History YMMV / StarCraftIIHeartOfTheSwarm

** Despite only playing a role for [[OneShotCharacter one mission]]. Naktul has gained a bit of a following due to people buying into the ridiculousness of a LargeHam Broodmother. Particularly, the way she always puts huge emphasis on some of her words.

* AuthorsSavingThrow
** Many fans complained that Raynor's vow to kill Kerrigan or Fenix's death weren't mentioned in ''Wings of Liberty''. Both are referenced when [[spoiler:Raynor finds out that Kerrigan has turned back into the Queen of Blades]]. The scene implies that Raynor mentally divorces the Queen of Blades persona and Sarah Kerrigan, and that he was saying he would kill the Queen of Blades when he had the chance in Brood War. ''VideoGame/StarCraftII'' was about doing that without killing Kerrigan; when [[spoiler: he sees that she's voluntarily turned back into the Queen of Blades, the rationalization seemingly blows up in his face]]. Hence his initial reaction.
** As noted on the YMMV page for ''Wings of Liberty'', it was pretty dickish for Raynor to kill the Tal'darim, defile their temples and steal their artifacts to sell for money. What's that? It turns out the Tal'darim [[spoiler:work for [[MadScientist Narud]] and worship [[EvilGod Amon]]]]? Oh, okay then, fry them.
*** As well, some fans complained about the {{Retcon}} that the Tal'darim were just a splinter group on Aiur serving Ulrezaj and had no influence beyond Aiur's since they were stranded there, and Blizzard's explanation that the Tal'darim were a larger group that the Aiur branch was just a small part of seemed like a HandWave. [[spoiler:With the reveal that they worship Amon, who is very likely the mysterious entity Ulrezaj serves]], suddenly their role in the game makes much more sense.
** The Umojans appearing in the starter missions could also be considered this as many fans have complained to Blizzard over the years for not giving this Terran faction any role whatsoever in any of their titles until now. And even despite their ''Heart of the Swarm'' appearance, they're still considered no more important than a nameless Terran faction. Perhaps justified. Umoja only has three worlds while the Dominion have dozens. Even the Kel-Morine Combine is gigantic compared to them. They get some light in the novels, being the faction that supported Acturus' father and the place where Valarian grew up. It is also stated that they put a lot of money and effort into making technology more advanced than the Confederacy. Still, they don't have nearly enough power to throw their weight around.

*** Infestors have no restraint on their Neural Parasite ability, and can eat up other friendly units to quickly regain energy. A few of these can easily turn the enemy's most powerful units against them.

** The evolution missions. Missions with an ExcusePlot that justify Abathur getting creative with Zerg strains and demonstrating their capabilities. There's no way to make the process of completing these missions and making your selection go by any faster.

* The jumping ability of the Hunter Banelings is somewhat wonky on higher difficulties due to the AI now having the ability to retreat back if Banelings get to close. Because Hunter Banelings only jump to the spot in front of the enemy unit, what you end up with is an odd interaction where the enemy unit will constantly retreat and the Hunter Baneling unable to properly explode as it keeps bouncing to the front of the retreating unit. Because of this annoyance, it's a lot more common for players to pick the Splitter Baneling strain.

* IdiotPlot:
** One mission is entirely dependent on the idea that the protoss would teleport in a prisoner from a zerg ship without investigating her in any way, even though every other appearance establishes that the protoss are so fanatically diligent about zerg infestations that they'll depopulate an entire planet on the off chance that it might be infected. Not only that, but they don't even bother to teleport the potentially infected prisoner into a holding cell or quarantine room, or even a public area with guards. Instead they teleport her into... the zoo? Predictably, the prisoner turns out to be infested with zerg larva, turns into a queen, and infects the whole ship. Kerrigan then pats herself on the back for her "clever" plan (read: hilariously stupid leap that only worked due to sheer dumb luck).
** The Protoss apparently built a colony on a planet so cold, every 2 to 3 minutes they themselves freeze solid, along with all their technology, and saw no reason to address this problem and made no effort towards it. Keep in mind they are supposed to be the most advanced species in the universe.
** The Tal'darim are revealed to be crazed fanatics serving Narud in an attempt at AuthorsSavingThrow to justify why Raynor's Raiders went about killing them so much in the previous ''[[VideoGame/StarCraftIIWingsOfLiberty Wings of Liberty]]'' campaign when they were, quite literally, just sitting around not bugging anyone [[note]]The "Maw of the Void" mission did finally show them being evil by caging up Dark Templar, but this was long after the Raiders had already been killing the Tal'darim a bunch for no justifiable reason, and there was no connection to Narud[[/note]]. This revelation however turns the whole artifact search from ''Wings of Liberty'' into a convoluted mess as originally, Narud and his Moebius Foundation were paying the Raiders to go in and steal the artifact fragments from the Tal'darim. Yet because of ''Heart of the Swarm'' revealing that the Tal'darim have been in league with Narud this whole time, it now implies quite heavily that Narud was paying the Raiders to steal away the artifact fragments... from himself. It took a ''second'' saving throw in ''Legacy of the Void'', namely a throwaway line from Alarak about the Tal'darim in ''Wings of Liberty'' being led by a renegade nutter, to finally rectify things somewhat (although said line is very easily missed).

* UncannyValley: The various Zerg advisors, what with performing human gestures like curtsying or FingerTenting, despite not looking at all human (or at best like [[Literature/HarryPotter Voldemort]]).

* WhatAnIdiot: Mengsk is just ridiculously stupid with how he handles [[spoiler:Raynor's imprisonment]]. This could be a vital asset in his war with Kerrigan. But instead of simply planting a bomb near this asset or having guards posted nearby that could shoot it if he needs it done, he puts it in a ship with a basic SelfDestructMechanism -- naturally, Kerrigan is able to get to it before the self-destruct happens. Not to mention that Mengsk should have known that the moment Kerrigan found out about this, she would go after it, so why would he put it ''anywhere'' she could feasibly get to it, no matter what measures he takes to make the ship difficult to track down. All Mengsk had to do was keep [[spoiler:Raynor]] with him on Korhal, broadcast to Kerrigan a video of himself holding a gun to it, and threaten her to stay away from Korhal or else. It's not like doing this would or could have backfire on him, of course Kerrigan's endgame would be a frontal assault on Korhal; it's not like giving her more incentive to do it would have changed her mind, unless Mengsk fled the planet (which he wouldn't do, he's not ''that'' stupid).

** In ''The Reckoning'', Kerrigan comments on how Mengsk's defenses need some work. Mengsk replies "You'll pay for that!" but sounds merely annoyed like she broke his watch.

** The supporting cast is the weakest of the trilogy. In the other two games, the secondary characters hasve distinct personalities and present different views on plot developments, and would even banter with Raynor or Artanis. Kerrigan's advisors, however, are single-minded in their interests and perspectives, since that's how Zerg are by nature. They are also entirely loyal to Kerrigan and rarely argue with her, and any time they displease her she puts them in their place and they back down. This means that Kerrigan's advisors are nowhere near as developed as Raynor or Artanis; they don't have very complex personalities, they don't have any particularly interesting insights to share on most subjects, and they explain things to Kerrigan directly when asked. For her own part, Kerrigan tends to listen to them until they say something that displeases her or she just loses interest in the subject, and she shuts the conversation down without issue.

** The Kal'dir mission chain. The only reason Kerrigan goes there is to find the broodmother Nafash and conscript her and her brood, but very quickly in the first mission you find out her brood has been mostly wiped out by a Protoss force on the planet. With this, Kerrigan should really just take the remnants of the brood and leave, but instead she spends the mission chain fighting the Protoss to keep them from contacting Shakuras to inform them that Kerrigan is on Kal'dir and has been de-powered. While the threat of the Protoss fleet coming for Kerrigan is understandable, Kerrigan could always just ''leave'' the planet and not stick around for when the fleet arrives, and with how long it would take them to mobilize and get to Kal'dir versus the fact Kerrigan's Swarm is still fairly dangerous, it's dubious the Protoss would try to track her down if she left. [[note]]However, ''Legacy of the Void'' does indicate that the Protoss still have Kerrigan high on their wanted list, so much so that Zeratul is branded a traitor for helping her.[[/note]] The mission chain comes off as just an excuse to have Kerrigan fight the Protoss more, and that has its own share of story problems. Also, while Kerrigan doesn't necessarily realize this, Artanis has more pressing matters like coordinating the Golden Armada for their strike on Aiur, and would not likely be in the mood to divert forces to go after Kerrigan.

* BestLevelEver: The game is full of superbly designed missions, but "Infested" still beats the rest by a bit. The goal is fairly mundane - seize control of a terran facility - but unlike the usual examples, this one lets you infest a large number of buildings all over the map that then proceed to spawn ''legions'' of infested terrans and marines. The only units you need to build yourself are the ones you need to defend your bases with during the regular intervals when the infested can't act. The rest is just gleefully watching the enemy drown in endless streams of expendable units, with hundreds of them overrunning the map in almost any given moment. No mission in the entire franchise showcases the zerg mindsets of ZergRush and WeHaveReserves better than this one.

* ScrappyMechanic: Blizzard introduced MMR decay, which makes players start from lower divisions based on how active they are. For example, if you are in Masters but don't play any games for a month or two, you can find yourself bumped down to Silver. This has led to situations were extremely skilled Masters level players are getting bumped down to the lesser skilled divisions, resulting in a lot of {{Curbstomp Battle}}s. It's also disheartening for people who are used to being in higher levels then being crushed by other people used to being in higher levels, especially if they come back and don't know what MMR decay is. To sum it up, they are low level players upset because they are being crushed, there are high level players coming in who are disheartened for ending up in lower levels then normal, and there high level players who are being bored or feel bad about crushing players who are way less experienced than them.

** For gameplay, ''Heart of the Swarm'' is by far the easiest of the trilogy, even on Brutal difficulty, and players can effortlessly steamroll enemies without much trouble. Additionally, while ''Wings of Libert'' had single missions played one at a time, and ''Legacy of the Void'' had single missions and occasionally two missions played in a row, ''Heart of the Swarm's'' campaign is structured into chains of three missions, with a clear midpoint in them where the player must complete the first three mission chains to advance the story. This enforces ComplacentGamingSyndrome, because it means that players will usually unlock the same units and the same upgrades on each playthrough and missions have almost no variance in how they can be completed. The only difference is if the player does the Char or Kaldir missions first, or puts one of them off until after the Zerus missions, but doing the former has a minimal impact on gameplay and doing the latter means that the mission chain the player skipped will be even easier when they return later in the game with a much stronger army than they had before.

** Kerrigan herself makes the campaign a breeze. She ''starts'' with two spells, one of which is essentially Yamato Cannon with no charge time and lower energy cost, the other an [=AoE=] stun with damage-over-time, and she has an innately high energy and health regeneration rates. From there she moves on to doubling the attack rate of allies and giving them +200 max HP for a time, spawning overlords instantly and causing them to give double supply, making drones hatch two from an egg, spawning six banelings at a target location, summoning an army of primal zerg instantly with drop pods, and healing allies nearby. If you know how to use her abilities properly and micro her carefully, Kerrigan can solo a lot of missions. As an added bonus, while Kerrigan is far from indestructible (in fact on the last few missions she die very easily if the player is careless), she respawns for free at your main hatchery/lair/hive sixty seconds later. And she will do this forever.

** The story has a lot of problems, foremost being that Kerrigan edges on being an UnintentionallyUnsympathetic DesignatedHero, and most of her victories come about due to her enemies grabbing the IdiotBall or the VillainBall. The dialogue is also cheesy and forced, and the story is straightforward with few surprises or twists. Its supporting cast is also weak. In the other two games secondary characters provide different viewpoints and insights on plot things, and they may even banter or argue with Raynor/Artanis. Kerrigan's advisors however are entirely loyal to her and their conversations never offer any interesting information; Ishza spouts mission exposition, Dehaka and Abathur wax philosophical about essence and evolution, and Stukov is just sort of there with not much to say or do at any time. The only character with any real arc or personality is Zagara, but it plays out quickly over a handful of conversations and in the end she remains Kerrigan's loyal lieutenant content to serve and learn from her. Any time that the dialogue seem like it could be going somewhere interesting, or one of them seems like they may be getting into a disagreement with Kerrigan, she either asserts her authority or loses interest in the topic and shuts the conversation down.

* GoodBadBugs: In the Jumping Baneling evolution mission, there's a trigger you're supposed to walk across at the first group of burrowed Jumping Banelings that is meant to activate the map's lava rising mechanic. However, there's enough room along the top edge of the cliff for a single Baneling to skip the trigger zone, which results in the lava rising mechanic never activating for the map. This makes the evolution mission a lot faster to complete as you no longer have to stop and wait whenever the lava mechanic activates.

* GoodBadBugs: In the Jumping Baneling evolution mission, there's a trigger you're supposed to walk across at the first group of burrowed Jumping Banelings that is meant to activate the map's lava rising mechanic. However, there's enough room along the top edge of the cliff to skip the trigger zone, which results in the lava rising mechanic never activating for the map. This makes the evolution mission a lot faster to complete as you no longer have to stop and wait whenever the lava mechanic activates.

* GameBreaker

** The Tal'darim are revealed to be crazed fanatics serving Narud in an attempt at AuthorsSavingThrow to justify why Raynor's Raiders went about killing them so much in the previous ''[[VideoGame/StarCraftIIWingsOfLiberty Wings of Liberty]]'' campaign when they were, quite literally, just sitting around not bugging anyone [[note]]The "Maw of the Void" mission did finally show them being evil by caging up Dark Templar, but this was long after the Raiders had already been killing the Tal'darim a bunch for no justifiable reason, and there was no connection to Narud[[/note]]. This revelation however turns the whole artifact search from ''Wings of Liberty'' into a convoluted mess as originally, Narud and his Moebius Foundation were paying the Raiders to go in and steal the artifact fragments from the Tal'darim. Yet because of ''Heart of the Swarm'' revealing that the Tal'darim have been in league with Narud this whole time, it now implies quite heavily that Narud was paying the Raiders to steal away the artifact fragments...from himself.

* WhatAnIdiot:
** How Mengsk handled the possibility of Raynor been rescued from imprisonment was pretty bad. Instead of placing the bomb on the prison ship in such a way to make sure his prized prisoner, Raynor, is actually killed off in case of a rescue attempt, he places the bomb nowhere near Raynor's location. Of course, Kerrigan manages to free Raynor before the bomb fully destroys the ship.

* SophomoreSlump: In terms of the trilogy's single-player campaigns. While ''Wings of Liberty'' and ''Legacy of the Void'' have their detractors, on the whole they are enjoyed for both story and gameplay reasons. ''Heart of the Swarm'' however is seen as the worst of the trilogy on both fronts. Its story is much weaker, with many finding Kerrigan an UnintentionallyUnsympathetic DesignatedHero, her enemies grabbing the IdiotBall, the dialogue is cheesy and forced, and the story is straightforward with few surprises or twists. For gameplay, it is by far the easiest of the trilogy and the player can steamroll enemies with little effort even on Brutal difficulty, and missions are played in three-level chains that makes replaying the campaign repetitive and dull, since the same units are unlocked at generally the same times each playthrough.[[note]]Unless you go out of your way to put off the Char or Kaldir missions until after the Zerus arc, in which case those earlier missions are even easier.[[/note]]
** The supporting cast in general tends to be fairly weak. Where as the casts of the other expansions play off one another[[note]]For example, Matt being TheConscience to Raymor, while Tychus is a PoisonousFriend, Tosh has insight on others, etc [[/note]] or bring out different viewpoints[[note]]Alarak is the TokenEvilTeammate and sees things as a Tal'darim, Vorazum is a Nezarim, Rohana has a traditionalist Khalai viewpoint and serves to show how the Templars need to change[[/note]], the Zerg around Kerrigan have very little influence on her and are fairly flat characters. Izsha just exists for her and Kerrigan to exposit at each other. Abathur, while giving interesting insight about the swarm, only cares about its evolution. Dehaka cares only about essence (a fact he'll remind you every other sentence). Stukov is kinda just there? Zagara is the only character with any development (going from a wannabe rival of Kerrigan to her pupil and heir), but even then her arc is best summarized as "learning basic competence". The conversations are all the more stale as Kerrigan doesn't really care about any of them, mostly regarding them as useful tools or allies of convenience at best.

** The Zerg species as a whole, partly because of the blatant RetCon of how they function. In the first game, the Zerg are explicitly non-sapient and not even really a species, but more like [[TheVirus a virus]] that infests other species. ''Brood War'' made it clear that the Overmind and later Kerrigan were the only guiding intelligences of the Zerg Swarm, and without them, the zerg are just feral animals. The manual to the first game also said that it was the Swarm that killed the Xel'naga. This game portrays the Zerg like sentient people and were basically mind-controlled by a rogue Xel'naga into being bad (it also introduces BlueAndOrangeMorality about how they want to "help" other species by assimilating them, when the first game made it clear that they didn't so much assimilate others as just kill them and puppet their corpses). Even disregarding the RetCon, the fact that most of the Zerg still ''are'' just animals, and mindlessly aggressive ones at that, makes it hard to see them the same way you would a Terran or Protoss. This culminates in a scene where Kerrigan "justifies" her murder of billions of Protoss by saying the Protoss killed billions of Zerg, making them NotSoDifferent. Except the Protoss were acting in self-defense against a swarm of non-sapient monsters with no non-combatants, while Kerrigan was killing actual people (including non-combatants) who had done her no wrong purely out of "self-preservation" and spite. Never mind that Kerrigan had only recently been deinfested and the Zerg were known to have a history of aggressively invading planets and were designed to do so by [[spoiler:Amon]], or that Kerrigan was free to leave Kaldir before the Golden Armada arrived.

** As FamousLastWords go, [[spoiler:"Ah made you into a ''mawnster'', Kerrigan"]] aren't exactly in the top ten.

** Despite only playing a role for [[OneShotCharacter one mission]]. Naktul has gained a bit of a following due to people buying into the ridiculous of a LargeHam Broodmother. Particularly, the way she always puts huge emphasis on some of her words.