A few people over at the halo wars subreddit asked me to post this here so that some devs may see this
I’m not going to talk about bugs or the overall glitch related problems with the game as those should be fixed for the main release
So for anyone wondering, I’ve played Halo Wars on a regular basis since it’s beta. I’ve played over 6000 games over the 7 years, finished in the top 3 of each standard leaderboard (before resets), and was a HW league member for the first two years of the game. I am also an avid supporter of the first game and love the series very much.
The Good:
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HW2 is extremely balanced. All of the units in the game are able to do something worth while and no unit or leader is a build and win. I should also point out that this is not easily done, so props to Creative Assembly. Rarely are games balanced properly, but from my experience, every unit has an effective counter and each strategy has a counter as well.
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The rock-paper-scissors actually means something now. Each unit type actually beats one and looses to another. The first halo wars was dominated by vehicles as infantry was too weak and air was easily defeated with wolverines. I will say that infantry have an advantage, but it is much, much better than in the first.
The Bad: -
Infantry are too strong. With the cyclops (which really should be called a mantis since it is much more closer to that), infantry can dominate against vehicles and air. This somewhat throws off the game since Vehicles and air are meant to be made later in the game are provide more firepower or counters. Let it be noted that they are not to overly powered, but they are still better than the other types, especially with the covenant.
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The Commander Tree needs some work. Most of the abilities are either useless or extremely overpowered. For example, the raid ability is pointless once you have a real economy and don’t need to cap points and the beams that come together can destroy a base instantly.
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The factions are the same as each other. HW did a great job of capturing the culture and style of the UNSC and Covenant in their play styles. However, in HW2, they are literally the same, even down too which unit type their counters are or their healers are. This is almost worthy of being considered Game Breaking as it attributes to repetitiveness, making the game not feel like halo, and because it takes away an amazing aspect of the first Halo Wars. The fact that the covenant were more numerous, have stronger air presence, and had a leader that they follow really spoke to their culture and to what they were. In addition, the UNSC’s stronger ground presence and smaller numbers spoke to what they were. Missing that is a tragedy in HW2.
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Population sizes are SMALLER. Sure they throw a big number like 80 out there, but since units count as 2-3 times more population, you actually have less. For example, you could have 13 tanks in HW as compare to 11 in HW2; or, how about 40 marines in HW compared to 26 in HW2.
The Game Breaking: -
It doesn’t feel or look like a Halo Game. HW did a great job of making it feel like a halo game. This game does not. Most of the units never appear in the halo universe and they don’t even look like something from halo. In fact, most of the new units, like the artillery, covy heavy air, and the covy anti-air are actually from the HW pre-alpha and were cut because they didn’t fit with the universe. The buildings also don’t look anything like what they represent, especially the covenant buildings. The UNSC generators also don’t fit (yes I know they’re from Halo: Reach, but they didn’t look right there either). A lot of the projectiles and abilities also don’t fit The brutes also don’t act or talk like brutes. Brutes were never meant to sound intelligent or be respectful, even if it’s to each other. You can’t expect a Halo Game to sell well or hold longevity among Halo fans if it doesn’t feel like a halo game.
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The game is even more complicated. If you played halo wars, then you can figure it out somewhat quickly, but for new players or about 80% of their potential sales, this will deter them. The energy and supply combination seems unnecessary as they are both needed for everything and it just makes the game harder. The control layout is much more difficult to understand and there are to many buttons or menus you have to navigate through to get the best out of your army. Reducing the use of the circle menu was a major mistake as it really condensed and simplified the game’s controls. There are a lot of other small things that add to the complicated-ness as well. Personally, I’m fine with this as it lets me destroy everyone else, but since I care about the future of this series, I know that this will ultimately hurt it’s sales and player populations.
Conclusion:
If you haven’t been able to tell by now, I’m not impressed with the current state of Halo Wars 2. However, I believe a lot of this can be fixed, whether that can be done in 8 months is another question, but I believe it can be much better. I feel like they developers took some of the best aspects of Halo wars an replaced them with bad ideas that really only achieve balance at the cost of so much more. In addition, it seems like the devs imprinted to much of their own creative ideas on the designs of units, buildings, and leader powers, causing much of the game to look nothing like Halo. I believe that all of this will hurt the game’s sales, longevity, and make it a flop, which is something I greatly do not want as I love the series. In fact, the beta has already generated almost all negative opinion from critics and game review websites. This might have already hurt the game’s future. On the bright side, it’s about 50-50 from reviews of regular players of the beta., which is good for a beta. We will have to see how the devs change the game and how it does when it comes out, but for now i’m not very inclined to believe it will do anything special.