First things first, realize this is my opinion, you may or may not agree with it, these are my opinions on the game, units, graphics, and more. Anything I say isn’t meant to upset anyone at all nor cause any arguments.
Backstory:
This beta is great, honestly it is, seeing that this full game’s release was pushed to February brings me hope that many of these issues can be fixed. Downloading the game I was excited. I’ve waited so long for a sequel to my childhood favorite game. Being 19 years old now I first played halo wars 1 when I was 11-12. I didn’t even own the full game, I played the demo of it for a solid year or longer because I couldn’t get the money to buy it, even though I was limited to 2 leaders and only 1 map I loved the demo and played it for a whole year. Eventually I got older, earned money and found Halo Wars and bought it on the spot, once I played the full game I loved it, beat it, played multiplayer a bunch. eventually I left and played another halo for a bit. now lets skip to a month or two ago. hearing halo wars being backwards compatible got me so hyped. knowing I can go back was great. so great I bought the DLC even though no one played it so I had new ways to play skirmish. I love the game. I love RTS (real time strategy) games and Halo so seeing both combined was a clear reason why I loved the game so much. so I played halo wars up until a week ago, got my friends to join me and had a blast. While awaiting for the download of HW2 to finish I hoped for an experience like that. Now after playing this beta I might have set my expectations a bit too high. And this is why I feel that way.
The Beta
Launching the beta was amazing. the menu music and background look amazing. Definitely had a Halo Wars feel and I loved it. Then a crash. clicking start seemed to launch the tutorial then freeze not even a second in, in did that for a solid hour and time after time again it would freeze and crash. Which was really depressing. eventually it launched and I finally got to the game. less than 2 minutes later I found a match. but let me tell you… that loading time was long enough that I had time to use the restroom before the game loaded. id say a 3-5 minute wait. My first match was pretty well, too fast though. Domination didn’t feel right. by the time I had an army the game was over. I never got to see any real battles and see the units in action. I played for a solid 2-3 hours understanding the game since the tutorial failed to get specific and without skirmish this was really difficult to learn since games only lasted 5-10 minutes each. Playing with friends was slightly more fun but aggravating, constant crashes, games getting stuck at “waiting for players” and games simply failing to load, framerate drops, quality drops, and disconnecting were a nuisance. Eventually we got off after seeing how a team of two Atriox leaders could rush and win easily.some could say that there are counters and ways to stop that. and yes, youre right. but 9 times out of ten, we never got countered doing that strategy, and when they countered, we still won by a land slide, the game feels slightly unbalanced, like Atriox is greater than cutter by a significant amount. By Wednesday night I had enough, I uninstalled the Halo Wars 2 beta and found me and all my friends playing Halo Wars 1 for the rest of the night.
Today I finally redownloaded the beta after hearing the excellent news that deathmatch was put in as well as a new map to fight on. Which this new map feels great and looks amazing, reminds me of the last few missions of Halo Wars 1. Deathmatch is great, finally getting to upgrade and really outwit your opponents without the need to rush to a position from the first second was great. being able to play how I wanted to play. Although deathmatch is an excellent replacement to domination that we had, the beta still doesn’t feel right, i’m not really happy with the game’s current state, the units are odd, and I feel there isn’t enough upgrades for things like the hornets, tanks, warthogs, and other units. along with upgrading I also feel that the unit count is greater but each units number is larger, for example, the warthog is 5 units, with I find really odd that a warthog is so large, especially a chaingun hog, I feel chaingun should be 3 or 4 while gauss is 5. The battles feel slightly smaller than portrayed in trailers, info, and leaks. many of these things I’m sure wont change as they aren’t really a main issue and just my opinion on the game’s new mechanics, I can easily get used to it the same way I got used to this different controller setup. One thing I hope really does change is the overall look of the game, I looks way too much like Spartan Strike (image: http://www.eggplante.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Halo-Spartan-Assault-Screenshot-Spirit-Escape.jpg) I would have preferred a look closer to halo wars 1 or even the menu look for the beta, certain units even look too cartoony in my opinion and take away from the war feeling that Halo Wars 1 had. If you saw a scarab, or vultures or even an army of hawks, it made you know that you need to take out whatever major threat it was, HW2 looks too cartoony for me to really worry about anything. The sounds of the music, fights, explosions, ect. are fine and suit the game well.
Final opinion:
Although the game has so major issues with it currently, I realize this is a beta, and nothing here is final until the game goes gold months and months from now. Anything can change. Other than the connection issues and some other problems I have with the game, I feel its a great game that has true potential but needs a lot of work. before it really impresses me. In the end ill buy the standard edition for the campaign, regardless of how the multiplayer turns out. If improvements are made and I feel excited enough I’ll even get the ultimate edition if I’m impressed enough, which could very well happen seeing as they pushed the date back for what I assume the issues we are currently experiencing. Overall, good job 343 Industries/Creative Assembly. The game is good, but will take some work before I can call it great.
(I know this only a beta and understand nothing I final, please don’t reply with “this is just a beta” I know that already)