When it comes to video games I love sequels. While it's difficult to capture the 'magic' of an experience from a film in a sequel, a video game sequel has the addition of mechanics to work with. Either they can improve or tighten the good mechanics of the original or completely rework them when they were bad on the original. So I generally like sequels, but they necessitate a comparison to the original. This can make them hard to review.
Halo Wars 2 is a sequel that is hard to review for this reason. I find that most of my comments are in relation to the first game. This is unavoidable perhaps, but it's unfair to those of you who didn't play the other one.
Which is a shame because the first Halo Wars was quite good. A rare RTS title that worked on consoles it did exactly what you would expect from it. It put you in command of the human and alien forces from the other Halo games. Like the main Halo games it had a campaign and a multiplayer which I played far more.
Before I get too much into the similarities and differences I want to talk about the elephant in the room; the cards. When this game was announced, long before Breweries and Games!, I was seriously hyped. I had been a big fan of the last one. When I saw that they were adding 'card-based strategy' though I avoided it like the plague. Were they seriously going to force a new card mechanic into an RTS? Thankfully, the answer was no.
When I played Halo Wars 2 for this review I found that the campaign wasn't asking me to play Magic The Gathering at all. As it turned out it's an entirely separate game mode called Blitz. They probably should have explained this in the marketing because Blitz is actually a fun control zones game. It's Halo Wars lite. No base building, one resource, and the units you can bring in are ones from a deck you build from card packs before a game. Yeah there's the micro transaction thing, but I got plenty of card packs from playing the campaign so all good.
Speaking of the campaign. It's very in the style of Halo. In fact it reminded me a great deal of the storytelling pace and style of the first game so that's good from a sequel way. Also like last time it has a mission in the center of the game that's WAY harder than any before or after. It includes what might be the best looking Halo cutscenes I've ever seen. I don't want to spoil anything plot-wise since the story gets going immediately but it starts with the Spirt of Fire, the ship from the last game, reaching the Ark from Halo 3.
The base mechanics are the same as last time, but there's a great deal more detail put into everything. For one the game emphasizes a Rock-Paper-Scissors approach to combat. This type counters that type which counters a third type and so on. There's more leaders to choose from, 6 at launch 16 with DLC, and they play a bit more differently than last time. Leader powers are a lot more important too. These can be upgraded and at least in the campaign are necessity for survival.
Your early game is also a lot more important than it used to be. Supplies work the same but now power is a resource rather than a key to a tech level. I'm not sure how I feel about that either. One the one hand two resources to balance is an additional, fun challenge. On the other, there still are tech level tiers to buy with power so what was the point in changing it. Interestingly, while build pads were premium last time the maps in Halo Wars 2 are sick with them.
Control-wise you can easily select all units, all on screen, create control groups, and jump between bases. Units tell when they need attention and it's all very intuitive. There's more going on in this game, but I think the controls are a bit tighter.
There problems of course. While there's more pads around the multiplayer maps, at least those I played, were less fun and had less stuff on them than last time. There's an almost need to min-max your resources and time ala Starcraft that I think doesn't work as well here. Units also seem to have far less voice lines. The camera doesn't let me zoom in on them nearly as much either.
The Good:
-Multiple options for selecting units
-You don't have to play the card game
The Bad:
-Mid game difficulty spike AGAIN
-The early game is too important, especially in multiplayer.
If I had known this game was this good AND didn't try to force the card thing into every game I probably would have gotten it at launch. It does real-time strategy on console right. That said, I wouldn't put this over any other RTS unless you liked the first one or are a fan of the series. If your on the fence go pick up the first one and get back to me.
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