I'm not a hardcore gamer by any stretch of the imagination. I don't tolerate insane levels of difficulty any better than the next guy. Starcraft II is actually a good challenge without being frustrating. It's more about figuring out what you have to do than actually doing it incredibly fast, or some such thing. Brutal makes it really feel like a strategy game, rather than a twitch-muscle-test.

Most of the missions take me roughly two full restarts, with two or three reloads. The restarts happen when massive raids I wasn't expecting maul my base while I'm away, or some such thing. Once I know they're coming, I'm ready for them next time. The level restarts are economy issues. SCII almost always gives you very limited resources, and you don't know whether you've managed them correctly until near the end of the level.

I think the most I've ever had to re-try is four or five times, on maybe two missions. Is that really so bad? Of course, I'm about to try the final mission, so we'll see how THAT sucker goes.

Oh, word of advice if you're about to do your replay: Tosh's missions (Breakout) is way more fun than Nova's mission. Make sure you pick him this time around if you went with Nova the first time, like I did.