It’s been a long time since we last visited the story of Jim Raynor, in fact it has been over two years since StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was released. This time the game has plenty of changes from balance to just random features. It seems that StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm attempts to make those changes by following StarCraft: Brood War’s formula of a few units for each race, a new campaign, and a few minor changes to the interface.

Well this boils down into two categories, the new units and the new campaign, because there isn’t a lot new to the gameplay. Hilariously enough, for a game like StarCraft, saying there isn’t a lot new is like an instant 100 because no one really wants anything new.

Terran gets Hellbats (Firebats) that are Firebats because Firebats and Hellbats are pretty much the same. Firebats are a hilarious unit because they’re so oddly balanced in StarCraft. In the original they were pretty much super powerful and complained about all the game, so in SC2 they just took them out and put them in the campaign. In custom games they are usually hilariously overpowered because they have the heartiness of a Marauder with an OMG flame attack.

So how do you balance it out? Well, require an Armory to build Firebats, which puts at the late mid or early late game, which traditionally is like the Firebat free zone. Problem solved, they work, they’re cool, and late game mass Zealot vs. Terran isn’t a thing anymore.

The basic plot of the game takes 20 total missions to get through and two sentences to write out, not counting some of the campaign’s evolution-themed mini-missions. Kerrigan wants to kill Dominion Emperor Arcturus Mengsk because he tried to have her bumped off in Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty. A stranger “find the origin of the Zerg” and “prepare for battle against the great unknown” storyline interweaves with the revenge plot, but it’s not nearly as exciting to kill regular, old Zerg or the religiously high-strung Protoss as it is to tear little humans limb from digital limb.

Part of the Heart of the Swarm’s appeal lies in the fact that the Zerg – biological creatures that they are – can benefit from a variety of upgrades that you can use to customize each unit you bring to the battlefield (technically, hatch) based on the kind of Starcraft player that you are. And that’s what made our second play-through just as fun as the first: The ability to try out different combinations of units and unit upgrades – not to mention Kerrigan’s powers – are wickedly fun for those looking to spice up the campaign with a little creativity.

Kudos to the company’s ingenious designers —Blizzard’s gotten much better at using the StarCraft II engine to stretch the limits of typical real-time strategy gameplay. We loved the diversity of the missions the game summons forth: Smaller Alien-like battles in ships or buildings, frantic missions that require you to complete objectives before something horrible happens, and missions that attempt to throw boss fights into a real-time strategy game.

Granted, the major example thereof – the mission entitled "Supreme" — does contain a final battle that’s nearly a carbon copy of the Belial fight in Diablo III. We’ll forgive Blizzard for drawing from the same well on that one if for nothing else than our sheer surprise at seeing the faithful recreation in an RTS game. Also, it’s a pretty feisty challenge on “Brutal” difficulty.

Since Heart of the Swarm centers on Kerrigan for most of the campaign, the star of the show gains power as you complete various missions and the bonus objectives sprinkled therein. You aren’t going to want to overlook these extra bits, as a fully-stacked Queen of Blades is quite the force to be reckoned with – one that’s able to singlehandedly drive the pain train across a number of baddies even on the game’s toughest difficulty setting.

Heart of the Swarm’s single-player campaign is more of a cakewalk compared to its predecessor, Wings of Liberty. To say Kerrigan is overpowered is a bit of an understatement. Combining her formidable powers with decent strategy and plenty of Hydralisks and Roaches took us to victory after victory without nary a sweat being broken.

To get even more meta, many of the campaign missions themselves gently introduce you to techniques that you’ll want to master — like micro control and macro strategy — if you expect to have any hope of beating your online peers.

It can be said that Blizzard’s only real reason for providing a campaign within its Starcraft series is to encourage tentative gamers to jump into the real reason for the game’s existence: online multiplayer. Heart of the Swarm’s poor plot and relatively easy gameplay does seem indicative of that fact, but it doesn’t mean that you won’t have plenty of fun laying waste to planet after planet in Kerrigan’s (not quite) epic tale of revenge.

Blizzard saves much of its designer polish for the raw game itself: Heart of the Swarm looks great, plays great, and comes with plenty of ways to extend your interest in the Starcraft universe as a whole once you’ve strolled your way through the game’s core campaign. We only hope that Blizzard hasn’t made its game too tight to tweak; a few extra new units, a new building or two, or even bringing some of the upgrade focus of the game’s single-player campaign into the multiplayer world could have really blown the Heart out of this Swarm. But we still love it so.