For me the top two are almost a dead heat and wayyy above the lower entries.
Halo 2 (coz my main man the Arbiter)
Halo CE (almost perfect but not as grand as 2)
Halo 4 (Best character stuff of the series. Succinct and emotive. Introduces the Didact too early. Bad level design.)
Halo 3 (Great vehicle set pieces and a nice resolution to the story but feels disjointed, confusing and has a weak opening set of missions)
Halo Reach (Some great operatic and somber moments that make Noble 6 great. Apart from George though his team was a let down and again it’s missions felt disjointed with a weak opening as well as the forced tie in to CE at the end)
Halo 5 ( 3 chief missions. A potentially great idea ruined by bad decisions and writing. Locke was dead weight.)
Halo ODST (I never watched Firefly. This games has bad characters, a dull, boring story about saving an engineer and the same environment)
While reading through this, keep in mind that I’ve only completed the main series Halo games.
Halo 4
Halo 2
Halo 5
Halo CE
Halo 3
Honestly, the only reason Halo 4 has any praise is for its cinematic gameplay and fantastic storyline. Other than that, the campaign is the worst in the franchise. Halo 2 was difficult, littered with Flood and had a boring tie in with the Arbiter. I feel like playing as him in Halo 3 would be a lot more fun and interesting. Halo 5 had an engaging campaign, but Halo CE and Halo 3 really stole the show. Both games had absolutely fantastic stories and had some of the most fun missions in the series. Without a doubt the finest FPS campaigns in the industry.
See my issue with Halo 3 was that it basically hand waved a lot of things like how did the Chief get booted off the key ship. How did the Arbiter and Johnson get to earth and start a resistance before the Chief.
The Floods actions seemed incredibly stupid. They don’t bother infecting te Galaxy and take everything to the Ark; ignoring Earth.
The game didn’t really have any plot twists and lacked any real threat. Most of the missions are also filler like the desert mission and most of the earth stuff.
The resolution to the Arbiters storyline is one of the worst scenes in Halo and it just felt tacked on as an afterthought.
Plus Cortana being telepathically
linked to Chief made no sense and was never explained.
Also no multi sided battles. Finest aspect of Halo and Halo 2.
Reach is beautiful, tells a real story, and gives a sense of a developing military conflict.
ODST has great characters that actually get screen time. Well designed and original.
Halo 5 has a great plot, great characters, great sets, and a more real world than its predecessors. It’s also infinitely replayable.
Halo CE gets a bit repetitive at times, but it’s a classic for a reason.
Halo 4 had a nonexistent plot and childish dialogue, but the gameplay was fun and the levels didn’t get stale- at least, they grew on me.
6.Halo 2 was so overhyped for what it was, a rushed sequel where a major plot point was literally “the Prophet showing up at Earth too soon.”
I think Halo 3 could score higher, but bad mechanics, poor weapon balance, and nonsense such as that has me genuinely disliking the game. I hardly even remember the one playthrough I did, almost as if I’m repressing the memory.
Halo 3. Despite some of the plot holes it was just an overall epic campaign. I also really enjoyed the story. Each level was fun and unique as well.
Halo Reach. Regardless of the inconsistencies with the novels the campaign itself as a standalone was pretty good.
Halo 3 ODST. I liked the story, voice acting was great and the soundtrack was fantastic setting the whole mood for the game. Granted it could/should have been longer but it was still great none the less.
Halo 2. All of the MC missions were fantastic, especially the first handful like Cairo and the mombasa based ones. Arbiter missions weren’t as fun, but the story was pretty awesome.
Halo 4. I liked this campaign for the most part. Didn’t really like the didact so much, I kind of prefered when the forerunners were mysterious but that’s personal preference.
halo wars.
7.Halo 5. The first time in a halo series I did not like the campaign. I have a huge long list of issues I had with it. It wasn’t completely awful, but it could have been so much better.
Spartan assault/strike. I haven’t beaten Strike yet, and spartan assault wasn’t great IMO.
I mean Reach has some great moments. The bits in New Alexandria and Noble Six last stand are great set pieces. But I felt I generally didn’t get what was going on most of the time and I didn’t like the whole Covenant infiltration thing. Reach doesn’t slowly escalate, the Covenant simply arrive with a huge armada and bombard the planet; a protracted ground war just felt silly. Especially since the UNSC apparently doesn’t have any sizable fleet assets in the area to stop said bombardment…
Plus, Halo is meant to be a comic book space opera, it simply doesn’t work if you try to make it gritty Call of Duty and focus on the military aspects. Aside from a really weak and last minute tie in to CE its basically a story about nothing.
Also they really dropped the ball by not showing the epic space battle from Fall of Reach. It felt very false that one super carrier (never mind Corvette!) could just walk into Reach and they act as if there isn’t hundreds of ships and dozens of MAC stations in orbit. Plus its a specific plot point that the Covenant DO NOT slip space their ships below the defence grid because they don’t know how to. I mean I don’t even get how Fall of Reach is considered canon anymore since Reach’s portrayal of the battle is completely different.
Halo 2 - Halo: 5G - Halo: CE - Halo 4 - Halo: Reach - Halo: ODSTYou may be surprised that I put Reach so far down but for me, it was equal to all the others (save for ODST), the fact that it contradicted can (Halo: The Fall of Reach) just put it down. And, ODST was dull for me.