Played until the third mission. The StarCraft vibes are definitely there but I think it's unfair to call this a StarCraft-like, since the best thing the game has going for it is that it's a non-standard RTS with a unique way of managing your forces. Without that I would have been much less interested in the game at the start, however the execution is where it gets a lot more messy, so even though the game is fresh enough to grab your interest at first that's not enough to compensate for the problems for long. It's an impressively competent game that on a base level has a lot of potential. It doesn't fail in any technical or fundamental way - every single problem comes from minor design decisions and balancing. You clearly know what you're doing on a technical level and would have had a real diamond on your hands if you had found a way to focus the gameplay experience. Since the game is close to release I think it's too late to change things in a major way but it's still valuable to know what was done well and what wasn't.
I'm not going to comment on the artstyle too much. I will admit that for the longest time I didn't pay any attention to the game because the graphics made it look like an unserious project. The assets clash with one another but I will say that I didn't have that much of a problem with it while playing. It's more of a problem when trying to attract new players. It gives the game a unique surreal quality but it creates the impression of a messy game.
Two missions into the game and the game is already as relentless and unforgiving as the late Brood War campaign. The StarCraft campaigns are still fresh in my mind and I don't think that even Omega (last Zerg mission) ever got that brutal with how absolutely inhumanly it treats the player. I would call that more unfair than difficult, because difficulty has some relation to skill. Here it's about replaying the mission enough times to learn and get around the ways in which it steamrolls you, which reminds me more of a challenge run than it does of any RTS campaign I've ever played. I've never played RTS games in multiplayer but I assume that this is what it probably feels like. Zero time to recuperate and think, just beat the opponent as fast as possible before he beats you. That might be fun for elite players, but it's baffling to see it in a single player campaign. A good campaign is typically a sequence of interesting scenarios that have some kind of strategic gimmick that has to be overcome.
It's fine if the game's target audience is limited to top RTS players, but considering that this is an unconventional RTS with its own rules, even the most hardcore players would need some introduction or tutorial to get the the hang of things. If not that then at least the first few missions should be more forgiving to give some breathing room to experiment and figure out how to play without enemies constantly breathing down your neck.
The two weakest aspects of the game are the sound effects and presentation. If we compare this to StarCraft that game would be diminished massively if it didn't have its amazing sound effects and story presentation. The sfx of Hypercoven are not punchy or memorable enough, sometimes there outright aren't any. This isn't just for atmosphere but it's also because in a genre like RTS sfx are one of the ways in which information is communicated to players extremely quickly. There's not even an alert when you're being attacked here. At least have a jingle when a mission is completed, Presentation is very important for user satisfaction, more so than difficulty or anything like that. For story, even a small improvement like displaying the mission briefing in a new window without any distractions and some sound effect would improve the emotional player experience a lot.
The game is ultimately too unfocused. From a technical perspective, amazing work, this is a big accomplishment. From an abstract perspective, it could have been amazing, but that's usually the hardest part .