Introduction
Today we are going to continue the Halo franchise, but before we can review Halo Infinite, we will need to play Halo Wars 2! Why? That is what we are going to find out in this review! If you have read the review of Halo Wars 1, you should know what kind of genre this game is, a real time strategy! Are you up for the challenge to fight a new foe, that is once again introduced, why can’t we stick with one or two kinds of enemies, why do the developers keep adding new enemies!?
What did I think before playing Halo Wars 2?
I was very interested in what Halo Wars 2, We had a lot of fun when playing Halo Wars 1! I had hoped that this game would build upon the success of Halo Wars 1. It is once again your goal to fight against numerous forces to win the day and give humanity hope once again. We did not have a lot of information thus we went to the Microsoft Store Page!
The Microsoft store page
https://www.xbox.com/nl-NL/games/store/halo-wars-2/9nblggh5wmkm
It has been a while since Halo Wars 1 released, this also gets factored in the events of Halo Wars 2 as it takes place after Halo 5. You will need to play this game before playing Halo Infinite, otherwise you will not understand what is going on! This time you have new buildings, new vehicles, and a lot of new units to use to devastate the banished forces. Who are the banished? I have no clue either, so, let’s go figure that out!
Rating
I rate Halo wars 2 with a 7.2 before playing.
Another new enemy joins the fray, we have the covenant, the Flood, the Prometheans, and all those have different factions and what not! The developers thought, we have all this lore established for these enemies, let us just randomly make a new enemy!
Story
The story of Halo Wars 2 takes place a lot of years after Halo Wars 1, not everyone made the journey, though. Someone sacrificed himself when facing the Covenant and Flood so long ago, Serina the ship’s A.I. also did not make it. However, all the survivors wake up from cryo sleep to find themselves in the line of fire against a new foe that apparently is hunting down humans. The survivors include the Red Team of Spartans that investigate the planet that they have arrived at!
Rating
I rate the story of Halo Wars 2 with a 6.3.
I admired how Halo Wars 1 was separate from the main story, filling you with lore while facing the Covenant and the Flood. However now another new enemy has entered the fray and this game is now required to play before playing Halo Infinite!
Gameplay
Halo Wars 2 does build upon the formula of Halo Wars 1. The cycle is very simple, you will take control of a small army while on a mission. You build a base in most of the missions, and then you will need to collect power and supplies. If you do not have the power or supplies, the building will not work. In most of the missions, you can build multiple bases, which means you need to upgrade power reactors or supply pads!
There are quite some new units in this game, but you are going to need a lot of them, as most of them have been seriously nerfed. Mostly in the health department, which is most notably in the legendary mode of the campaign. Your units will break if you sneeze on them, thus you will need a boatload of them!
A lot of the missions have new elements, which you will encounter in the story. You will even fight bosses, defeat huge bases and a lot more! Are you up to the task of amassing an army against, once again, new enemies? The Banished are powerful and beat up Spartans like they are dummies. Which makes no sense at all! I wish the Flood was here instead of a new enemy, or even the Covenant!
Rating
I rate the gameplay of Halo Wars 2 with an 8.2
While the gameplay is fun, a lot of it does not even make sense, how big is that ship? How can they have that many marines? They have not been to a civilized planet for a long time. I thought the flood wiped out a lot of them in the previous Halo Wars. Maybe they breed them in breeding chambers, or maybe they just respawn, who knows!
Sound and Graphics
Graphics
The graphics of Halo Wars 2 are a serious upgrade compared to the last game, this time around you will see super epic cut scenes where the Spartans get into frantic melee combat! They will try to show you who the banished are capable off when facing Spartans. If you do not play this game before Halo Infinite, you are not going to understand a single thing of what is going on!
Sound
The soundtracks in the cutscenes are great, as is the voice acting! Especially for the red team of Spartans! While I did enjoy the gameplay, I enjoyed the Halo Wars 2 cutscenes the most, they were great to see!
Rating
I rate the sound and graphics of Halo Wars 2 with a 9.2.
This is… Where the game truly shines!
What did I think after playing Halo Wars 2?
My wife had a lot of fun when watching me play Halo Wars 1, thus we started playing Halo Wars 2 together. Since this is a single-player game, we decided to take turns! The new mechanics that were added gave more complexity to the base building, but the loss of the Flood enemies was quite a bummer. The covenant even barely makes an entrance, as they get slaughtered by the Banished for some reason.
The story is what took us by surprise the most! We enjoyed the ride, there were some epic cutscenes! And each mission had secret skulls to collect, side quests to complete and a lot more! The Spartans are now prominent in the main role! I hope in a future Halo game, they meet the Master Chief!
Rating
I rate Halo Wars 2 with an 8.7 after playing!
I intend to make a movie video of Halo Wars 2 just as I did with Halo Wars 1!
What are my personal thoughts about Halo 3?
I did like a lot of the gameplay elements in Halo Wars 2, one of the great gameplay elements is that you can scour the map for much-needed resources, make sure to bring land based units to pick the resources up though!
Rating
My personal rating of Halo Wars 2 is an 8.6
While story wise, I wish it was more linked to other Halo games or just more lore based, it is now needed before playing Halo Infinite! However, the gameplay is superb compared to the previous Halo Wars!
Last Words
Pros
- Play as the Red team of Spartans and unleash their special abilities!
- Follow the story of Halo Wars 2 as they discover the new Banished threat!
- Gather new resources to build more complex bases compared to Halo Wars 1!
- There are new buildings to build for your base, along with new troops and vehicles!
- Fight bosses with your units but be prepared to get obliterated
- Find secrets in each missions to unlock new skulls!
Cons
- Halo Wars 2 has frail units which means low health, you will need to keep rebuilding your forces
- Halo Wars 2 has a quite confusing story as to how they can still have such a huge fighting force
- The Flood and Covenant no longer play a major role in this game.
- There are some bugs in the game but most of them can be overlooked as rebooting the game fixes it.
One of the bugs that I mentioned in the con list is an annoying one though, it will seem as if your save data is deleted. Whatever you do, do not play a new mission but just reboot the game, and it is fixed!
Final Rating
7.9
Let me know what you think of Halo Wars 2 in the comments!
I hope you enjoyed reading this review, I hope to see you in the next review!
If you liked reading this review, maybe you would like to share this review with your friends!
Interesting RTS
Looks like a fun game, that movie video can look great
I am not good at RTS games but I love Halo. Halo Infinite was awesome. Thank you for the review.
I´m not sure about this one. I´m not a halo fan so i´d rather play starcarft or command an conquer
There are a lot of RTS games out there!
i agree cutscenes part.
Seems Ok
cool game
Good review! This seems to be a good RTS game.
It all depends on your taste!
Not bad
I stopped playing RTS games, but it looks kinda good.
I hope you get into RTS games again someday!
So awesome! Good old fashion RTS games have been in short supply nowadays.
While this game is fun and good, I did think Halo Wars 1 is better!
very nice game choice
i like it
Rts + Halo is a very daring idea, but it looks like it had a mediocre execution.
Halo Wars 1 was executed much better!
as a player of the 1st game. i strangely don’t have the morale to play this game for some reason :I
I can understand that!
I love the RTS genre but, since I have never been a console gamer and Halo was an Xbox exclusive for many years, I’ve never played any of the Halo games. By the time they became available on PC, the franchise was so expanded that just getting into it was simply intimidating. Additionally, I became burnt out on FPS or TPS games long before Halo debuted and so I had very little interest in or knowledge of the franchise.
As for Halo Wars 2, based on this review it sounds like a rather poor RTS game. Actual strategy seems lacking in favor of simple mass spamming tactics given the apparent, innate, weakness of the Red team of Spartans. This is simply sloppy and uninteresting game design. Good balancing in a RTS game is very difficult to achieve and has been the downfall of myriad games produced in the genre by those unwilling, or unable, to put in the requisite development and balancing needed to achieve an outstanding entry in the genre. This game appears lacking in design; relying mostly on the lore of the shooter games of the franchise. Despite the rating, I doubt I’ll pick it up.
Yes, you are correct, whereas in Halo Wars 1 you would need actual strategy and could use some units to keep the enemies busy while flanking them with other units was amazing! In Halo Wars 2, if you try this, your units go bye bye before you even order the other units, thus spamming is the best way to go!
Not for me but sounds great for RTS lovers
not my type of RTS, but glad you like it 😀
This sounds like a fun game, although I’m not always a fan of having to play side games in order to understand the plot of a mainline entry game. Is this game available on Steam as well like Halo Infinite, or is it only available on the Microsoft Store?
I believe it is only available on the Microsoft Store, where a part 1 is on Steam. You can also play it on game pass, but it will not have any DLC!