For me, Age of Empires on PC was my gateway in to the world of real-time strategy games. Then, just a couple of years later, Command & Conquer on the N64 almost did the exact opposite, making me recoil from the genre. It had not been the games themselves, but the method that I played them. Although I came to be more engrossed in consoles through the years, the RTS genre always held a special place in my heart from those early PC days, but I could never find one that captured what made the genre great on a console. So, after i needed a fix, it would end up leading to a rare PC purchase for me. Then, in 2009, fittingly enough the studio that made Age of Empires figured it with Halo Wars. It wasn't just marrying one of my personal favorite shooter series towards the genre, however they had determined a method to allow it to be control almost as well as on the PC. Ensemble Studios may now be gone, but Halo Wars lives on, and another stellar RTS developer in Creative Assembly has picked up the ball and run with the series in spectacular fashion in Halo Wars 2.
When last we had the crew from the UNSC Spirit of Fire, they'd immersed themselves in cryosleep, beaten, battered, with heavy losses after emerging victorious in a grueling struggle with both the Covenant and also the Flood. Now, 28 years later (up to date with the Halo timeline), the crew is woken up when the Spirit of fireside drifts within range of an Ark, and accumulates a UNSC distress signal coming from its surface. Commander Cutter quickly dispatches a group, and everyone is shocked as all they find is really a young AI named Isabel. She quickly gets the Spirit of fireside crew up to date on the last 28 years, and reveals a new enemy in The Banished, a Brute-led force so powerful they were in a position to splinter off and earn their freedom from the Covenant.
On the surface, Creative Assembly only has made minor tweaks to the basic gameplay from the original Halo Wars, but that in and of itself is an accomplishment. It's not easy to make an RTS game focus on consoles, but maintaining a lot of the same controls-like using the A-button to brush over and collect units, or double-tapping a bumper to pick all of the units-I never once felt hampered when commanding my UNSC or Banished armies both in campaign and multiplayer. One major addition was particularly handy, though.
A feature long available on PC RTS games-and noticeably absent in the original Halo Wars-was the opportunity to assign units to groups so you could bounce back and forth easily between teams fighting on multiple fronts. Now, you can create four separate groups around the D-Pad by holding a direction and a bumper, making army management a lot simpler. It might not be around the ten groups you may create on the keyboard, but it is a start, and can significantly help for your enjoyment from the game-in particular when the campaign creates several missions where fighting along multiple fronts is the necessary approach to take if you are to achieve victory on harder difficulties.
The other major addition is how much more in-depth Creative Assembly has gone using the upgrade trees and units you may make. Following a story, the Banished do not possess many familiar Covenant faces like the Jackals, because they wouldn't seem sensible (no spoilers!). A variety of different Elites, however, help complete myriad roles of units such as these that didn’t continue in the first game. And this works on both sides from the war, with an example being retrofitted Cyclops replacing the Cobra tanks-the UNSC's anti-vehicle units for that original Halo Wars.
One of Halo Wars 2's best features, however, is when the campaign not just fits perfectly into the Halo universe having a tremendous story, but shows you about these new mechanics and units as you play. You will experience them all as the narrative unfolds, prepping you before you take the plunge in to the multiplayer modes. Additionally, there are some surprising replayability with four different difficulties (all also available in 2-player co-op), high scores, and the optional and bonus objectives, that is the way you actually unlock skulls this time around instead of trying to find them tucked away in corners of the battlefield.
The campaign, however, can also be where one of the greatest flaws with the game crops up: its length. A complete playthrough on normal only clocks in at approximately 6-8 hours (based on if and how often you fail a mission), and just includes 12 missions-one which can be a 5-minute tutorial. In hindsight, this is three chapters shorter compared to original game. While the length doesn't detract from the great story, and it's nice the campaign would go to such lengths to teach you about all the units and lower the bar of entry for those potentially new to the RTS genre like mentioned above, I also got the sensation which i was never going to truly cut loose before the final mission.
That's because right until the finish, I felt the game was still being giving me tutorials and holding me for a bit too long, keeping certain units back behind a curtain-and when everything was finally at my disposal, the sport was over. Limiting players with certain scenarios and stipulations is nice some of the time in an RTS campaign, but doing it virtually every mission can get a little stifling, and prevented me from learning as much by myself. Really, experimentation in an RTS is sometimes part of the fun.
I was also surprised there were a couple of moments within the campaign where some precipitous frame rate drops occurred (particularly, many of them happened in Mission 7). There really weren't any other technical issues to talk of within my time using the game, and these could've been the sporadic pre-launch hiccup which could easily be patched on day one-but it's definitely something to keep an eye out for.
While playing an RTS game in single-player is all fine and dandy, when i alluded to before, it is only the appetizer before diving in to the multiplayer. Halo Wars 2 really shines here if you are any kind of an RTS fan. The multiplayer suite is greater than ever before, featuring new modes like Strongholds, where players receive infinite resources while racing to construct the largest army first while attempting to control the most bases. They with the most bases in the end-or the one which can eliminate their opponents-wins. It's a nice complement to Team Deathmatch and Domination if you're looking for some thing casual and fewer dedicated to the all-important resource management of other RTS modes.
The shining jewel, though, may be the brand new card-based Blitz mode. Yes, it's really a good way to include microtransactions to another game, but it is entirely unnecessary to spend any extra money. You can generate cards by playing the game's other modes (including campaign), and by leveling up your overall rank. There are also daily and weekly challenges across all modes that can reward you with special cards, too.
The idea in Blitz is that every player includes a 12-card deck, and may even customize 18 total decks when they want (three for each of the six starting commanders hanging around). Each commander has special cards only they can wield, and really then add unique elements to each deck. When you play Blitz, you draw a four-card hand and can only call units onto the field by playing cards, that you simply do by collecting resources as with any other RTS game. If playing against others, it requires on the Domination-like feel, with each player or team vying for charge of three different points. If you play against AI, Blitz becomes a wave-based survival mode.
I hate to admit it, because it seems like a lot of games are trying to add trading card game elements somehow now, but Blitz was probably my personal favorite from the multiplayer modes. Each match was fast (8-10 minutes), deck building is simple, and there is still the process element you'd expect from something featured within an RTS game. Knowing where and when to experience cards is essential. And, since you will invariably have a limited quantity of units, knowing when you should break someone removed from your main groups to go collect more resources is critical to being ready for the inevitable conflicts. My only complaint concerning the mode is it only features one map, however with no match ever playing the same-even when using the same deck-it's a real minor annoyance at worst. Also, it should be mentioned that I noticed no problems with Halo Wars 2 servers, however these were pre-launch conditions only populated by devs and some dozen fellow members of the press. When the game is released into the wild, it may be a completely different ballgame, so that's also something else to keep an eye out for.
As keen on the original Halo Wars and RTS titles generally, I almost couldn't be happier with Halo Wars 2. It continues the story of a number of my personal favorite characters in the expanded Halo universe inside a fitting and fun way, while giving me the competitive, strategic gameplay I expect and crave from a bet on this genre. The manufacturers should campaign would've given me a little more length and freedom in many scenarios, but other than that, Halo Wars once more shows the right way to do real-time strategy experiences on the console.
