Halo Wars 2 Impressions

After recently playing through Halo Wars 2 I'm now able to provide some details or at least give a preview on a small portion of the campaign. While I'm not supposed to discuss any spoilers I need to mention that there might be spoilers to follow. At this point I'm currently able to discuss the first three missions of the campaign and will be focusing on those aspects. I actually really enjoy RTS titles with Halo Wars being a favorite of mine and while it's been a long wait I'm glad that the sequel is finally here. Picking up after a gap in time the Spirit of Fire awakens to a new foe, a brutal Brute named Atriox and he serves as the antagonist for the crew. The game opens up with beautiful Blur cinematics and going from the context of the original Halo Wars' cutscenes these ones are absolutely beautiful. I say in context to as those original cutscenes hold up very well even now and the ones featured in Halo Wars 2 look stunning with a glorious quality. The first three missions act as mainly a tutorial introducing players to key concepts and movements within the game. These areas were somewhat brief though great in teaching the core mechanics for new players while also going over the improvements for veterans.

Some key elements that have changed are the much larger army groups you can have out in combat at once, the balance of credits with power collection and the factions at play. With having more units out on the field at once things can get be more hectic and thus the amount of frenzied particles follow which looks great. The areas also feel vast in scope offering classic varied Halo terrain while also offering some fresh new spaces. There also seems to be a heavier focus on scripted vehicles opposed to just have players handle everything creating a cinematic style in some sequences. I also liked the new complexity between holding onto resource points or general credits in most RTS games and power. The power adds an extra layer to things as this is a resource that can be harvested to unlock certain parts of the game whereas the credits allow you to purchase items. I'm mostly vague as the details are limited as to what I can say before launch though this starting point was a solid kick-off to what hopefully leads to more RTS efforts from Xbox and Microsoft.

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Impressions Made on Halo Wars with the full release on Xbox One