Still fun and better than alot of games after all these years.
Its classic RTS game featuring three factions which are look and play differently, these are the Terrans - humans with a focus on heavy vehicles and mechs with some rather interesting buildings which can float, Zerg aliens which rely on quick attacks and superior numbers and Protoss, another alien faction that seem more powerful than the others but require more resources and time.
Graphically Star Craft looked good when it was released, and the 2d graphics have aged well, I tend to find 2d ages much better than 3D games and it seems to be vindicated. The story in the game is decent enough for the string of missions, this I find unusal in a real time strategy game, only the westwood titles (excluding generals and its expansion pack) have had good storylines, all other RTS games sadly do not or treat it as entirely secondary.
The story has three campaigns which focus on the various races, first of is humans discovering the zerg and getting mauled and regime change occuring, then its the zerg evovling and attacking the Protoss homeworld, and finally the protoss defeating the zerg.
The missions are fun to play, some are quite varied and can actually require tactics and strategy to succeed, especially missions were you travel through a complex infested with zerg or the latter Protoss missions.
The gameplay is offcourse the strongest part of star craft, i said its the typical RTS mould but it handled very well, the game is at a fast paced but not ridiculously so, and you can go for early wins without making the game feel cheap (this is compared to rushing in say, Command and Conquer 3) and have large scale battles.
Another good point to the gameplay is that the fighting feels more precise and easier to control, if you learn the shortcuts and play skillfully you can win with a smaller force, wereas in a game such as Dawn of war (and dont get me wrong DoW is quite fun) the fights devolve into little more than mob combat or with C+C3 the greatest tank spammer wins.
This i fel is the reason Star Craft is so popular still, its got a decent enough storyline, the music is very good - its not bombastic or deliberately 'epic' and reminiscient of Dune series of games, the sounds are good and will probably stick in your mind, the game is fun both in singleplayer but especially in multiplayer, it requires abit more skill than in most RTS games and has such a huge online community that you'll always find a new challenger.
The criticisms I can offer are, sometimes it feels like there are not enough units , the nuke seems weak, sometimes the replay function is a little screwy, the game has aged and so offcourse doesnt have quite the same graphical appeal as it did all those years ago and there have been developments over the years which impact postively on gameplay whcih star craft doesnt have, for example reverse move (c+c3) position damage say armour being weaker on the flank of a unit(c+c3), but trust me its still good.