Halo Wars 2 has been getting quite a lot of updates, patches and new content and that is great to see. Why? Well it does show that the developers do care about what’s happening with their game. Some new character leaders initially were too powerful and needed to be toned down. The developers fixed that. They brought out new characters who like Serina brings in new layers to the game like the freezing mechanic. This shakes things up and keep players thinking. Now we have a large DLC coming our way which will bring in… the Flood. Oh dear. This is both exciting and bad at the same time. Exciting because it’s an old enemy coming back but bad because anyone who played Halo 1 (we know it’s called combat evolved but we call it halo 1) knows what a horrible enemy the flood are. There are many great things but some big issues as well.
We love Serina as the whole ice thing is really cool and like we said adds another layer to the game. For example you now have to think about how to handle her if she is your opponent. You can’t stay around her hero unit for too long or risk being frozen. The Frostravens are there to freeze and destroy frozen units easily and her abilities on top of that makes it almost too risky to approach her. When you are her though you get to decide how you will toy with your enemies. Charge at them and then drop ice barriers around and behind them to start the freezing. Drop Cryo bombs to instant freeze and make troops panic with glacial storm. Then finish them off with Seismic charge. It’s cruel.
Spear breaker was an interesting mission that was of a nice length and offer some cool combat. You got to control a special ODST squad which have a lot of health and each member carries different weapons, from some laser type gun to rocket launchers. They have access to a emp ordnance support drop. This unit would be OP in multiplayer as it is. Fun to play with. The Retriever sentinel bosses were real bosses but most specifically the last one as it had moments when other sentinels made it invulnerable and healed it. It’s health was higher than normal and did more damage we believe. It’s worth playing but that’s all, the story wasn’t interesting at all.
The main bad thing and this is what put us of off online multiplayer is that the matches are now all about rushing. Rushing with hero units. Now YapYap and Serina are the two worst at the moment. Serina’a hero unit the ‘Bison’ has good health and tanks all the damage while sitting there freezing your units and buildings, while their units are attacking from behind. Now if you don’t have your hero unit then there is nothing you can really do. Really. So it becomes a game of getting your hero units out first whether for attack or defend. What’s worst is that not all hero units are made equal. For example if you have one of the original three UNSC characters leader’s heroes: The spartans, then they will die to Jerome’s mantis, Serina’s Bison or YapYap’s three grunt mechs. It isn’t fair. They are weaker. It’s almost like saying don’t bother with the original three. Almost every match has been like this. It’s not fun. So we stopped playing online.
Overall Halo Wars 2 has been growing and doing very well but it’s not all that fun if you don’t want to play it anymore then it becomes useless to you. We honestly have been playing other games besides Halo Wars 2 and that’s taking into account that YapYap is new. We haven’t been bothered to take him on or try him out. Don’t get us wrong. It’s an excellent game with lots of work going into it but currently until something is done about that leader rush we won’t be quick to get back online. Yes we know that you can just get your hero out as well but that leads to issues in itself like what character leader to use and more. New players better beware. Now we still love Halo Wars 2 but not as much as we love… the ‘Earth Walk!’