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Halo Wars 2 Review

If there was ever a time to take a step back and not go in guns blazing, now would be the time

If you read my preview for Halo Wars 2, you’d know that Halo Wars was one of my favourite games of last generation. While I’m not an overly big fan of RTS games, Halo Wars just hooked me in and kept me hooked. It offered a stripped back and simplified design so as not to be overly complicated or daunting, and it had a great story to boot. Ever since then I have been eagerly waiting for a sequel and finally it is upon us. I even bought an Xbox One just so I could get my hands on Halo Wars 2, and fortunately the seven-year wait and purchase of a new console was more than worth it.

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Halo Wars 2 is set 28 years after the events of the original Halo Wars and some time after the events of Halo 3. The Spirit of Fire and her crew find themselves at The Ark as they come out of a slip-space warp, which is especially strange seeing as the Spirit of Fire’s FTL core (which allows slip-space warping) was destroyed to stop the Covenant from using the Forerunner Fleet at the end of the first Halo Wars. Obviously, since we return to the Spirit of Fire we also see the return of characters like Captain James Cutter and Professor Ellen Anders. It’s immediately apparent that something isn’t right with The Ark, and this is where you are promptly introduced to Isabel. Isabel is an interesting character as she is an AI, but she’s been designed to have very human-like behavior. From the way she moves to her mannerisms, she’s someone who you can tell has seen some things in her short time spent commissioned as an AI for the UNSC. It is Isabel who informs the crew of a threat who becomes Halo Wars 2’s main antagonist: Artiox. Atriox is a vile Brute who is the only one of his kind to ever defy the Covenant and survive. He leads the Banished, who are essentially ex-members of the Covenant who have been cast into exile (hence the name) and kept away from The Great Journey. The Great Journey (which the Covenant believe is triggered by activating one of Halo’s infamous rings) is a holy event believed by the Covenant to deliver a form of ultimate ascension, although in actuality activating a ring would annihilate all sentient life in the universe. The Great Journey is at the pinnacle of Covenant faith, so the Banished are essentially religious and social pariahs, and they’re none too happy about it. The menacing and merciless Atriox is a brilliantly executed character; and his brute strength and cruel nature belies a cunning and intelligence that make him a formidable adversary.

Halo Wars 2’s story immediately kicks in, but isn’t hard to follow. The thrust of the campaign involves you uncovering Atriox’s nefarious plans and ultimately putting a stop to them, but there are tangents and intricacies which make the journey interesting. It’s a story with a classic Halo feel that is both grand in scale and well executed, slowly building the story crescendo until reaching a satisfying climax.

The beauty of the approach that Ensemble took with the original and Creative Assembly have also taken with the sequel is that cutscenes are excellently used to deliver information imperative to the story and develop the plot. Visually speaking, cutscenes and action sequences look phenomenal, with pre-rendering coming leaps and bounds since 2009. The art style is also executed very well as it pays homage to Halo’s roots, which is something I respect. Detailing in things like character models and the background/foreground really just helps you become absorbed in what you are viewing. Focusing on story development wholly during cutscenes allows focus on either the story or the action, and the two don’t become muddled.

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Never kick the hornets nest…

The campaign consists of 12 missions which go for about 25 minutes each (if par time is anything to go by), but they can go for longer, in fact my entire play through took about nine hours.

Mechanically speaking, Halo Wars 2 is incredible, maintaining the same simple design as its predecessor but still managing to have enough depth to keep it compelling. Controls are quick and snappy, which allow for ease of access when selecting and commanding units. Cycling through every base, quickly reaching units under fire and many other things take a matter of moments. You can definitely see how the controls are made with a gamepad (controller) in mind.

Levels are varied and at some points touch genres (like tower defence) which you might not expect. All in all it’s just good fun, and to be honest I haven’t enjoyed myself like this in a game for a while.

The campaign is not without some technical hiccups and performance issues that do get in the way of a good time. While for the most part it runs smoothly, some cutscenes feature quite drastic drops in framerate. It’s lucky that these cutscenes are quite awesome (particularly with 4K and HDR enabled) but it was nonetheless an annoyingly persistent issue. In-game scripted sequences can also be a little jarring with their sudden shift in quality, suffering from some pervasive anti-aliasing issues that detract from what are quite beautifully detailed character models and environments. The game also has some bugs like bases being stuck in the construction phase, and enemy health bars and other UI features being stuck on screen when they shouldn’t be, but despite these issues performance as a whole is fairly solid.

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One of my favourite things about the original Halo Wars and Halo Wars 2 was the ability to play skirmish games with AI. As someone who shies away from online adversarial situations and likes to avoid people in general, it’s brilliant. There are four game types for you to choose from, including the very interesting Blitz mode, which I’ll discuss later. Multiplayer plays very similar to how it did in the original where you can choose to do 1v1, 2v2 or 3v3 and select maps which are better tailored to the amount of people in the game. Deployable units are very well balanced in the sense that unit strengths are like scissors, paper, rock: infantry beats air, air beat vehicles, vehicles beat infantry. Resources and power are as essential as each other, and need to be carefully managed. Don’t expect to build heaps of generators and have a ridiculous amount of power either, each generator is more expensive to build than the last which balances the whole thing out. Uber units, which have been renamed Ultimate units, are nowhere near as overkill as they were in the original. Scarabs are quite easy to take down and the new human Ultimate unit, the Condor, is like a Pelican but if it took steroids for twelve months and called itself Zyzz.

If you are someone who doesn’t have the patience for the standard multiplayer game, then you will love Blitz. In my preview of Halo Wars 2 I talk about how Blitz is like The Witcher 3’s Gwent except you can control the units after you place the card. Blitz can be played with as many people as a regular multiplayer match can be, however it’s quite different. You are given a maximum of 15 minutes to play what’s essentially Domination: control multiple points and earn tickets, once your tickets reach 200 you win the game. Instead of building a base you have a blanket resource simply called energy that constantly goes up and can be used to spawn units. Energy supply drops will also appear at random intervals across the battlefield. Picking these up will not only provide an immediate gain, but will also increase the rate at which you earn energy, so it’s wise to hunt down these drops when they come. Every unit is displayed at the bottom of the screen via cards and you can choose the unit and spend energy to spawn the unit either inside your homebase or anywhere on the battlefield (doing the latter will spawn unit with Deployment Sickness which gives them half health and strength for 8 seconds).

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Random = probably work against me

Blitz has quite a fast pace to it, and it’s necessary to think and act on-the-fly and manage your units and tactics effectively. One must think about both capturing points and defending them without spreading your force too thinly, and sometimes a distraction can be just as good in the long run as an all-out offensive.

Selecting and applying your cards can be a bit annoying as it seems imprecise in the way you cycle through them (there are five in your hand at a time that you can deploy). This means it can take a little too long and in a fast-paced game mode this can prove detrimental. However the greatest issue with Blitz will most certainly prove to be its shady microtransactions. When playing Halo Wars 2 you earn Blitz Packs which drop various cards for you to customise your deck. Having a good deck in Blitz is absolutely essential for success, and the game actually rates the strength and playability of your deck quite well. However, if you don’t feel like actually playing the game you can spend anywhere between 5-150 AUD to simply buy these packs and have instant rewards. Worse than this, if you collect enough multiples of the same card, that card/unit levels up and becomes more useful. Simply put, people who are willing to spend the money can quite easily have higher level cards compared to people who don’t. This is undeniably a pay-to-win situation, and cheapens the whole sense of progression. The defense given in interviews when this issue was highlighted was that only players of similar deck rating will be placed together in multiplayer (so the rich people can duke it out and leave the poor people to their own devices), however this means nothing if the player base is not large enough. It’s a real pity given how fun and innovative Blitz is, and it’s a blight on the hallowed Halo name.

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Final Thoughts

Halo Wars 2 is an excellent sequel to the original best-selling console RTS. With its grand story, solid visuals, great art style and fantastic level design, Halo Wars 2 manages to be the best Halo game yet (despite the fact it’s not a mainline Halo). As a compliment to the excellent campaign, multiplayer is fun and balanced and will give the game more or less infinite replayability. Unfortunately, while Blitz is a triumph in creativity and innovation in the age-old RTS genre, the deplorable implementation of microtransactions create a pay-to-win economy that sullies the experience. All things considered I would highly recommend picking this title up whether you are on Xbox One or Windows 10. It advances the Halo lore for Halo fans but is still completely accessible to newcomers. It builds on the strength of its predecessor and the Halo universe in general and delivers one of Microsoft’s finest exclusives to date.

Reviewed on Xbox One S

Player population on pre-release servers was too low to ascertain the quality of online matches. The review will be updated in due course once servers have been properly tested.

Halo Wars 2 Review
Strategically Deploy An Excellent Exclusive
Halo Wars 2 brilliantly captures what was great about the original, while also adding more depth and variety to the playing field. This is definitely a game for both newcomers and veterans alike.
The Good
Good visuals and art style
Fantastic level design
Great story
The Bad
Pay-to-win microtransactions
Blitz cards are a bit of a hassle to manage in-game
Framerate, anti-aliasing and UI issues
8.5
Get Around It
  • Creative Assembly / 343 Industries
  • Microsoft Studios
  • Xbox One / PC
  • February 21, 2017

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.
Halo Wars 2 Review
Strategically Deploy An Excellent Exclusive
Halo Wars 2 brilliantly captures what was great about the original, while also adding more depth and variety to the playing field. This is definitely a game for both newcomers and veterans alike.
The Good
Good visuals and art style
Fantastic level design
Great story
The Bad
Pay-to-win microtransactions
Blitz cards are a bit of a hassle to manage in-game
Framerate, anti-aliasing and UI issues
8.5
Get Around It
Written By Jordan Garcia

Jordan lives and breathes Dark Souls, even though his favourite game is Bloodborne. He takes pride in bashing his face on walls and praising the sun. Hailing from the land of tacos, he is the token minority for WellPlayed.

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