Halo Wars 2

Halo Wars 2 Campaign and expansion spoilers. The Spirit of Fire has been missing for a very long time when Halo Wars 2 brings it back. The crew wakes up at the Ark, the war it knew has ended, and there’s another enemy already waiting there. That enemy is the Banished, and Atriox gives the game a pretty direct introduction to what kind of problem they’re going to be. Halo Wars 2 released on Xbox One and Windows PC in February 2017. It returns to real-time strategy with Cutter, Anders, Red Team and the Spirit of Fire, but the people they’re facing have their own goals and their own way of fighting. The Banished broke away from the Covenant. They aren’t simply continuing the Prophets’ old religious mission under another name. You see that immediately in the way Atriox deals with Red Team. Spartans are formidable, and he still makes it very clear that they can’t assume he’s going to be another enemy they can overpower. That’s a strong way to establish him before you’re even thinking about how to handle his army. Isabel joins the Spirit of Fire with firsthand knowledge of what the Banished has done on the Ark. She has good reasons to be afraid of them. Cutter has a ship full of people who have just woken up into a world that moved on without them, and he still has to decide what they’re going to do next. The campaign gives them a very large problem to work on. The Ark can manufacture Halo rings, and control of a place like that has consequences far beyond whoever wins the next local battle. There are installations to capture, routes to hold and Banished forces that aren’t going to quietly give any of it up. The strategy side builds on the first game, but you need to pay attention to the differences. Supplies and power are separate resources now. Building an army, developing your bases and buying upgrades compete for what you have available. If you only watch one part of that economy, you can end up with resources you can’t use effectively while the thing you actually need is missing. Getting out onto the map matters. Resources, power nodes, base locations and information about the enemy are all reasons to do something beyond sitting at home and making units. You want to know what the other side is building before you discover it by losing a fight. Leader powers add another layer. A good ability used at the right time can change an engagement, but it still needs to work with the army and the position you’ve put together. There’s plenty to explain in guides about setting up a fight instead of expecting one button to rescue every bad situation. The different leaders also give the game a lot of variety. They have their own powers and unit options, so a strategy that makes sense for one leader may need changes for another. That’s useful material for separate breakdowns: what a leader does well, what it struggles with, and how to build a force that takes advantage of it. Blitz is another part of the game, with cards used to deploy units rather than the normal base-building process. It needs its own explanation. Somebody who understands the campaign economy shouldn’t be expected to automatically understand how deck choices, energy and objectives fit together in Blitz. And then there’s the additional campaign content, which needs to be kept straight. Operation: SPEARBREAKER adds two missions following a UNSC ODST operation. It was part of the Season Pass. Awakening the Nightmare is a separate expansion that puts you on the Banished side against the Flood. The Season Pass did not automatically include that expansion, so an old “complete edition” guide needs to be very clear about which product it means. Awakening the Nightmare is a particularly useful change of perspective. You spend the main campaign fighting the Banished, and then you’re controlling them while they deal with a threat that can become everybody’s problem. It also adds Terminus Firefight, where defending the objective, building defenses and surviving incoming forces becomes the focus. The main campaign’s ending leaves the larger situation open. Anders departs with a Halo ring while the Spirit of Fire remains at the Ark, and the ship still doesn’t get a simple return home. Winning part of this fight doesn’t remove the fact that its crew is isolated and has a lot left to do. For guides, there’s a full set of practical things to build out: mission strategies, medal requirements, skulls, Phoenix Logs, leaders, unit counters, build orders and both sets of extra missions. The Phoenix Logs deserve attention because they add information about the people, units and places you’re spending the game dealing with. Halo Wars 2 gives the Spirit of Fire another chapter and introduces an enemy that becomes important well beyond this game. There’s a lot to get into here, both for the story and for anyone who wants to understand how to keep an army alive long enough to accomplish something.