Auir is a shambles. A rogue Xel'Naga, Amon, looks to slaughter the Firstborn and end the cycle of life and death. Only Artanis, Hierarch of the Protoss, can save the Koprulu Sector by uniting the Daelaam, Tal'darim, and Nerazim against him.

If you haven't paid attention to the lore of StarCraft II up to this point, now is a terrible time to start. The deluge of hard-to-parse proper nouns and space magic is enough to douse even the tiniest spark of interest at this point. It's ironic—the first game was all about petty politicking and squabbles between the Zerg, Protoss, and Terrans over limited resources. In-game and out, the scope was so much smaller and the plot much more affecting for it.

If you must know what's happening going into Legacy of the Void—the finale to the StarCraft II trilogy and the fifth installment in the series, overall—it sports a slide show telling "the story so far." Honestly, though, you're better off grabbing a ticket to see Duncan Jones' upcoming Warcraft movie adaptation. The plot points in both series are basically identical, and Jones’ Moon was pretty good.

Boots on the ground, keep stepping

Despite Legacy's fictional failures, the single-player campaign in this expansion is a lot stronger than its predecessor. StarCraft is at its strongest when it gives you too many objectives to juggle for too long. This is something the first chapter, Wings of Liberty, got very right, but the second, Heart of the Swarm, did not. The standout skirmish from that first campaign was pulled straight out of The Chronicles of Riddick, of all places, forcing players to outrun a solar flare scouring the planet. You had to ceaselessly soak up resources while you could while also completing your objectives and moving your base out of harm's way every few minutes.

Legacy emulates that same plate-spinning style more than once. Whether it's a psychic storm surging through an arid riverbed or just a spread-out battlefront in need of defending, there's nearly always something to keep Protoss leader Artanis and company on their toes (or talons, as the case may be).

As Hierarch, Artanis is more of a leader than a bleeder, and so you won't bring him into combat nearly as much as you did with Sarah Kerrigan in Heart of the Swarm. That's just fine. Without the crutch of a super-powered psychic war machine to lean on, the balancing act is a lot more fun and much truer to the kind of real-time strategy game StarCraft is meant to be.































That's not to say Legacy has dropped the meta-progression from previous episodes. Instead of providing upgrades for Artanis, as you did with Kerrigan, completing mission lines reveals upgrades for your ship—the Spear of Adun. The dreadnought's support abilities work on timers, as well as their own renewable resources, complementing your existing forces rather than replacing them.

Even so, the Spear can seem overpowered at times. One upgrade path allows you to summon minor reinforcements and Pylons—which allow you to warp in more troops—to any location, free of charge. Limited resources and a constant need to reposition make this upgrade particularly unfair against the already relatively toothless A.I. In fact, if you have even the slightest understanding of human StarCraft II tactics, you'll rocket through the campaign on normal difficulty.

Cutthroat competition

How that might hold up against other humans is harder to say. StarCraft II's competitive multiplayer is the same as it has always been: brutal, fast, and unpredictable. Will your opponent slit your economy's throat four minutes into the game, or will it drag out into a long, grinding siege?

Blizzard probably hopes for neither. While there's little to do about the infamous Zerg Rush, Heart of the Swarm was particularly notorious for ferociously long base phlebotomies with siege units. In the boundless search for the perfectly balanced meta-game, the developers have promised a greater focus on micromanagement and small-scale, low-impact fights. At the core of this philosophy is rebalancing units to have more active abilities that require more individual attention. There are new units and structures, but not many—fewer than ten. In this way, as it was in Heart of the Swarm, Legacy's "new" multiplayer feels more like a hefty patch than a real expansion.

That's probably fine for those already bulwarked behind the walls of Castle StarCraft. The creater of this year's StarCraft II World Championship Series is still glowing behind us. It will be a while before the tournament pros and ladder Joes nod with knowing approval and/or spit in disgust at every little balance update. StarCraft is, and will remain, categorically bonkers.

You require more minerals—no you require more minerals

Those looking for admission to the cabal, or who just want a lick of their Kool Aid spoon, have new options in Legacy of the Void.

Archon Mode is the one getting the most spotlight among fans at Blizzcon and the like. It has two players controlling a single base, thereby splitting the macro- and micromanagement into something closer to what the average human is capable of. Some might use Archon Mode as a replacement for pure, one-on-one dueling. A more likely scenario, and perhaps what Blizzard has in mind, is for one half of the APM sandwich to coach the other, prodding them along the plank over the sea of ladder leagues and matchmaking ratings.

Co-op Missions haven't gotten the same attention as Archon Mode. Perhaps it's because they don't preach to the StarCraft multiplayer faithful, instead playing more like a game that’s been hybridized with Diablo 3. Each mission in this mode is played against the A.I. with pseudorandom scenarios that allow you to use the hero units and Spear of Adun spells you'd expect from the campaign—depending on the commander you select. There are two commanders for each faction, and they level up as well as earn permanent upgrades independently.

In summary, Archon Mode is a gateway drug to traditional multiplayer, while Co-op missions feel like a concession to those loners looking for a semi-randomized excuse to keep playing after the campaign's gibberish termination.

Babble and battle

This new repeatable content is welcome after a campaign that falls somewhere between Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm in quality, with plenty of well-designed missions. Even the space hocus-pocus story—with an ending so saccharine, so perfectly neat and happy for all involved that it feels like a How Legacy of the Void Should Have Ended video—has its bright spots, mostly involving Artanis' conversations with subordinates about Protoss culture.

Even so, it's hard to recommend Legacy of the Void in the traditional way. If you've played the last four Starcraft releases, even the last two, you're probably not going to stop now. If you haven't, this is technically the most complete version of the game's multiplayer to date. Just don't expect to have even a slight understanding of the nearly 20 years' worth of fiction and intricate gameplay that it puts a tidy bow on.

The Good

Juggling multiple objectives keeps campaign missions exciting.

Archon Mode makes for a decent entry point to multiplayer.

Co-op missions offer more of the campaign's best stuff.

One of the most complex and defined multiplayer suites in history.

The Bad

A nonsense story that wraps up a bit too neatly.

Multiplayer is still vicious and brutally complicated for casual players.

The Ugly

That moment after the campaign when you realize you've forgotten how to play any race but the Protoss.

Verdict: As the conclusion to a more than 17-year-old saga, Legacy of the Void isn’t a great place for newcomers to jump in. For those who want to wrap up the story or see the pinnacle of the series’ multiplayer, this is probably your last best chance to jump on for a good, long time. Try it.