Starcraft: Brood Wars is hard

I wanted to finish the old game before buying the new. I’ve completed all 30 missions from the first game and 22 of 26 from the new, but they’re getting progressively longer and harder to beat. I’m averaging three hours a mission in the expansion pack. The one I’m on now (Drawing of the Web) is brutal…no air units, constant Protoss attacks complete with mind controlling dark archons taking my best units, etc. Ugh.

I’m stuck playing a 12 year old game because I want to do all the plot missions before doing the new game. I’m almost to the point of using cheat codes, and I never use cheat codes.

You haven’t seen the worst, wait until you get to the last zerg mission of the game.

Use the codes. It’ll still feel cool watching everything unfold, and then you can catch up.

I cheated like crazy through Brood War.

Use the cheat codes… keeping it on the straight and narrow was worth it for bragging right 10 years ago but now there’s no justification to spend 3 hours on a BroodWar level when you could be spending them playing Starcraft II.

Power overwhelming!

I beat Brood Wars when it came out. I don’t recall any difficulty.

Then I played it again about 5-6 years ago and it really kicked my ass. It was frustrating thinking about how my mad skillz had devolved. I did finally beat it, though.

At the very least, I used the strategy guide that came in the Battle Chest; I might have used cheat codes as well. IMO, if you’re not enjoying yourself, cheat away!

Yep, those brutally difficult Zerg missions kept me from finishing the game way back when I could stay up until 2am and not suffer the consequenses.

If all you care about is the story, you can watch it here.

I seem to recall that since Brood War’s release, there have been patches that have updated the AI and changed some of the costs of things. Could that have made the expansion harder than it was for those who played it at release?

I did the same thing you’re doing, played the entire campaign prior to starting on the sequel.

IMO the missions in the original two games are easier than those in the sequel (on Brutal), but perhaps that’s because they’re more macro orientated while the sequel is about micro (at least the ones I’ve played so far).

Just ensure you produce units all the time, that you find the easy expansion (there’s always one or two free plus the nearest enemy base is usually easy) and don’t launch any attacks until you have all the upgrades. Don’t fall into the trap of turtling, you need lots and lots of mobile units (for the late Zerg campaign mass Hydralisks with a few Ultralisks will win every mission). The late Protoss mission caused me more problems than the final Zerg mission because it’s entirely micro.

You should be producing units from 4-5 hatcheries, depending on mission.

The last mission is really easy so long as you don’t split your forces.

No mission should be taking more than 45 minutes, an hour at the most. That’s assuming you play on the highest speed, trust me, it makes that early collection phase move by so much faster. You don’t need anything more than attack move to win these mission, superior forces will do it.

EDIT: Checked the mission, the usual combination and strat will do it. Build up your first base, make sure you keep Overlords at the entrances for detection and once comfy expand to the high ground attached to your base, two very easy expansions with a single point of entry. You will need Overlords at those entrances too. For units start with Hydralisks and Zerglings then drop the Zerglings for Ultralisks once you have them. From there, mass and win.

My natural style of play is turtling, honestly. Starcraft is designed so that you have to expand or die, but I do so cautiously and only when necessary (usually when resources run out). I build up a base, reach the point where I can hold off enemy attacks and then start chipping away until I can overwhelm the AI with my unit of choice. For the Zerg I’ve always stuck with mass produced Guardians, with Mutalisks and Hydralisks supporting where necessary. This mission has no air power though, so I just have masses of Hydralisks. I tried expanding to the high ground this morning before work, but they caught me on the hop, mind controlled my Queen and Overlord and steamrolled the new base.

I’ll try it again tonight, but it may come to cheat codes. I like the game, and it’s satisfying to beat these missions when I finally win, but I want the new one. Hopefully they’ve at least fixed the unit pathfinding in the last 12 years (right?).

Sort of :)

Well, if you don’t count Ultralisks…

I broke down and used cheat codes to finish that mission. The one after was even worse - even with unlimited resources and instant construction I was getting shredded by the Terran/Zerg combined forces, so I went all out and entered the God mode cheat. Oh well, at least I finished the bonus mission without any cheats.

Now for Starcraft 2…

Blizzard is releasing Starcraft Remastered this summer and making the original Starcraft free. The remaster will have revamped graphics audio, and additional scenes in the story, I think.

I just finished without cheats quite easily a minute ago. Playing multiplayer forged me. When I was a kid, I could’t finish the last zerg missions without cheat.

Just finished this mission, and it was hard. The first time I played, I realized that there wasn’t air units. So I guess it’s all about hydralisk. And there are two directions that enemy can come to attack. So I wasted some time to upgrade quickly and setup the 2nd base. Enemy attacked my second base south and I had to quit.

The 2nd time I played, I put a zergling to each direction to give me warnings. Then I group all forces to defend. Then I moved the defense on the south side west so it can also protect the 2nd base before I build it. With at least 30 hydralisk in there, the south west defense network attracted enemy attack and protected the 2nd base. Laster I got enough hydralisk in the north side and push that direction to protect the 3rd base as well as the main base. After that, it was easy to reach the first 3 beacons.

Then, get the south defense army to attack across the bridge, and take another base. I even built the 5th base but there is actually no point. Just bring Duran to the last two beacons and finish it. I didn’t see the result screen. There seems to be a bug.

BTW, I selected the slower and spent more than 2 hours to finish this mission.