This custom campaign was created by Juxtapose in 2018.
Mission 1 - “The Swarm’s Future”: There were plenty of resources in the expansions, so this mission was easy. I was a bit wary when attacking the final base, after I got the transmission questioning my frontal assault. This one was good as an introductory mission.
Mission 2 - “Coercion”: It was weird to see a Terran adjutant, but it clearly seems that Izsha appears in StarCraft II. I don’t see the purpose behind Izsha asking “how do you know this, my Queen?” after Kerrigan stated her plans.
I would have liked a second Hatchery next to my starting one, but later I understood why the Spawning Pool was located where it was (the respawn trigger for Kerrigan).
Both Protoss enemies defended very poorly, even though this mission was a bit harder than the first one. I think it’s the use of Zerg air units what made a difference in regards to difficulty, because I had a lot of resources like in the previous mission. The map layout was acceptable but it could have been better.
Mission 3 - “Ascension”: I was using Hallucinations to explore the map, which served to clear Spider Mines (I think the Hallucination didn’t trigger the dialogue about Spider Mines). I liked how this mission ended, with the extra challenge. I’d think it’s rare to see Kerrigan being called as Sarah Kerrigan, but I’m almost sure it’s something to do with StarCraft II.
Mission 4 - “The Templar”: There’s one long Dark Templar wall. I think purple “wakes up” only after destroying the expansion of the same color. I ignored purple’s main base and I attacked red because they seemed more dangerous. Big mistake. I had to reload. Anyway, during my second attempt I also noticed that purple Zerg got more active after destroying their expansion.
I thought there would be rescuable Carriers in the map (because of the dialogue), but the more I was exploring the map the more I was confused (because there didn’t seem to be any survivors at all). After 27 minutes of gameplay during my first attempt I got the dialogue and mission update regarding the Zerg presence. The second time (when I reloaded) this update happened after 36 minutes of playing. I killed blue last.
Mission 5 - “Distress”: The four starting Dark Templars allowed me to block the left ramp to my Terran base. During my second attempt, and before rescuing the Terran base, I scouted with my Corsairs and killed all the Overlords I was able to. Raynor should be forcefully rescued with a burrowed Zergling because I was allowed to play without Raynor (and the dialogues don’t make sense if I rescue Raynor before rescuing the Terran base, one reason being the incorrect order of dialogues and the other reason is that there wasn’t any Kukulza attacking the base because they were killed long ago). I reloaded a lot of times during my attack to the first base, because of the presence of Infested Terrans. I completed the optional objective just to not have any more issues with Infested Terrans. Archons and Carriers were very effective against the base in the southwest corner. I lost my Terran base completely (only Raynor survived). It didn’t matter to me, as Terran only had level 1 upgrades available. If Terrans had level 2 upgrades available the game would had been more balanced, but I’m fine with the map encouraging the player to use Protoss units more than the Terran ones.
Mission 5S - “Deus”: Probably the Zerg Defiler was the only unit in the map that I didn’t kill. After I got plagued the Defiler burrowed, right before I reached the unlocked door. Although Infested Terrans are always annoying, Raynor alone can kill them in 1 vs 1.
Mission 6 - “Judge, Jury…”: I thought I saw a lot of enemy Zealots during the first attack to my base, but there were just a few ground units and three Arbiters -it’s strange to see Arbiters, especially so many of them, during such an early attack-. Anyway, I didn’t have any issues with enemy attacks.
I attacked the right Terran base after killing the Protoss. Terran factories were not training units in that base, so it was easy to destroy it.
Attacking the main island was difficult. My Arbiters died before using Recall, even though I was trying to do it quickly with hotkeys. I left a bunch of units with screen centered using Shift+F2, and other units were loaded into a dozen Shuttles. Archons were effective against Siege Tanks (although being vulnerable to EMP, at least Science Vessels never cast that ability).
Mission 7 - “Ethically Grey”: I moved the starting Command Center at the beginning because, although exactly between the two mineral nodes, the resource layout demands two Command Centers. The Protoss were causing me issues with their special abilities (Psi Storm and Feedback) and Dark Templars. So I built 4 Barracks and 2 Factories in order to maintain a good amount of reinforcements, as I was losing lots of my units when attacking the Protoss. I had 4 Nuclear Silos to attack Raynor’s Raiders.
Mission 8 - “Rusted Edge”: I couldn’t complete the objective of sending Nova and the Psi Emitter on time. I was assuming the next map would change depending on this objective. I thought that after this mission there were two alternative maps, because I read incorrectly “9b” instead of “9e” during a quick look at the map folder. This map, of course, always leads to mission 9 after victory.
After completing the campaign I revisited this map to complete the missed objective, just to see what happens. To complete this objective, I pushed to the white base as soon as I got my first Siege Tank with Siege Mode, and started to send reinforcements constantly until I reached the Beacon. Strangely, the mission became more difficult, as the Zerg were more active and upgraded completely (when I played before, the Zerg just upgraded to level 1). I was caught off guard by the Zerg and had to restart the mission after I lost Nova.
Mission 9 - “Terraformation”: I lost all my base during the final Protoss attack (full of Scouts), and had one SCV left along with the Bucephalus. I tried to build far away from my starting base to distract the enemy. That’s how I won…
Epilogue - “Interbellum’s End”: Of course I remembered the iconic StarCraft II’s cinematic upon watching this epilogue. This was a really good idea. I guess it missed the sound effects to create more suspense. But I really liked this final map.
As someone who played Wings of Liberty really long ago (2012) and haven’t played the expansions, this campaign felt really natural. The author did a good job introducing the characters. The writing was outstanding and causes the impression of playing an official Blizzard campaign, considering it’s a hard task to write for an unofficial expansion while at the same time connecting it to StarCraft II (which is even more remarkable). Text format was quite differentiable from Blizzard campaigns, and I’m not sure if emphasis like underscore are even used. Map layout ranged from acceptable to good, I think some maps needed more decoration in the terrain. There’s a lot of variety in the gameplay design, plenty of secrets and easter eggs. But some trigger Conditions should be changed, as I pointed out some issues in a couple of missions (4 & 5).
My score: 8 out of 10
. That likely messed up some triggers and had some dialogue out of order, sadly.
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(mission 3 and 5). I couldn’t even find the Vulture in mission 8 (how could I have missed that? .-.) after playing and beating the map twice. Unfortunately I missed all the sightings, that’s why I didn’t mention them in my review. But after completing all the maps I peaked at the triggers for my review.
. I had a lot of fun putting those in and the references and foreshadowing they were about.