling to recover from the battles from the original Starcraft campaigns. The Protoss must flee their homeworld of Auir due to the Zerg infestation and unite with their Dark Templar brothers. The Terrans are in civil war against the powerful Emperor Mengsk. However, they also must contend with the still powerful Zerg. The Zerg meanwhile are in disarray after the fall of the overmind. Kerrigan, who is now the Zerg Queen, must reunite the Zerg factions and try to thwart other's attempts to stop her. The story picks up right where the previous storyline left off. And like the previous storyline, it takes several twists and turns. However, many aspects of the story are tidbits taken from various space sci-fi movies and cartoons.

The campaign missions follow the same basic pattern as the original Starcraft missions. You have a hero unit who usually must survive and you're left to try and achieve certain goals. Most of these goals involve destroying the other factions. However, other objectives include preventing enemy units from escaping, destroying certain targeted units, or preventing your own annihilation. Also as before, the missions progress in difficulty as well as restricting advanced units to later missions. I'm not fond of this concept in Brood War because it's an expansion pack that assumes you're familiar with the more advanced units in the game. While I'll get to the new units later, the missions do a great job in showcasing the new units in action and forcing you to use them in advantageous and disadvantageous situations. The best part of all is the fact that there is roughly the same amount of campaign missions as in the original Starcraft.


What Else Is New?

The reason why Brood War was so successful was due to the new units, upgrades, and to a lesser extent tile sets. Each race got at least 2 new units, one of which is a flying unit that only attacks other air units. The Protoss received 3 new units, the dark templar, the dark archon, and the corsair. Dark templars are permanently invisible units that have a high attack power and light defense. When mixed with Zealots they can provide a great boost to an attacking force. Like with two templars forming and archon, two dark templars can be combined to form a dark archon. Unlike the original archon, the dark archon is a spell-casting unit. The dark archon has 3 different spells at its disposal. The first is feedback, which uses an enemy’s magic points to damage its life points. Maelstrom stops units in a small area allowing you to attack them freely for a few seconds. The final ability is mind control. This allows you to control another unit on an enemy team. This spell opens up new possibilities including stealing a worker unit and building a second base with another race. The final Protoss unit is the corsair. This is the air unit that can only attack air units with a weak attack that adds splash damage to surrounding units. The corsair does have a powerful ability in its disruption web attack. This allows it to create a small area where buildings and units cannot attack or perform actions other than moving and harvesting. This is a powerful ability to taking out missile turrets and other anti air buildings.

The Zerg have two new units. The first one is the lurker. Lurkers are units that can be evolved from hydrolisks. They burry themselves in the ground and can attack multiple ground units with a spined attack. Their biggest weakness is that they cannot attack while above ground. They are a great unit for defense, especially around harvesting areas. The other new unit is the devourer. This is the Zerg's flying unit. While it can only attack other flying units, it's very powerful in that it can dish out a lot of damage as well as take a lot of damage. In addition, its attacks decrease the armor on its targets. However, one huge drawback is that it takes a long time between attacks.

The Terrans have two new units as well. They now have a medic unit whose primary job is to heal non-mechanized units. In addition the medic can cure status ailments like corrosion and parasites. It also has another ability in that it can blind other units. That decreases its target's sight range to the minimum amount as well as removes its ability to see invisible units if it can. The medic's biggest weakness is that it has no attack (other than the blind, but that doesn't damage life). The final new unit is the Terran valkarie. This air unit has a weak but wide ranging air unit attack. Like the corsair it does minimum damage to large groups of air units. While the valkarie doesn't have any abilities like the corsair, it can take a beating.

In addition to these new units there are also three new upgrades available for a couple units from the original Starcraft game. The Terran goliaths now have an upgrade to increase the range of their ground to air missiles. This makes them even more powerful against air units in attacks and defense. The Zerg ultralisk has two new upgrades. One upgrade increases the ultralisk's speed to match the zergling's speed upgrade. The other upgrade increases its already impressive armor. In addition to the carapace upgrades at the evolution chamber, this upgrade at the ultralisk cavern can be stacked on top of its armor.

In addition to these upgrades, they also included 100 new multiplayer maps with many new ladder maps as well. Fans, as well as Blizzard employees designed these maps. The number of people for a map range from 2 players to 8 players. Some are specialized for certain type of game like Free For All or Team Melee, whereas others were intended for using the Default Map Settings. These maps, while a minor addition on its own, added a lot of diversity to the game.

Finally, three new tile sets were added. There's a desert tile set, a snow tileset and a dark world tile set used to represent the homeworld of the dark templars. While the snow and desert tile sets were welcome additions, I don't like the addition of yet another dark map. I thought the original Starcraft had too many dark tile sets that really took away from the great graphical sprites of the buildings and units.

These upgrades not only add new strategy to the game, but they also fill holes in certain race's weaknesses as well as increase certain race's strengths. Adding these units allows a more balanced and competitive environment in Battle.net. The new maps also add new strategy and competition as well. New ladder maps allow more choices for competitive ladder players. Overall these additions were not only bold, but they were also successful and widely accepted as such.


Graphics and Sound

Broodwar features many new cutscenes for the new campaign missions as well as graphics for the new units. These cutscenes followed the great tradition of the original Starcraft cutscenes in that they were tense, suspenseful, well rendered, and well produced. The action, the explosions were all realistic and not over the top and captured the drama of a war in space between three different worlds. The new units also had commendable sprites. They were detailed well and contrast well not only between the new background tile sets, but also the race's units from the original game.

The sound, I think was somewhat disappointing. The new themes aren't as upbeat and inspiring as the original Starcraft soundtrack. They are good, but it just doesn't capture the same magic in my mind. The sound effects and voice acting however is top notch. The new units' sound effects are unique, but can also blend into their character and racial identity. The voice acting, like the first game, seemed genuine and well presented.


Value

I can't imagine anyone who enjoyed the original Starcraft not picking this up. It's almost like doubling the size of the original game. If you don't like the campaign missions, then you almost are forced to get Brood War just to find enough players on Battle.net. I would pay $40 for this expansion. It would be more except for the fact that you also have to pay money for the original game as well. Considering the original retail price of $30, and the fact that many stores have decreased their prices on the game, this is an incredible value.

Recommended: Yes

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