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I finished my protracted play through of StarCraft 2. Took me a few months of on again off again play.
The Terran campaign I played on normal, and it was easy to the point of being tedious and boring. I definitely feel like some pussification happened in the difficulty, and "hard" became normal, normal became easy, and easy became "This is mathematically impossible to lose unless you are a game journalist".
The Zerg campaign I played entirely on hard, and that felt about right.
The Protoss campaign I started on hard, but towards the end I caved and had to switch to normal. They just throw too many high level units at you when all you start off with are zealots and stalkers. Also too many obnoxious defense missions where it feels like Protoss are just too squishy on defense. I forget which mission it was that finally broke me and caused me to switch to normal, but it was some defense mission where your allies start off covering your east, west and south entrances, and you get repeatedly hammered from all three directions.
Then I played the epilogue on normal, because I'd already switched, and also the Nova mini campaign. They felt alright on normal. At least not tediously boring like the Terran campaign on normal.
All in all, it was alright I guess. I had to obsessively watch every dialog because I can't help myself. Which really slowed things down because the game feels like 50% dialog and 50% gameplay. The story beats of "Cure Kerrigan of her Zerg infestation, then re-Zerg her, then she saves the universe" was as dumb as it always was. Especially with that being the penultimate climax of the Terran campaign, and then completely undone halfway through the Zerg campaign. It reminds me of all those show runners that end season 1 on this show altering cliff hanger/climax, and then completely chicken out and backtrack in the first episode of season 2. Like in Santa Clarita Diet when the first season builds up towards Drew Barrymore turning into a feral zombie, and then in the first 30 minutes of the next season they cure her and go a completely different direction with the story.
It also got pretty tedious how every campaign is some weird neoliberal fanfiction about all these different peoples coming together in a melting pot where all their differences actually make them strong enough to defeat the big bad. In every single campaign. I don't remember StarCraft 1 being remotely that obnoxious and one note. Oh well.
Oh, are we ranting about Starcraft? Let me pour out a drink and ante up.
Starcraft 1 had it in a much older style, that hews closer to "White guy gets accepted into alien culture" tropes. Think The Last Samurai, or every rip-off of The Last of the Mohicans. Once you get past the first Terran campaign, Raynor is estranged from Mengsk, so the story keeps him around by just letting him tag along with the Protoss.
"Greetings. We are the Firstborn, the sons of Aiur, the Protoss. Our people are advanced far beyond your ken, both technically and psychically. We have come to do battle with the greatest forces of darkness, wielding our eldritch might in the most ancient of our sacred warrior traditions.
Also, we brought our friend Jim. He is a kind of monkey-thing, militia, motorcycle-cop. We gave him a battlecruiser; it's hilarious."
SC1 is a lot funnier if you interpret Jim as the Protoss' version of Boblin the Goblin.
But yes, the plot for SC2 is fucking stupid all around. They can't alienate any players, so all three factions have to have Good Guys, though they all splinter so much that there's someone for everyone.
My general love for Starcraft is matched and mirrored by my burning hatred for the damned defense missions. Why the actual fuck did that team think static defense missions were the best way to cap almost every campaign? And the LotV one was just actually offensive. You spend the whole campaign building up and unlocking Solarite powers, and then they take them all away for the final mission?! One of my angriest video game experiences.
Difficulty-wise, "hard" feels like the correct choice for all of them. Normal for the horrendous defense ones that feel terrible to try at.
As a turtler who's terrible at RTS games because I'm horribly sloe to expand, I love me a good defense mission. But I'm hardly the modal player, and SC sure as hell shouldn't be catering to me.
I would say that every strategy game should certainly have defense missions (though not necessarily as the climax), so you should get catered to in that sense. Both defense and attack are part of the strategy game experience.
Fire Emblem players know that a good enemy phase team is a thing of beauty. Just sit back and watch as the enemy breaks itself upon your swole waifus and husbandos.
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