I’m currently in a bit of a gaming limbo where I’m killing time until the release of New World’s next patch and Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. Lacking any clear direction, I decided to bust out Ol’ Reliable: StarCraft II co-op missions.

I’ve played a lot of co-op over the years, so I’m at the point where I’m struggling to find ways to keep it fresh. I decided to turn to the prestige system, wherein one resets a commander to level one in exchange for a talent you can equip that changes their playstyle in some way. I knew I hadn’t done much with prestige, but I was surprised to realize Raynor was the only commander I’d prestiged to date, having unlocked all three of his talents and regularly using two of them (first and third).

While I appreciate the prestige system is meant to be a time sink, I always felt it was an error to make you unlock prestige talents in a specific order. To me the chief appeal of prestige talents is to improve characters you didn’t otherwise enjoy, or at least weren’t your favourites. I have no interest in prestiging Nova; she’s perfect the way she is. But I also don’t want to relevel a character I don’t much like two or three times just to get a prestige that might appeal to me.

That said, I looked over the options and found a few commanders who fell into the sweet spot of being commanders I enjoyed playing enough that I didn’t hate releveling them, and which I still felt had room to be improved by prestige talents. These were Alarak, Karax, Han and Horner, and Zagara.

Karax took some willpower. My goal was to get his second talent, Templar Apparent, which removes his ability to produce turrets but makes his combat units cost less than they normally would instead of more. Karax has many of my favourite Protoss units, but their massively inflated cost made it difficult to use them viably.

The trouble is low level Karax suuuuucks. He’s probably the most dependent on leveling upgrades of any commander, and even at max level he’s a candidate for the weakest commander, assuming you’re not on a defensive map or using prestige talents. There’s little risk of losing co-op matches these days, but being totally dependent on your ally carrying you isn’t a great feeling.

It was worth it, though. Templar Apparent makes him a much stronger and, more importantly, more fun commander. It’s a very Protossy feeling army: tanky and hard-hitting.

Alarak’s first talent, Artificer of Souls, buffs his mechanical units, which was already my preferred playstyle for him, so it’s pretty much just a direct buff for me. Only reason it took me this long to unlock is because I had fallen out of the habit of playing Alarak, and he’s one of the hardest commanders to play, so it was intimidating to pick him up again.

Long term, I would like to unlock his third prestige as well. It lets him build an army normally, instead of it only being a temporary calldown. I’m not as horny for the Deathfleet as most fans seem to be, but it would be nice to have the option to go that way. It would also be good to have an army for him that isn’t quite so dependent on essential upgrades — I love my Wrathwalkers, but having to upgrade them so they can hit air is a pain. Don’t see myself getting around to unlocking prestige three any time soon, though.

So far my biggest disappointment has been Zagara. Her first prestige talent removes her as a hero unit but allows you to more quickly produce even bigger swarms of lings and scourge. A beefy hero unit always felt like a bit of an odd fit for a commander focused on swarms of disposable trash units, and certainly prestige one seems to be the only version of Zagara I seem to group with these days.

But now that I’ve tried it, I don’t think I like it. Without Zagara’s hero unit to micro, there isn’t really anything to do but build a couple macro hatches and hold down the Z key for twenty minutes. It’s boring.

I may at some point give her second prestige a try. It buffs her aberrations and corruptors, which I always thought were underrated units anyway.

I was also hoping for more from Han and Horner’s second prestige talent, which was my goal for them. It reduces the vespene cost and charge cooldown for summoning Horner’s air units in exchange for reducing the number of galleons you can produce.

I was always a bit disappointed that H&H play more like a Mira Han commander with occasional cameos by Horner’s troops, so doubling down on Matt’s air fleet appeals to me, but I don’t think the talent goes far enough. Even with the cost reduction, his units are still crazy expensive. I think it should have been 30% reduced vespene cost rather than 20. One time my partner DCed and I got four bases worth of gas income, and I still felt starved for it until mid-late game.

Also, as much as it makes sense to reduce your galleons as a way of shifting away from Mira’s units, the fact remains galleons are H&H’s best combat unit, even without taking into account their unit production capabilities, so losing them stings.

I’m going to keep using the talent, as it still brings me closer to the playstyle I want from H&H, but I was hoping for more.

I’d be lying if I said I was still having as much fun with co-op now as I did when it was new, but the fact it still holds my attention at all after the truly ungodly amount of time I’ve put into it is high praise in and of itself. Especially when you consider it’s actually a relatively small amount of content.

One thing about playing anything this long is that even the smallest flaws start to really wear on your nerves. I wish more gamers understood this — that there’s a difference between “this game has severe problems” and “this game has minor problems, but I’ve played it for 2,000 hours so they seem big to me.” The latter is where I’m at with SC2 co-op.

For me the biggest issue is the power creep. This is a comfort game for me, and I don’t need it to be super hard, but most matches are just absolute facerolls these days, even on brutal. Mutations aren’t a great solution since most are annoying or only beatable by certain commanders, on top of being super hard generally.

Pain.

You can really see the design philosophy shifted a few times over co-op’s life. Early on they clearly wanted each commander to have weaknesses as well as strengths and rely on each other for success. See Karax’s inflated unit costs, or Alarak’s struggles against air units.

But then around Nova, they stopped giving commanders clear weaknesses. Nova’s my favourite commander, but she wasn’t healthy for the game. She should have had an Achilles heel of some kind, even if she remained strong in most areas. From that point on, commander design became about making them generalists without any flaws.

And then starting with Tychus, they just abandoned all semblance of balance or sanity. They started making commanders not just crazy strong, but strong in a way that leaves their partners often unable contribute meaningfully. It’s like they forgot it’s a co-operative game mode and designed each commander to be able to solo the map. Stetmann is a minor exception, being very strong but not game-breaking the way the other later commanders are.

Tychus and Mengsk are the worst offenders for me. Not just broken in terms of power level, but potentially in very uninteractive ways.

With Mengsk it depends on the build. Most are fun to play alongside, but a lot of people play him by massing earthsplitter ordinance and just wiping the entire map with artillery barrages, without even leaving their base. When you’re paired with one of these players, there’s little to do but sit and watch.

Tychus is even worse. His crew of hero units are so strong, and so easy to use, that every Tychus player can effortlessly solo any co-op map. Most Tychus players even seem to go out of their way to prevent you from contributing in any meaningful way. They’ll make sure to fight in front of your mines if you’re H&H or Abathur. They’ll teleport in front of every attack wave, wiping it before you get a chance to fight.

It’s gotten so bad I’ve started doing something I once would have considered unthinkable: I’m immediately leaving games if I get pared with a Tychus or a Mengsk with the earthsplitter talent. It feels like a bit of a dick move, but I’ve got better things to do than sit on my hands while my partner solos the map, and based on the way they play, I think most of these players would also prefer not to have a partner.

It’s funny how Tychus managed to be the worst part of both the story and co-op mode.

These problems aside, though, there’s a reason I’ve put so much time into co-op, and even if it’s lost some of its lustre these days, I’m glad it’s always there for me when I need to kill some time.