The Brilliance of StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty - A Brief Retrospective

Video Description

Wings of Liberty is an incredibly important game to me. This retrospective ended up taking a lot more time than I had initially intended. This is the only shot I will ever get to express my detailed feelings on this game and I hope I got it right. Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 2:24 - Liberation Day 4:59 - The Outlaws 8:19 - Zero Hour 11:00 - MLG Cribs: The Hyperion 12:43 - The Evacuation 18:13 - Smash and Grab 25:01 - The Devil's Playground 30:18 - Welcome To The Jungle 31:42 - Outbreak 37:16 - The Great Train Robbery 42:40 - Cutthroat 48:42 - Welcome Back To The Jungle 52:42 - Upgrades 54:51 - Dr. Ariel Hanson 56:39 - Haven's Fall 1:00:16 - sAfE hAvEn 1:06:48 - The Dig 1:13:50 - If you laid out every possible Wings of Liberty route end to end it would reach from Columbus, Ohio to Pluto 1:16:53 - Whispers of Doom 1:20:28 - The Greatest Game of StarCraft Ever Played. 1:24:48 - Breakout 1:30:25 - Nova: Overt Cops 1:35:05 - A Sinister Turn 1:41:40 - M L G 1:45:02 - rotcaF suibeoM ehT 1:48:20 - Jim's problematic inconsistent problem 1:50:15 - Engine of Destruction 1:53:30 - The News 1:55:22 - Echoes of the Future 2:00:00 - Exemplars 2:03:22 - Media Blitz 2:07:38 - Piercing The Shroud 2:11:40 - Why Side With Nova When You Can Go To SuperNova 2:18:44 - Maw of the Void 2:24:26 - In Utter Darkness 2:27:18 - In Utter Lameness 2:35:11 - Oh You Thought I wouldn't bring up Touhou when talking about The Lost Vikings? WELL HOLD ON TO YOUR KNEE CAPS BECAUSE HERE WE GO. It is pretty clear that TLV was largely inspired by Touhou 12: Unidentified Fantastic Object, which came out 1 year earlier. The weapon pickup system is very similar to the UFO collection in...UFO. But ahhhhhhhh why did they ever pick THAT game as the basis? UFO is considered one of the hardest Touhou games because the system is incredibly inconsistent and leads to a lot of deaths trying to get power. There were so many better thing to be inspired from that weren't mechanically problematic. Just copy Mountain of Faith for goodness sake, it was LITERALLY DESIGNED AS A SOFT REBOOT TO THE FRANCHISE and had very accessible and easy to learn mechanics as a result! A core mechanic forcing people to stop bottom hugging on a one-off game mode is incredibly silly! I have a pet peeve about people who invest a lot of time to get good at something and then proceed to forget how much time they invested to get there and assume everybody else can keep up with them. That sort of feels like what happened here. Somebody was a decent STG player and forgot how insanely difficult the genre is to get into. Anyway while I was making this video I ended up getting into Lost Branch of Legend because I needed a turn based game I could play in bite sized chunks. Really solid Slay the Spire knockoff. The use of MTG mana colors really adds a strategic depth that I like a lot, though I think the game is a bit too snowbally. The "True" boss on lunatic is nice and tough but I don't think I have ever lost on act 3 because of how strong you get by then. Spell Carnival arrived in the mail while I was making this video and I am hoping it is decent, just haven't had time to boot it up yet. I am a big Turn Based Strategy fan so I have high hopes. There is also Touhou Empries coming out eventually which I was hoping would be good but I legitimately don't want to play it because Reimu's sprite is too ridiculous. Anyway but maybe that is okay because Marisa ≫ Reimu anyway and I doubt this game would be an exception 2:38:00 - Gates of Hell 2:42:13 - Shatter the Sky 2:45:18 - Belly of the Beast 2:49:00 - War of the Field 2:49:55 - All-in 2:53:53 - The Finale 2:58:24 - The Only Good Part Of The Video List of External Content Used: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13u8YbKMfsHSo39Dkg7RQC5LKhnkVuJJe6wt3Mc2qoQE/edit?usp=sharing