Blizzard wisely made Kerrigan respawn back at the base if she's killed instead of ending the mission, so I felt free to keep her on the front lines where her powers could do the most damage. But even that's useless against airborne foes, so in a mission with a lot of enemy aircraft I might leave it behind for Wild Mutation, which can boost my Hydralisks' attack speed. The ability to summon a small group of suicide-bombing Banelings at will became my go-to favorite – when they appear and detonate directly underfoot, it can completely wipe out entire mobs of enemies. Some of her powers seem dramatically more useful than others, making the choice a no-brainer (why would I want Vespene Extractors that don't need Drones to harvest when I could have Drones that spawn two per egg?), but others present some good options. I generally prefer a more permanent character-development system, but in an RTS this system makes a lot of good sense – if you find your choice of powers isn't working in against the enemies in a given mission, you can restart it with a different set. Fittingly, she's on the battlefield almost every time, leading her delightfully slimey soldiers and growing absurdly powerful by the middle of the campaign by means of a flexible RPG system that allows you to swap out powers between missions. Nearly every other mission of Heart of the Swarm is focused on Kerrigan, in a very direct way. That one's a welcome intermission that wisely doesn't make you re-learn how to play as terran to succeed. for the one non-zerg mission where you control Jim Raynor's battlecruiser, Hyperion, in a great little space battle. I was glad to only have to put up with Captain Bland.I mean Horner. His ethics-free conversations with Kerrigan are a good way to showcase her newfound morality, while exposing more of the zerg backstory. Despite cliche-heavy dialogue, I enjoyed chatting with her zerg lieutenants aboard her ship between missions, especially resident genetic engineer and gross caterpillar-like creature, Abathur. This crew of monsters is by far more memorable than Raynor's bunch. She'll now go out of her way to avoid slaughtering innocents, but still finds ample opportunity to mercilessly order her swarm of alien bug monsters to "kill them all!" when facing an enemy. Blizzard does a reasonably good job of transitioning her to a non-evil but still dangerous state of mind. It's a relief, at least, to see that this time Kerrigan is treated like an actual character who prides herself in her use of cunning as opposed to the blindly rampaging, smack-talking monster of Wings of Liberty. Don't expect many surprises, but the cinematics are of the beautiful quality we've come to expect from Blizzard, so at least it looks good. tutorial – and setting her out on a quest for long-overdue revenge against Dominion Emperor Arcturus Mengsk. Little time is wasted in reversing Sarah Kerrigan's de-zergification at the end of Wings of Liberty – a decision she wrestles with for the entire. Heart of the Swarm's story can't fix the fact that the plot of the StarCraft II trilogy is a deluge of cliches hurtling toward a predictable "warring races unite to confront a powerful god-like enemy" conclusion (gosh, where have we seen that before?), but at least it feels like it's actually trying now.
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