Starcraft 2 Protoss

There are a lot of changes in starcraft 2 from the original, but most of them have to do with the game engine itself. Sure, there are some changes to the races and units and how everything fits together, but the neat thing is that Blizz managed to completely overhaul an entire game without making it a different game. Which is kind of a hard trick to pull off. Usually when game makers do sequels they fail because the sequel is just not as good a game than the original or is so different it's nothing like the first game, or they fail because the new game is too much like the first game so that not enough has changed to keep it interesting. The starcraft 2 protoss race is a good example of just enough different while remaining mostly the same.

The best way of looking at the way starcraft 2 works is to start with the units themselves. The zealot is pretty different than in the original but the function is the almost exactly the same. The zealot, like all protoss units is powerful by itself. In a straight up fight the zealot can take out 3 to 5 marines or zerglings all by itself, but it's slower than either. As a result the zealot makes a great meat shield for any stage of the game, as well as a good unit for harassment of economies and other functions. And you'll probably end up using them a lot. You will find that in starcraft 2 you'll be in far more need of gas than minerals and you can just blow those extra minerals on more zealots since they are so useful in many different ways.

The sentry is another great protoss unit. They do the same amount of damage as a marine, but include three special abilities tat make any protoss task force much more effective. The force field ability does just what it sounds like. It puts up a block that enemy units cannot penetrate. It doesn't last forever, but it has cool uses like cutting an enemy force in half or blocking them from getting away or even entering battle. The sentry ability reduces incoming ranged damage to your units. They also have hallucination, but that one doesn't get used as much. Hallucination creates a unit that doesn't really exist. You can hallucinate a Colossus to fool your opponent into thinking you are making them even if you haven't.

Stalkers are great as well. They can hit both ground and air units and hit hard. When you add in the blink ability it allows them to move up cliffs in order to escape or attack from flanking positions. Blink also allows you to get away from a zergling rush or siege tank fire into a much more favorable position - the one that doesn't get you killed and let's you wreak havoc on the enemy.

And that's just three of the protoss units in starcraft 2. But they give you a good flavor for the highly technological and very alien feel of the protoss from the original game. In other words, they fell the same, but you play them differently than before. In that way, they are just as good as the original, just in a new game that's even better than the original.