StarCraft II / YMMV

See also:

Angst? What Angst?: A lot of the characters have suffered fates that would have utterly broken any real person, or at least given them severe PTSD. Yet most characters in SC2 simply carry on with showing little more than an angry squint.
- While Zeratul's certainly got quite a bit to feel bad about, he just keeps on fighting, never letting it slow him down, though some pieces slip through the cracks; one of his unit quotes is "En aru'din Raszagal", or "In Memory of Raszagal". It's also painfully apparent how much he's suffering from Can't Kill You, Still Need You where Kerrigan is concerned.
- Raynor's entire life seems to be a Trauma Conga Line: he spends his youth as a criminal but regrets it deeply; his parents die in shame, only knowing his as a criminal; his best friend gets imprisoned indefinitely; his son is hauled off and dies in a shady training programme and his wife subsequently dies of sorrow; the planet he gets a job on gets consumed by the Zerg; he then goes to fight for Mengsk, who rewards him by feeding Kerrigan to the Zerg and go from freedom fighter to dictator; he witnesses Kerrigan get infested and later kill his friend, Fenix, and he sees Mengsk rise to power and get away scot free while he himself is vilified with no hope of deposing him. Then SC2 has him kill off his best friend to deinfest Kerrigan, only for her to willingly reinfest herself later. And he never so much as sheds a tear.
- Kerrigan also counts. Aside from getting betrayed by a man she trusted implicitly, fed to and infested by the Zerg, and then get returned to normal, suddenly able to look back on her butchering her way across the stars as the Queen of Blades from a normal perspective... that can't be easy. And this isn't even mentioning how she later loses Raynor to a sniper bullet. Unlike the others, at least she gets to shed a Single Tear.
Bizarro Episode: The trilogy of novels StarCraft: The Dark Templar Saga. Word of God is they were written specifically to set up plot events in the trilogy, but none of the characters besides Valerian reappear and the events of the novel are not referenced ever again, and most of the backstory and lore it provides is either given again in the games, or are retconned. In the meantime, the book concerns a Terran that has to share his brain with a Protoss experiencing the memories of famous Protoss heroes as visions, Kerrigan's attempts to replicate her infestation on another Terran succeed (with no given reason for why after another novel had her repeatedly failing), we deal with Protoss drug addicts, and we have Ulrezaj the dark archon draining the souls of other Protoss to sustain his life.
Broken Base:
- Unfortunately, this was expected. The game created this before it was even released. Features such as multiple building select split the fanbase early on on the development cycle, followed by debates over how protoss display team color, if the lurker should have been removed or not, and more. Not to mention the arguments that broke out when it was revealed that Blizzard was changing the voice actress of Kerrigan from Glynnis Talken to Tricia Helfer. And now that the game is actually out, the base has become extremely polarized, nearly to the extent of the Inheritance Cycle over StarCraft II's story.
- Early in development there was a Broken Base on the Zerg. Some thought they're the weakest race and helpless before any competent Protoss or Terran, while others thought they were fine and the weaker players just had yet to "click" with the race and realize their full potential and versatility. A related point of contention was the Infester, a unit so powerful it was considered a necessity for Zerg to have a chance, but perhaps was too powerful. Then Patch 1.4 talked about nerfing the Infester's Neural Parasite ability, and cue the arguments. Numerous fixes to the race come Heart of the Swarm helped mitigate the problems.
- The release of Legacy of the Void broke the base in a similar manner on the Terrans. The Marauder nerf, along with addition of the Adept and Disruptor to the Protoss, and the Lurker and Viper's Parasitic Bomb to the Zerg, made the Terran's bread and butter strategy, MMM (Marines, Marauders, and Medivacs) much weaker. Some Terran players complained they were now the weakest race since MMM couldn't handle the late-game armies of the Protoss and Zerg, and Terrans have a harder time transitioning into later-game Factory and Starport-based armies than the other two races. Protoss and Zerg players responded by mocking the Terrans are just upset they "have to learn how to really play", since MMM had been the backbone of most Terran strategies since Wings of Liberty and Terran players spent five years getting good at it. Over time balance tweaks largely mitigated these complaints.
- The Swarm Host is the source of many arguments. Some players consider them overpowered, as when used properly their locusts can deal a surprising amount of damage and be used to snipe bases and ambush armies with little risk to the Swarm Host itself. And because locusts cost nothing but time to produce, every battle fought using locusts is economically favorable to the Swarm Host player. On the other side, players point out that Swarm Hosts cost a lot of resources, time, and supply, their locusts don't last very long compared to the cooldown to spawn them, and the Swarm Host is not very maneuverable and needs a Nydus Network to be effective, which all means they require a substantial investment and the player must sacrifice the size and sustainability of their army, leaving them more vulnerable to counterplay when their Swarm Hosts are out of position or on cooldown. The Swarm Hosts were considered overpowered in Heart of the Swarm, then reworks to them for Legacy of the Void saw them become much less effective and they were almost never used; it is hotly debated if it's possible to buff them in any way without tipping the scales back to overpowered.
- In the 2020s, the Terran Ghost began to be the source of arguments, particularly in Terran vs Zerg games. Steady Targeting lets them kill every Zerg unit except the Brood Lord or Ultralisk in one shot (and Brood Lords are still left heavily weakened), EMP lets them drain Infestors and Vipers of their energy, and with Cloak they force the Zerg player to keep Overseers around, which Ghosts can still kill with Steady Targeting. Critics of the Ghost point out they're too versatile and mass Ghost counters everything the Zerg could throw at the Terran unless they resort to mass Banelings, the Ghost's biggest weakness, but this is both expensive and can be microed against to mitigate their potential. Defenders of the Ghost point out that they're very expensive to build and take a long time to tech up to and upgrade, so the Zerg player shouldn't let the Terran's economy get to the point they can afford to go mass Ghosts, and Brood Lords and Infestors and Vipers would easily roll over the Terran's other late-game unit compositions without Ghosts, so the Terrans need the Ghost to support their armies against them.
- Some of the non-literal translations in the Latin American Spanish version. Are they surprisingly good references to Native American languages, or they don't make sense at all?
- The writing and delivery in general is a major divide amongst the singleplayer fanbase. Some fans like the direction the series went in, with a more Mass Effect-esque space opera feeling, and the change to Kerrigan and the Zerg's motives. Others feel the story repeatedly breaks continuity, ignores the core premise in favour poorly written love story, reduces characters to one-dimensional archetypes, and has a script consisting of nothing but a giant Cliché Storm. A third group yet considers both games to have a subpar story and writing full of tired cliches and hold that the multiplayer is the games' only worthwhile quality. Then come the newer fanbase who've never played the first game and don't understand what all the fuss is about.
Cheese Strategy: The single-player campaign had hilariously overpowered upgrades (to the point where in WoL you couldn't get them all in a single playthrough and subsequent games gave these upgrades to the AI to counteract the new, utterly broken Zerg and Protoss units).
- Unlike previous games, you can finally gives commands to your entire army instead of one 8-unit group at a time, making Zerg Rushes much easier.
- Each game has an ability that lets you gather vespene automatically, freeing up workers for other purposes or getting more combat units.
- Wings of Liberty:
  - Most Zerg missions become a cakewalk once the Reapers are unlocked, as they combine high speed, the ability to jump up and down ledges, high anti-Light damage (that is, most Zerg ground units) and devastating anti-building damage. Building up a large force of Reapers and a few medics becomes a near-unstoppable deathball that ravages infantry swarms and bases alike. It's helpless against air units, but with enough Reapers this isn't much of a problem (especially when combined with an upgrade that lets you train them two at a time per building).
  - The Science Vessel allows you to heal mechanical units for free, and flies. This alone causes most players to take it instead of the Raven, a turret-placing robot.
  - One upgrade lets you choose the Hercules dropship or the Predator, a robot panther that deals area damage. However, the Hercules can carry huge armies and several Thors and deposit them behind enemy lines, making it a much better option.
  - One upgrade lets you choose between making units attack faster with every damage upgrade, or get more health with every armor upgrade. The former is much more powerful thanks to using Critical Existence Failure (most units function as Glass Cannons, so increasing their damage output is much more important than keeping them alive longer).
- Heart of the Swarm:
  - Zerglings can now spawn in groups of three, Banelings (spawned from Banelings) now have an upgrade that lets them jump cliffs and over other units. Drowning the enemy in explosive death is immense fun.
  - Kerrigan's abilities let her (among others) summon banelings into enemy troops, drop a small Zerg army on the field or essentially use a psychic nuke.
- Legacy of the Void:
  - Almost every mission lets you call down orbital bombardments. This only increases with time as the Spear of Adun gets more powerful abilities like stopping time or sending down a superpowered robot.
  - Tempests are flyers with the range of artillery, letting them annihilate entire bases with near-impunity. And unlike other artillery flyers, they can actually defend themselves against other air units.
Contested Sequel: For the multiplayer, it's really a matter of opinion if the original game or this one is superior. For the singleplayer campaign, most agree the gameplay and presentation are significantly improved, but the writing has taken a downward turn, albeit improving in its own way by Legacy of the Void.
Creator's Pet: The macro booster mechanics — MULEs/Chrono Boost/Spawn Larva — have always been a touchy subject for skewing the game balance in different ways. MULEs provides a ridiculous boost to Terran mining, allowing Terrans to run much fewer workers than other races, and they can recover from losses of workers much easier than the other races since MULEs can be dropped to mine anywhere. Spawn Larva on the other hand requires Zerg players to constantly monitor their Queens and Hatcheries to make sure they're producing extra larva, and prior to Legacy of the Void, Spawn Larva could not be queued multiple times on a single Hatchery, so any time lost not using Spawn Larva was time that could never be gained back. A poll was set up on Team liquid to ask the community's thoughts on them, and an overwhelming majority voted "no macro boosters", yet Blizzard chose to retain them and try to balance them in other ways.
Ensemble Dark Horse: The baneling has quite a following as the "cute" zerg unit, for some reason.
Epileptic Trees: Early in the trilogy, some fans suggested that "The Voice in the Darkness" from the Frontline graphic novels was Amon; they're both Void-based entities, the Voice was apparently killed/sealed by the Xel'naga ages ago, it refers to them as false gods and itself as the one true god, it was unsealed by Moebius Foundation, and it shows some ability to control the minds of Terrans and Protoss. Word of God has said outright the two entities are different, but it hasn't stopped speculation on other potential connections between them.
Fan Nickname:
- The Overlord's ability to produce creeps is referred to by fans as "Diarrhea".
- Anything Arthas-related for Valerian.
- Some people like referring to Rory Swann as a "Space Dwarf" since he's short, stocky, bearded and good with machines. He does spend all his time in Bay 12. No Scottish accent, though.
- Watching commentary replays of pro-level games requires learning an entire fan vocabulary of names for the different build orders and strategies used, especially since several terms sound similar but have different meanings, such as six-pool^note, 4-gate^note, and one-one-one^note.
Franchise Original Sin: Although many complain about the romance between Kerrigan and Raynor, many forget that it was featured already in the first game. The only difference is that there, it was only a minor subplot, whereas here, it forms a core part of the story.
Game-Breaker:
- The Zerg Infestor has become the most despised unit in the entire franchise for its immense versatility and power. However, since they were also the only midgame unit that could stand up in direct battle combat for the Zerg, Blizzard refused to nerf them. They ironically nearly broke the game and kept the Zerg from falling apart at the same time. The unit got nerfed in Heart of the Swarm once the other Zerg units had been fixed.
- Another issue in multiplayer is the Terran MULE. It's a Worker Unit that can be summoned by an Orbital Command Center for 50 Energy (of 200), does not take up Supply, and brings back 7 minerals per trip where standard SCVs bring back 5. It only lasts for 90 seconds, but if a Terran player can focus his economy in the midgame, he can build a ton of Orbital Commands and basically replace all his SCVs with MULEs. This is where things start going Off the Rails. In the late game, a Protoss player has probably dedicated about 60 of the 200 Food in his Arbitrary Headcount Limit to Worker Units; Zerg are expected to run more like 80. A Terran player spamming MULEs? He can get by with 20.
- In Co-Op, Zeratul is even more broken than Tychus. Despite the fact he's recommended for experienced players, he's both one of the most powerful and the easiest commanders to use. His gimmick is that he has to find artifact fragments in the world itself by the use of an ability, but once he does, all his units upgrade automatically. He's only got 1 tech structure you really need (Whereas other commanders have 2 or 3) unless you want to build specyfic tier 3 units. Not that he needs them, Zeratul as his Stalkers, Sentries and Immortals are more than enough to destroy anything the enemy throws at him. The Stalkers boast good health and damage on top of an automatic dodge teleport which eliminates the need for micro on any difficulty except Brutal, the Sentries keep the army alive by being portable Shield Batteries, and the third erases air units from the map with 2-3 shots. His only real weakness - swarms of Zerg units - can be negated by building Tesseract Monolyths, a free and instant turret with insane range, Detector capabilities, and splashing stun. Three of them can stunlock entire armies, and with just the 2nd artifact fragment they can be "projected" onto the battlefield for about a minute, essentially giving you global control over the battlefield (so long as you have vision in the area). A half-decent player can do Brutal missions with this guy as early as level 5, which is the "free to play" threshold.
Genius Programming: The Starcraft II World Editor is surprisingly versatile; mods have ranged from a racing game, a Futbol game, and so on.
Goddamned Bats: Those annoying little broodlings that come out when you destroy a zerg building.
High-Tier Scrappy: Swarm Hosts' ability to endlessly create waves of locusts to pressure the enemy indefinitely means they can force a stalemate if a player can't find a way to push back against them, and any units lost to their locusts are an advantage for the Zerg player because they lose nothing if their locusts die. The hate for them got even worse in Legacy of the Void when their locusts were allowed to fly, making them base raiders to boot, able to unleash locusts on worker lines from across chasms without fear of reprisal.
It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Boring, but Practical units are derided for their effectiveness (at least in earlier levels of skill, wherein players don't know much strategy beyond attack-moving), with some going so far as to (dismissively) allege that Marine-Marauder-Medivac / mass Mutalisk / mass Void Ray is practically impossible to win against.
Low-Tier Letdown: The Mothership has been hated since Day One. Players hated the concept in the first place because it was deemed too reminiscent of Warcraft III's focus on hero units instead of armies. The Mothership takes a long time to tech up to, costs a lot of resources, moves slowly, doesn't deal much damage, is easily focused down and killed because of its size and sluggish speed, and it needs time to build up energy reserves so it can use its abilities. The result is that they virtually never see play in the competitive scene except for niche and novelty strategies. Heart of the Swarm added the Mothership Core as a stepping stone to the Mothership to try and make them more viable, but it had the opposite effect since the Mothership Core had the same abilities but was much cheaper and lower on the tech tree. The Mothership Core was ultimately removed two years after the release of Legacy of the Void, and the Mothership had a massive rework (not the first time, either) in 2023, to try and bring it up to par.
Magnificent Bastard: Alarak from the Starcraft II Legacy Of The Void expansion. See that page for details.
Memetic Badass:
- General Warfield punches Hydralisks to death and would rather his medics chop his arm off so he can stay on the battlefield than retreat for proper medical attention. And losing his arm barely slowed him down since he came back one mission later with an Arm Cannon. Even being impaled in the torso with several steel beams didn't kill him, and he was trying to pull them out!
- Alarak would have you know he is by far the most powerful being in the galaxy and could crush anyone who defies him beneath his heel. The fandom agrees.
- Egon Stetmann became this when he got added as a Co-op commander, fielding an army of mechanical Zerg that combine traits and abilities from all three races, like his "Mecha Battlecarrier Lord", a mechanical Brood Lord with "locustceptors" and a "Stetmato cannon". It's been declared that Stetmann and his Mecha Swarm are the true fusion of the races over Amon and his Hybrid, and Stetmann achieved what Amon could not.
Memetic Mutation:
- TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE DAMAGE!!!
- SO MANY BANELINGS!!!
  - "Banelings, banelings, banelings woaaahhh..."
- How do you defeat those invisible protis sniper-
- At least he's not poohunter.
  - If there is a solarite in Amon's body, Legacy of the Void will end prematurely.
- Pylo the Pylon. Appeared in a game between WhiteRa (DuckloadRa) and BratOk. Created by Husky Starcraft to name a Pylon near the front lines, Pylo has become a sensation in the SC2 community, recently spawing his own SONG. Pylo appears at around 9:03 here.
- The objective of _____ is super unique. There are X _____ scattered around the map that need to be _____. Each is guarded by a progressively stronger force of enemies. ^Explanation

Most Wonderful Sound:
- The siege tank's *shbooom* noise is this for terran players. What it says is "group of enemy units just got their teeth kicked in".
- "Nuclear Launch Detected." That's assuming you were the one that launched it, otherwise it's another trope.
- In the Co-op mode, any time your ultimate ability comes off cooldown comes with one:
Adjutant: Pulse Cannon online.
Protoss Advisor: Solar Bombardment available/Time Stop online.
Alarak: I am ready to be empowered/The Death Fleet is standing by.
Stukov: An Apocalisk is ready for spawning.
Motive Decay: Arcturus Mengsk goes from a Magnificent Bastard who shrewdly manipulated everyone around him into helping him achieve his goals, to a one-note villain willing to sacrifice his only heir just to kill Raynor. It's never really elaborated upon why he hates Raynor enough to destroy his own dynasty, he just does.
Narm:
- Zeratul talks to himself a lot, mostly to recap gameplay mechanics or plot points he already knows very well. It's there to exposit to the player what he's doing and how his abilities work, but this doesn't change the fact he's talking to himself and pulling As You Know on himself. Coupled with his Large Ham tendencies, it results in a silly habit of giving dramatic monologues to thin air.
- Several of the Zerg portrait quotes you can't help but unintentionally laugh at. The Zergling and Infestor's quotes particularly where the former has a moment where it sounds like the Zergling is letting out a brief fart, while the latter sounds like someone working at Blizzard had just recorded a person taking a dump on the toilet almost the entire time.
Nightmare Fuel:
- The infested terran in general. The portraits are far more detailed and thus far more disturbing than the original game.
  - Zoom in on their death animation. Once their meter expires, they put their guns in their mouths and shoot themselves.
Play the Game, Skip the Story: TV Tropes is probably the most you'll ever hear about the actual story of StarCraft II. A huge number of people picked up the game and went straight to the multiplayer. Others play the main campaign, but skip the cutscenes entirely.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Starcraft II re-balanced much of the gameplay in an effort make competitive play more unpredictable, but also improved campaign gameplay over time as well.
- A criticism of the Wings of Liberty campaign was that the developers included too many units, with every single mission dedicated to a unit. This not only created a massive tech tree (almost two dozen units in total), but some of the units weren't that good, even in the missions that focused on them — on the other hand, there was criticism over many missions being This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman, being tailored to the strengths of its spotlight unit and coming off as gimmicky and easy. Heart of the Swarm dialed back on the unit count heavily, had several levels that didn't focus on one unit, and the levels that did focus on a new unit did so in ways that felt more organic and didn't try to shoehorn the unit into things. Legacy of the Void technically had more units than even Wings of Liberty, but many of them were variants of existing units and existed to add variety to the player's army, not to be used heavily in a single spotlight mission.
- While StarCraft had praise for its solid Competitive Balance, one of the quirks the game had was that it had powerful spells, abilities and units that could render some units almost obsolete. This was most noticeable with Terrans infantry compositions which were considered too weak to stand up against opposing Protoss and Terran armies at the professional level even with ideal micromanagement skill. Terran players could use Siege Tanks and Spider Mines to quickly eliminate infantry while the Protoss had Reavers and Psionic Storms that made infantry a joke. Starcraft II re-balanced a lot of spells and abilities while keeping them still crucial to playing well, and reworked Terran infantry into a viable force that is no longer only useful for fighting against Zerg opponents. Now Terran players don't have to deal with un-dodgeable bursts of splash damage rendering infantry uneconomical and can choose between Infantry and Factory-Mech builds more flexibly, making the Terran faction more unpredictable and dynamic. Many spells are now balanced around reaction time, with skillful micromanagement being rewarded with taking reduced or no damage.
- Supporting fliers like the Corsair, Devourer, and Valkyrie wern't useless, just very situational with the Corsair seeing the most use but its Disruption Web requiring the costly fleet beacon to unlock and still being a niche spell. These were respectively replaced by the Phoenix, Corruptor, and Viking, and had some way to engage ground units. The Phoenix is able to inately lift up all but colossal units so that other Phoenix units may attack them, the Corruptor is able to attack structures or morph into Brood Lords to attack any ground units, and the Viking is able to land to attack ground forces.
- Artanis was considered an uninteresting character from the first game, struggling to stand out against Zeratul, Tassadar, and Fenix, who were seen as much cooler and better developed. His starring role in Legacy of the Void and the development he got there saw him firmly break out of this mold and establish himself as the modern face of the Protoss.
Romantic Plot Tumor: Many who disagree with the direction of the story in SC2 see the romance between Kerrigan and Raynor as this. Although this was already present in the first game, it received very little screen time and so looked more like a Token Romance that came to a tragic, premature end. Kerrigan's subsequent actions further cemented the death of their romance when she had Raynor's Fire Forged Friend, Fenix, killed, whereupon Raynor handed her a "Reason You Suck" Speech and swore be the one to kill her. So when Blizzard then decided that Starcraft had apparently "always been a story about a boy and a girl"^note, it understandably pissed off a lot of fans. This was made even worse by neither Fenix nor any of Kerrigan's crimes ever being brought up even once in the first installment, with every character acting as if they never even existed, making it look like they were retconned out just to make a forced romance work.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: The game comes with four difficulty levels, compared to the single (and Nintendo Hard) difficulty in the previous game. The removal/tweaking of some frustrating mechanics (such as Artificial Stupidity and the unit selection cap) and the addition of more user-friendly ones (such as the ability to tab through each type of selected unit for abilities and descriptions for said abilities) augment this more so.
Sequelitis: Whether because of changes to multiplayer, singleplayer, or both, there are a large number of fans who view StarCraft 2 as inferior to the original for one reason or another. Some find that one of the particular installments is to blame for the failure, others dislike all of them to various degrees albeit not necessairy in order, and some simply dislike SC2 as a whole, viewing all the installments as equally bad.
"Stop Having Fun" Guys: In multiplayer, a lot of older or higher ranked players will rather play with other players of equal ranking and have hate on newer ranked ones, especially newcomers (ie noobs). Some will go through great lengths to abuse the new player until he/she quits the game. Apparently they'd rather have a lower chance of winning than have a newcomer on their team. This even happens on unranked games. If you bring it up in the forums the answer is often "play multiplayer only when you can play 4v4 against the computer on brutal". Ouch. Also, a lot of players believe in specific tactics and you will be terribly bullied if you choose to play in a way that do not conform to any known tactics.
Strangled by the Red String: People who have only played the games and not read the books will be somewhat surprised by how much Jim Raynor wants to save Kerrigan, as the last time they met Raynor was swearing revenge on her for Fenix's death.
Stupid Evil: Many detractors of the story view Arcturus Mengsk as having turned into this in SC2, in contrast to his Magnificent Bastard role in SC1. Surely, deciding to kill off your one and only heir, when you rule a hereditary monarchy, must count as a colossally stupid idea. Even more so when you do it just to kill off ''one'' ineffectual rebel who deserted you because you fed his girlfriend to the Horde of Alien Locusts.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Broken Base aside, there were a lot of complaints about the Siege Tank's acknowledgement and Stop Poking Me! phrases not being equal as the ones of its StarCraft I counterpart.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- The Protoss as a whole are put on a pretty big backburner before they were finally brought into the spotlight when the Legacy of the Void expansion rolled around. The primary example being that it takes awhile for the Daelaam Protoss to actually get going in SC2 due to how insignificant they are to the main stories of Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm. One can only wonder how different, or more interesting, the story would have been had they taken part in Valerian's attack on Char to cleanse Kerrigan, or when Kerrigan invaded Korhal with her Zerg Swarm to kill Arcturus. In addition, the Tal'darim didn't fare much better as they were basically a shallow one-dimensional villain that existed purely for missions to fight against Protoss. It's not until Legacy of the Void that the Tal'darim were finally provided some much needed depth.
- The Hybrids ended up not having much going for them outside of being a fodder army for Amon. What's especially damning is that they weren't given a single recurring character to act as the representative of the race. At first, Wings of Liberty played around with the idea of having named Hybrid characters, such as Zeratul going up against one named Maar during "A Sinister Turn," yet it turns out that this was the only time that the player faces off against a named Hybrid. In the end, Maar's appearance is so out-of-place looking back on the campaigns as a whole that it wouldn't be surprising if it turned out that the developers decided to ditch the idea of giving the Hybrids characterization for the sequel campaigns.
- Tychus Findlay features heavily in the first installment and was perhaps the most well-liked new character in the entire game. Many would probably have liked to see even more of him in the subsequent installments. Instead, he was unceremoniously killed off at the end of Wings of Liberty.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- Unlike previous RTS games from Blizzard Entertainment, there's no definitive villain campaign for Starcraft II. This plays a huge part as to why Amon and his Hybrids are some of the least interesting and underdeveloped characters seen in the franchise as you never get to truly see their Evil Plan unfold from the villain's point-of-view.
- One common criticism of the Starcraft II storytelling is that it doesn't do that good of a job bridging the storytelling of where Brood War left off with the start of Wings of Liberty.
  - The last we saw of Raynor, he believed Kerrigan had crossed the Moral Event Horizon and vowed to kill her for betraying him and Fenix and all the other lives she had ruined. Come Starcraft II, Raynor mourns for Kerrigan as the love of his life that he regrets being unable to save, and his desire to kill her is gone.
  - The Dominion was a broken shell after the UED invasion and Kerrigan's betrayal, with many of their worlds suffering mass destruction, their military being crippled, and General Duke being killed. At the end of Brood War it's said that Arcturus retreated to Korhal to lick his wounds and try to rebuild. In a short four years between the two games, the Dominion is stronger than ever and Arcturus is secure in his power and controls a majority of Terran worlds.
  - The Protoss on Shakuras are barely even mentioned outside of Zeratul's mini-campaign in Wings of Liberty, which is only a vision of the future. It wasn't until Legacy of the Void that they got any real focus, with webcomics and novellas left to fill in what had been going on with their civilization in the six years since Brood War.
  - The overall storytelling outright ignores any impact that the UED invasion may have had on the Koprulu Sector to the point that everyone acts like said invasion never happened. The only time the UED is even mentioned in Wings of Liberty is in the description for the Spartan Company Goliath mercenaries, which is something that can be easily missed while Heart of the Swarm has Stukov mention a throwaway line regarding Earth.
- When the Covert Ops mission pack was announced, some players were interested in further mission packs to follow up on lingering plot threads leftover from the main trilogy, or to continue telling the story much like Brood War had done with the original Starcraft. Covert Ops ended up being the only mission pack produced.
Underused Game Mechanic: Several universal cases throughout all the Starcraft II campaigns.
- Gone are the days when the player used to have to fight through multiple factions ^note. A vast majority of the missions tend to pit the player against a single enemy. This can largely be explained away as a case of Technology Marches On. Due to various restrictions in the game code, most notably the Arbitrary Headcount Limit and the need to populate the entire map, Starcraft I enemy was divided into multiple allied A.I.s each with their own 200-supply headcount. As Starcraft II no longer had this restriction, and relied less on "wipe out the map" missions, such an approach was no longer necessary.
- Resource expansion is also quite scaled back throughout these campaigns. Most of the missions tend to have just a single expansion beyond the main base to expand to.
- Rich resources is very seldomly used throughout the campaigns. Only a select few missions have the gold mineral fields, and the purple gas geysers don't appear at all.
Vindicated by History: The trilogy was rather divisive upon release and completion, citing poor writing as one of the narrative's primary flaws. In the years to follow, given the absolute trainwreck of story and game releases for Blizzard's other works like Diablo and World of Warcraft along with the abandonment of Heroes Of The Storm, many players were just glad that the Starcraft series was able to give itself a decisive conclusion and quit while it was still ahead instead of being run to the ground.
Woolseyism: The latin american spanish translation of the trilogy went a little liberal and redubbed certain names with native american words. For example:
- The Firebat is called Camazot, one "z" away from the name of the mayan bat god, Camazotz. Furthermore, the K'iche' tribe, whose mythology originally did not include Camazotz, was eventually adapted as being the same as the K'iche' fire god. Essentially, the fire bat god.
- Similarly, the Reaper is Yum-Kimil, taken from the name of one of the mayan death gods, making the name equivalent to Reaper.
- The Baneling was renamed Uetzi. Uetzi means "roll over" in Nahuatl, the aztec language. This fits with the way they move in the battlefield.
- The Thor's Javelin Missile Launchers are called Colihue Rocket Launchers. The colihue (A mapudungun -Mapuche language- word) is a south american species of bamboo.

YMMV / StarCraft II

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