Come at the Queen of Blades, you best not miss.

After escaping Raynor's facility - and failing to reunite with him - Kerrigan's new-old mission is collecting strength for a revenge run against Arcturus Mengsk (yes, the same target she had back in 1998). The campaign narrative has offered a little more insight into the internal organization of the Zerg hive, which, wow, is incredibly dull. The Xel'Naga artifact from Wings of Liberty has barely been mentioned so far -- I'm hoping Heart of the Swarm doesn't push this plot point off for another three years. Kerrigan's personal journey is of more interest, but the dialog and scene scripting is still very underwhelming. Some of these lines are so terrible, it should be a crime to give them to as good an actress as Tricia.

The campaign's gameplay is, ... better, with a caveat. As per StarCraft standard, there's a great variety of mission objectives and mechanical twists, including the quirky, micro-sized unit-upgrade missions -- which are themselves part of Heart of the Swarm's collection of new virtual-dashboard content (along with Kerrigan upgrades and some story bits). The problem with this variety is that, so far, none of the missions have been even remotely challenging. Granted, I'm "only" on Normal difficulty, and I'm still in the campaign's early days, but so far the theme of the Zerg missions seems to be centered around the game's new "Select your entire fucking army at once" button. I really wish the story would unlock more units from the beginning, because right now I can't even force mechanical complexity into the missions.

I'm sure that this situation will improve before too much longer, but at the moment, considering the hours I've already spent in the campaign, I'm feeling pretty lukewarm toward it.

Progress: Finished Char (6 missions complete).