Underdogs is a custom campaign created by G. Onorati, released in 2022.
Mission 1 - “Return of the Queen”: This map offers lots of options as to where to expand. It is quite challenging as well, requiring to beat three Zerg players. Each one of the Zerg enemies has its own characteristics, making the mission more interesting as a campaign opening. The layout of the map is very well designed, with a combination of high and low terrain that looks natural.
Kerrigan died in my first attempt while attacking red. I restarted and attacked with Hydralisks again. I moved some Hydralisks to prevent them from dying to enemy Ultralisks. I killed orange after eliminating red. And I killed brown at last.
Mission 2 - “Eviction”: I liked the optional objective. This mission would still have been good without it, but it is a nice enhancement. After I controlled the bottom half of the map, I attacked the upper left corner to get the last rescuable buildings. This map looks vibrant with all those doodads placed everywhere. They were placed by the map maker very well. I didn’t notice them consciously while playing, but I feel that this map in particular has lots of doodads when I look at the terrain.
A bit easier than the previous map, but with annoying Medics using Optical Flare a lot.
Mission 3 - “Do ut Des”: I liked how the terrain resembled the map “Homeland” from Episode III. Now the campaign dives fully in the events of Episode V, the previous two missions were like introductory ones in relation to the story.
Mission 4 - “The Mole”: I thought that I had to kill the first white base within five minutes to unlock the bonus map. Then I saw DK unlocking the map by the end of this mission so I just played this mission one more time and completed it quickly. Having two enemy players instead of just one -for example a brown base that the player has to destroy within 5 minutes in order to unlock the bonus map- would have worked for what I had in mind. But it was fun beating the map twice.
I think Duran betraying his own men would have deserved another mission in addition to this one, so you can see how Kerrigan confirms that Duran ain’t lying and gains some confidence towards him. After all, these are two important events in the story.
Bonus mission - “Act of Faith”: I sent Zeratul to get rid of several Sunken Colonies. I used Mind Control for the last Torrasque. That unit was really helpful.
Mission 5 - “Infiltration”: I thought this map would be an Installation one. I would have liked to use Spawn Broodling, but I really enjoyed playing with Zerglings and Ultralisks, instead of playing only with Hydralisks like so many times. I really liked the approach of this map. The AI wasn’t tough, but it sent units to my base all the time.
Mission 6 - “Lesser of Two Evils”: It took me two attempts to beat this map, without reloading any saved game. That was possible because I never attacked the blue Zerg. When I played this mission again, in order to destroy the Hive, I had to try it like ten times because of how difficult it is to beat the blue Zerg. I have clearly underestimated the AI. Attacking with full 200/200 underlings has never been enough, so I had to build Zerg Sunken Colonies and Spore Colonies in the enemy base to overcap my attacking force!
This campaign really did a good job presenting the events surrounding Kerrigan during most part of Episode V. I enjoyed the variety of missions, and liked the map design a lot.
Score: 8 out of 10.