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The final installment in the epic Starcraft 2 trilogy is the Legacy of the Void which is a campaign based around the Protoss faction. The Protoss are the "Space Elves" of the Starcraft franchise, an elder race with long lives and mastery of the warp technology which forms the backbone of their war machine.
Legacy of the Void was released in the end of 2015, making it a relatively old game by today's benchmarks. It also marked the end of the Starcraft 2 trilogy with the first installment (Wings of Liberty) having been released over 5 years before Legacy of the Void. Thankfully, those who played the Zerg campaign only had to wait a complete year and bit for this final chapeter! Or if you were like me, you couldn't be bothered with the wait... and just jumped in with the complete package many years afterwards!
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# <center>The Story</center>
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There is a little bit of a Prologue to the main campaign (Whispers of Oblivion), following the heretic Zeratul as he gathers the last piece of the Xel'Naga prophecy which leads him to the location of Amon's (the big bad of the series!) Ressurection from the Void. It is a series of short missions that are even easier than the campaign missions... however, the point is to lay the groundwork for the finale of the trilogy.
The Legacy of the Void begins properly after these Prologue missions, with the player placed in charge of the Golden Armada of the Protoss under the leadership of Artanis. At the start of the campaign, Artanis is about to invade and retake the Protoss homeworld of Aiur which was overrun by the Zerg in the Brood War expansion of the original Starcraft game. Zeratul arrives at this moment to warn him of Amon's imminent resurrection from the Void, but Artanis refuses to listen...
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... this is the beginning of the last chapter in the Starcraft 2 trilogy.
# <center>The Game</center>
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I'm not really going to go into the tactical portion of the game, much of it has been covered in my previous reviews of the [Zerg](https://peakd.com/hive-140217/@bengy/starcraft-2-heart-of-the-swarm-pc-gaming-review) and [Terran](https://peakd.com/hive-174578/@bengy/starcraft-2-wings-of-liberty-pc-game-review) episodes of the trilogy. Suffice to say that it is a top down RTS from nearly a decade ago, so there are many things that we take for granted in more modern RTS titles (like a less floaty physics and unit interaction as well as a greater distance for zooming out).
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The Protoss are the masters of Warp technologies, and all of their units sport a regenerating shield that protects them from damage. However, if that shield goes down... then they are relatively fragile. Their units tend to be more expensive (and thus slower) to build, so their gameplay is the polar opposite of the Zerg rush tactics. However, one for one... they appear to be much more powerful... especially if you can swap in units that have full shields to replace those with depleted shields.
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The unit customisation that was present in the two previous Starcraft 2 outings makes a return... however, this time, units do NOT get a hardwired upgrade. Instead there is a choice of 3 different soft (reversible) upgrades for each unit type... these upgrades are dependent on the various Protoss factions that you have discovered and allied with. There are initially two choices available for each unit type... with a third being unlocked as the story and faction interactions progress.
Similar to previous takes on this army customisation, you will likely choose one that suits your particular play style and stick with it. However, in the multiplayer games... I suspect that this degree of customisation, with the attendant strengths and weaknesses of each choice really start to matter when you are playing at a competitive level!
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Early in the story, Artanis manages to reawaken a long lost Elder ship known as the Spear of Adun... which becomes the main operating HQ of the Protoss legions. Unlike the previous Zerg campaign, where Kerrigan (The Queen of Blades) leveled up and got progressively more powerful; or the Terran campaign, where the Scientists would find new breakthroughs with the Protoss/Zerg artifacts, The Spear of Adun is the primary focus of the metagame levelling.
With each additional discovery of Solarite (an in-mission bonus), you can choose to power up certain subsystems of the Elder ship. This manifests itself in some passive army upgrades, some supply side enhancements or some really powerful orbital strikes!
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Like the previous installments of the trilogy, the single-player campaign serves more to convey the narrative backstory of the Starcraft Universe and to serve as a tutorial to the Protoss units for the multiplayer meat of the game. However, in my case... I don't really have much desire to play in the ultra-competitive multiplayer events (although... I really did enjoy playing the original Starcraft at LAN parties!), so my incentive to play through the single-player campaign is for the joy of uncovering the Starcraft 2 story arc! After all, it is a story that began in the original Starcraft in my formative gaming days... to be finally concluded nearly two decades later!
# <center>Epilogue</center>
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The epic finale of the Starcraft 2 trilogy isn't actually the end of the Protoss campaign. Instead, the Protoss campaign only sets up the ultimate showdown with the big bad in these additional Epilogue missions. Here is where things start to become a bit more challenging in the single player campaign... things are no longer a walk in the park like the previous campaign installments.
You reprise your role as commander of the various factions (Terran, Zerg and Protoss) as each mission highlights each in turn. However, unlike the previous campaigns, you are just dumped into the missions with your army customisations pre-chosen... which is incredibly annoying as it is likely to not be the way that you prefer to play the faction. If I had any quibble with the way that the Epilogue played out, it would definitely be this... I would have hoped that we would be able to self-select our Army customisations before the missions.... or at least have them imported from the previous campaigns! The missions are tricky enough without learning the new balance of unfamiliar unit specialisations!
However, the epic finale missions are really quite something to behind... as the computer AI handles the other two factions in each mission... and you really get the impression that you are working together, hanging on for dear life to take out the Destroyer of the Universes. When you finish, it really feels like a huge achievement.... to finally reach the end of an epic storyline that has potentially spanned all of your gaming life!
# <center>Visuals, Sound and Performance</center>
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As mentioned before in the previous reviews... the game engine for Starcraft 2 is pretty old (nearing a decade!), and so pretty much any computer built in the recent past will be able to handle this. The game is built to be pretty efficient as it needs to be light enough for competitive multiplayer over internet/LAN... so there are definitely not likely to be any bottlenecks or problems on the performance side of things!
However, the real beauty of the game lies in the cutscenes.... the game engine hasn't really aged that well... it is functional, but it isn't really that modern... the cut-scenes on the other hand... are just as gripping and beautiful as the day that they were pre-rendered! For me, this was the real reason that I played the game... to experience the truly epic soap opera that is Starcraft!
# <center>Conclusion</center>
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The end of an era... the Legacy of the Void brings the epic Starcraft franchise to a complete end. We have the conclusion of the epic story arc that began with the original Starcraft nearly two decades ago... and continued with the release of the Starcraft 2 trilogy that spanned over 5 years in itself! It is hard to describe the feeling as you finish off Amon, and all the characters that had captured your imagination and interest for so long...
Alongside the Starcraft story has been the adoption of Starcraft (and later Starcraft 2) as THE competitive RTS game... well balanced with matches that are great to watch, it has long been a staple of the Korean gaming scene.
However, it isn't quite the end... Blizzard released a final farewell to the Starcraft legacy, known as the Nova Missions. A real final love letter to the fans and the franchise... and an incoming review very soon!
# <center>Review Hardware</center>
Played at 1080p (144Hz) on:
Intel BX80662I76700 Core i7-6700 Prozessor (3,4GHz)
6GB EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC GAMING
GIGABYTE Z170N-WIFI
Ballistix Sport LT 16GB DDR4
Samsung 960 EVO M.2 512GB
[S4 Mini Case (NFC Systems)](http://nfc-systems.com/s4-mini/)
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