It is amazing how well Age of Empires 2 aged. My regular gaming crew likes RTS sometimes, usually AoE2. So, we decided to try out some Brood War, since it was the decidedly superior RTS 20 years ago. Could barely finish the game! All the comforts they’ve added to AoE2 over time (bigger viewport and better graphics mostly) and the grouping/pathfinding made us spoiled.
I played a ton of StarCraft growing up and it definitely has a high rank in the pantheon of games, but I’ve been converted to AoE2 I guess. Wololo.
Blame the pro players! When SC Remastered (released 2016) was under development, they specifically protested changing literally any single thing impacting the gameplay, including resolution (the 16:9 aspect ratio can be toggled back to 4:3). They were all rightfully scared of the remaster having very little support moving forward, and getting stuck with new bugs that upset 18 years of accumulated "balance" (as in: everyone figured out how to play around the existing bugs and the game converged on a ~50% winrate in all 6 matchups).
I think it was the right call, considering (unlike the AoE series) that SC has always had very asymmetric factions and matchups. It's very easy to make a trivial "fix" and wreck that balance, leaving a significant part of the pro player community with no tournament wins = no income.
I played a ton of StarCraft growing up and it definitely has a high rank in the pantheon of games, but I’ve been converted to AoE2 I guess. Wololo.