Despite bankrupting developer Ensemble Studios and being an underwhelming performer in the eyes of publisher Micrisoft, 2008’s Halo Wars was actually quite a big success as far as console Real-Time Strategy games go, and it garnered a fervent and extremely loyal fanbase that kept the game alive for years after its release and constantly pleading for a sequel for what was arguably one of the most ambitious projects of that time. It would seem as though those prayers would never be answered, but nine years later 343 Industries and Creative Assembly surprised everyone when they announced Halo Wars 2 for the Xbox One and PC.
The UNSC Spirit of Fire has been adrift in uncharted space for twenty-eight years. Its crew cryogenically frozen whilst ship AI Serina ensures the ship can remain operational long after her self-termination to prevent rampancy. As far as humanity is aware, the Spirit of Fire and its crew are long lost and most likely dead.
When the ship is transported to Installation 00, The Ark, the crew are awakened and begin to explore this strange world they have encountered. There they find a UNSC AI, Isabel, and a fleet of Covenant forces called The Banished, led by a brute named Atriox, abandoned at The Ark following the cataclysmic events of Halo 3. Isabel informs Captain James Cutter that The Ark can be used to build a new Halo ring which can then create a slip space portal to get them back within range of UNCS communications. However, Atriox is a dangerous threat and will do anything in his power to get his army off The Ark and take revenge on both humanity and those in the Covenant that left them behind.
The UNSC Spirit of Fire has been adrift in uncharted space for twenty-eight years. Its crew cryogenically frozen whilst ship AI Serina ensures the ship can remain operational long after her self-termination to prevent rampancy. As far as humanity is aware, the Spirit of Fire and its crew are long lost and most likely dead.
When the ship is transported to Installation 00, The Ark, the crew are awakened and begin to explore this strange world they have encountered. There they find a UNSC AI, Isabel, and a fleet of Covenant forces called The Banished, led by a brute named Atriox, abandoned at The Ark following the cataclysmic events of Halo 3. Isabel informs Captain James Cutter that The Ark can be used to build a new Halo ring which can then create a slip space portal to get them back within range of UNCS communications. However, Atriox is a dangerous threat and will do anything in his power to get his army off The Ark and take revenge on both humanity and those in the Covenant that left them behind.
Halo Wars 2 has a fantastic story and is without a doubt the strongest aspect of the whole game. The first Halo Wars was somewhat of an outlier in the Halo canon because it took place so long before the events of the main series. Halo Wars 2 not only manages to maintain this side story narrative that doesn’t require any knowledge of the main Halo games to understand, but by the end it manages to tie the game in to the main series in very interesting ways. It’s very skilful storytelling and whilst there are certainly some shortcomings here and there relating to the narrative, overall, the story is extremely strong.
The only aspect of the story that doesn’t quite work as well as you would hope it does is Atriox. He’s built up to be this extremely powerful and very dangerous threat, but we only fleetingly see him in cutscenes. We don’t really know anything about him beyond the fact that he was banished from the Covenant ranks and then his army was left on The Ark when the Covenant were defeated by Master Chief, the UNSC, and the Arbiter’s Elite rebellion. It’s the same problem Tartarus had in Halo 2, they build up this dangerous brute villain, but don’t really do anything interesting with him.
For anybody who is familiar with the first Halo Wars, the gameplay mechanics for Halo Wars 2 aren’t all that different but there are some key changes. First of all the leader powers have moved from the D-Pad to the Left Trigger. There’s also no longer an option to select all units, instead you can only select local units (those on your screen) or hold A and move the camera to cast a selection recticle over any units you wish to use. This can make combat slower at times, particularly in the ‘boss’ encounters you’ll frequently have. These encounters often require all your units in order to defeat and gathering them up from different parts of the map can be tedious now that the ‘all units’ option is gone. You also have a new resource to worry about, Power. In the original game you only needed to worry about building Reactors to have a particular Power level which allowed you to build certain units or buildings. Now though Power is a limited resource much like Supplies, and so you must build Generators alongside Supply Pads to get an increasing amount of Power needed to build vital units or buildings. This also slows the pace of the game down as you’re either going to have to limit what types of units you can build because you need more Generators, or you make less Generators to have access to other types of units but it means that training units will take longer whilst you wait for your Power level to increase.
Missions tend to be more varied this time around as well. You will regularly find yourself using special units, encountering boss battles, and engaging in activities the first game never allowed. The original Halo Wars only ever allowed for a handful of different mission types, but it did those few very well. Halo Wars 2 offers up more variety but at a lower overall quality. Missions generally feel much longer in Halo Wars 2, this is likely a result of having more defence-based objectives. Two of the missions in the final act require you to simply wait in one area for an extended amount of time (approximately thirty minutes each) as you face increasingly difficult waves of enemies. The penultimate mission has you guard three objectives once you have captured them for around fifteen minutes. There’s a lot of waiting which is what the original Halo Wars rarely ever made you do. This makes me wonder whether Creative Assembly wanted to appeal to the more hardcore RTS audience with Halo Wars 2 because of its slower pace and more strategic depth, but at the same time it doesn’t do these things nearly as well as many of the big RTS games out there. If anything, it should have stuck to what the original game did so well and that was being a simpler RTS game aimed at non-RTS gamers, and just perfecting that formula.
The only aspect of the story that doesn’t quite work as well as you would hope it does is Atriox. He’s built up to be this extremely powerful and very dangerous threat, but we only fleetingly see him in cutscenes. We don’t really know anything about him beyond the fact that he was banished from the Covenant ranks and then his army was left on The Ark when the Covenant were defeated by Master Chief, the UNSC, and the Arbiter’s Elite rebellion. It’s the same problem Tartarus had in Halo 2, they build up this dangerous brute villain, but don’t really do anything interesting with him.
For anybody who is familiar with the first Halo Wars, the gameplay mechanics for Halo Wars 2 aren’t all that different but there are some key changes. First of all the leader powers have moved from the D-Pad to the Left Trigger. There’s also no longer an option to select all units, instead you can only select local units (those on your screen) or hold A and move the camera to cast a selection recticle over any units you wish to use. This can make combat slower at times, particularly in the ‘boss’ encounters you’ll frequently have. These encounters often require all your units in order to defeat and gathering them up from different parts of the map can be tedious now that the ‘all units’ option is gone. You also have a new resource to worry about, Power. In the original game you only needed to worry about building Reactors to have a particular Power level which allowed you to build certain units or buildings. Now though Power is a limited resource much like Supplies, and so you must build Generators alongside Supply Pads to get an increasing amount of Power needed to build vital units or buildings. This also slows the pace of the game down as you’re either going to have to limit what types of units you can build because you need more Generators, or you make less Generators to have access to other types of units but it means that training units will take longer whilst you wait for your Power level to increase.
Missions tend to be more varied this time around as well. You will regularly find yourself using special units, encountering boss battles, and engaging in activities the first game never allowed. The original Halo Wars only ever allowed for a handful of different mission types, but it did those few very well. Halo Wars 2 offers up more variety but at a lower overall quality. Missions generally feel much longer in Halo Wars 2, this is likely a result of having more defence-based objectives. Two of the missions in the final act require you to simply wait in one area for an extended amount of time (approximately thirty minutes each) as you face increasingly difficult waves of enemies. The penultimate mission has you guard three objectives once you have captured them for around fifteen minutes. There’s a lot of waiting which is what the original Halo Wars rarely ever made you do. This makes me wonder whether Creative Assembly wanted to appeal to the more hardcore RTS audience with Halo Wars 2 because of its slower pace and more strategic depth, but at the same time it doesn’t do these things nearly as well as many of the big RTS games out there. If anything, it should have stuck to what the original game did so well and that was being a simpler RTS game aimed at non-RTS gamers, and just perfecting that formula.
Halo Wars 2 looks a little weird to be perfectly honest. It looks nice with its vibrant colours, detailed environments and unit models, as well as nice animations. But it doesn’t really look like Halo. If anything, it looks closer to Mega Bloks Halo instead. It looks more cartoony than any other Halo video game that has come before, and so sticks out like a sore thumb.
The game also suffers from some major frame rate issues. I was playing the game on an Xbox One S and frequently things would start to judder and slow down when things got busy. Several times whilst I was playing the game would just freeze for upwards of thirty seconds whilst it processed what was happening. These occurrences didn’t happen often, but it happened enough for me to realise that it wasn’t just a one-off thing and that the game does have some serious performance issues. Whether these are rectified with an Xbox One X or higher end PC I am not sure, but this game doesn’t seem particularly intensive graphically, so it puzzles me as to why it has these performance issues.
Halo has had a long history of awesome soundtracks, but I can say that I don’t really care for it in Halo Wars 2. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t stand out. It does have very stiff competition in all fairness because all of the previous games have had excellent soundtracks, but this time round I barely noticed it was there much of the time.
All of this culminates into a product that whilst still fun and engaging for a Halo fan, is not as engaging or refined as the original game. It feels as though Creative Assembly wanted to appeal to more than just Halo players, but doesn’t give the game the level of refinement it needs to stand up against its biggest competitors. Whilst there is still no major competitor on the Xbox, so console RTS fans can rejoice there, PC players will certainly be left feeling a little hard done by in relation to the simple gameplay mechanics.
The game also suffers from some major frame rate issues. I was playing the game on an Xbox One S and frequently things would start to judder and slow down when things got busy. Several times whilst I was playing the game would just freeze for upwards of thirty seconds whilst it processed what was happening. These occurrences didn’t happen often, but it happened enough for me to realise that it wasn’t just a one-off thing and that the game does have some serious performance issues. Whether these are rectified with an Xbox One X or higher end PC I am not sure, but this game doesn’t seem particularly intensive graphically, so it puzzles me as to why it has these performance issues.
Halo has had a long history of awesome soundtracks, but I can say that I don’t really care for it in Halo Wars 2. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t stand out. It does have very stiff competition in all fairness because all of the previous games have had excellent soundtracks, but this time round I barely noticed it was there much of the time.
All of this culminates into a product that whilst still fun and engaging for a Halo fan, is not as engaging or refined as the original game. It feels as though Creative Assembly wanted to appeal to more than just Halo players, but doesn’t give the game the level of refinement it needs to stand up against its biggest competitors. Whilst there is still no major competitor on the Xbox, so console RTS fans can rejoice there, PC players will certainly be left feeling a little hard done by in relation to the simple gameplay mechanics.
STORY: 7/10
GAMEPLAY: 6/10
PRESENTATION: 7/10
LIFESPAN: 6/10
SCORE: 6/10
Fun can be had with Halo Wars 2, but you’ll have to look for it rather than it present itself to you.