"Where you see half a crew, Isabel, I see family. And where you see one old ship, I see home. And that is always worth fighting for!"
Halo Wars 2 is another attempt by Microsoft at bringing the ever popular PC Real Time Strategy genre to the Xbox. Microsoft's original Halo Wars was lauded for its accessibility when using a joypad but criticised for its simplistic management options and lacking the depth hardened RTS players have come to expect. Making an RTS game for a console is a thankless task but what lessons have been learned since 2009?
Creative Assembly and 343 Industries have combined their considerable talents to take another shot at creating the definite RTS game for consoles with Microsoft's flagship franchise Halo. Halo Wars 2 is a sequel to the original Ensemble Studios developed Halo Wars which was released in 2009 which seems a lifetime away. Halo Wars 2 begins immediately after the events of the original Halo Wars where the Spirit of Fire has been waging a war against the Covenant in an effort to stop them taking control of a group of advanced alien spaceship which they want to use to wipe off humanity. This is all explained via CGI cutscenes which look breathtaking. But you won't have much time to ponder over what's going on because when the game gets going it does so at breathtaking speed. 
Awakening after 60 years in hypersleep the Spirit of Fire and it's crew are adrift in space after being declared lost with all hands. During this time the war between humanity and the Covenant has ended. After awakening from cryosleep Captain James Cutter, Professor Anders, and the crew find themselves above the Ark wide the Halo rings were built. Unbeknown to the Captain and crew that the war is over they receive a signal from the Ark where a team of Spartans have encountered an alien presence known only as the Banished who are led by Atriox, a Brute who was sent on a suicide mission by the Covenant but thrown out of the order for his ever growing disobedience. While recovering an artificial intelligence called Isabel from a ransacked UNSC research base Spartans Alice-102 and Douglas-042 are both left behind.
Some knowledge of the previous game will help you figure out what exactly is going on and who is who but nothing that will impact your enjoyment of the beautiful cinematics that play out in front of you view are simply gorgeous but I digress. Atriox has gone full bat shit rogue and has declared The Ark as his own. As with most RTS games it's a case of rock-paper-scissors. Infantry will always lose to ground vehicles and ground vehicles will always lose to air support but air support are more vulnerable to infantry attacks. It's a case of learning and understanding which vehicles or infantry to put in front of your enemy. Leader Powers are also available during battle and these come in all shapes and sizes. Each leader has their own unique Leader Powers which reflect their offensive or defensive personalities. Each power is on a cooldown so using them at the right time is pivotal especially if you're on the receiving end of an ass kicking. Leader Powers can completely turn the tide of battle when used at the right time and the quicker you earn Leader Points by completing objectives, destroying enemy units, construction, research, etc the quicker they will become available. 
The original Halo Wars was a good example of how flanking and ambushing your unsuspecting opponents should work but for some unfathomable reason that tactical nuance seems to have been pushed to one side in favour of amassing as many troops as possible and ploughing through the enemies with an unstoppable force. While this tactic allows you to plough through the game quite quickly it also leaves a sour taste. I like surveying my surrounds and creating my battalions according to the tactics each mission, terrain and enemies dictate and all this is now missing which is a huge shame and takes the shine off Halo Wars 2’s campaign.
Blitz Mode on the other hand is a surprisingly frantic twist on the RTS genre. Playable in single player or multiplayer Blitz throws you straight into the action. There is no base building to be done here. The first thing you will need to do is build a deck of cards or pick a deck from a premade set. When the game starts you have no control over which card will appear in your hand from one play to the next. You can play the card you're dealt or discard it and pray that the card that replaces it will be better suited to your needs. Each played card summons a different unit to the battlefield and each card you play or discard will cost you energy and energy is what drives Blitz Mode. You can also earn new card packs by completely various challenges throughout the game's different modes.
Energy is awarded to you over time but the best way to boost your resources is to find the drop pods that plummet to earth during the game and destroy them so you can collect the precious resource inside. Each card costs a specific amount of energy to use with the most powerful cards using the most energy. Each card can also be leveled up each time you get a duplicate in your pack. Now this sounds like a good thing at first until microtransactions rear their ugly head. It's far too easy for someone to splash the cash on a few packs of cards so they can buff their deck out beforehand and custom build a deck that will leave those of us who won't spend any money at their mercy time and time again.
Pay to win models piss me off and Blitz Mode stinks of it. There are also a few other multiplayer modes that don't seem to be getting much attention because of Blitz Mode which is a shame because these are the more traditional modes that still offer a great deal of fun. Stronghold and Domination center around players controlling bases or modes scattered on a map. Deathmatch is exactly what it sounds like and it involves players fighting over a map until only one team is left standing and Skirmish which allows you to play solo or conservatively against wave after wake of ever increasingly difficult enemies.
An RTS game on a console has to absolutely nail the controls and Halo Wars 2 just misses the mark. Pressing A over a unit selects them and pressing X will deploy, attack or garrison the location. Y is used to activate any special moves or attacks a particular unit has. Selecting all units is as simple as tapping the RB button or double tapping it to select every unit.. You use the D-pad to quickly switch between your units, bases or battles so you can keep an eye on everything that's going on. Creating squads but doing so means using the game's slow moving cursor that seems to take forever to get anywhere. In the heat of battle the controls break down with fiddly button combinations needed at precisely the wrong moment to cycle through build radials so you can add more units. A frustrating mess that saw me building the wrong units over and over. There are also huge sound issues with dialogue either sounding distorted, very low or absolutely silent. Halo Wars 2 also randomly crashes for no apparent reason and when you've spent a good hour or two playing a level only to lose your progress it's rage inducing. I find it amazing that such a high profile game can be released with these faults. These aren't isolated incidents either with the PC version suffering the same problems.
As console RTS games go Halo Wars 2 is in a league of its own surely because of consoles there is little to no competition. You won't find a massive amount of tactical depth here no matter how hard you try. A lack of precision and a clunky control scheme take the shine off an engaging single player campaign and the game's multiple online competitive modes. Blitz Mode is enjoyable but it's pay to win model soon takes that enjoyment away. Even though Halo Wars 2 has its faults it's still an enjoyable romp through Halo lore.
Developer: 343 Industries
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Website: Halo Wars 2
Twitter: @Halo
Review code supplied by XCN