Halo 2 is a legendary game with a amazing narrative. If youve been thinking about playing it its a game everyone has to experience. From its defining multiplayer to its legendary campaign. Or the amazing ost. This game for the standard of 2004 is insane. And its such a shame halo games arent made with as much love and passion as these were back then. I will always have so many good memories on this game whether it being one of the first games i picked up for my og xbox or the countless hours ive spent playing it in the master chief collection. Absolutely one of the best games ever made

currently replaying all the halo games and boy does this one just shoot my back in front of TV in 2012. Halo 2 is (in my opinion) the best out of bungies trilogy, the new gameplay features and AI are a huge step up from Combat Evolved with akimbo and playable Elites makes it such a great experience for casual players who want to enjoy the expansive story of Halo.

if there's anything bad to say about Halo 2 it would have to be how terribly catered it is towards anyone who wants to play on this games legendary mode or god forbid the Legendary playlist from MCC. Everyone knows about the infamous sniper jackals but one shot with an 8 frame reaction time is absurd, the armory guy at the start said the funniest joke in the series saying "this is the new and improved armor system, strongest around" because it is the most flimsy piece of shit in existence. John Halo went from cracking ungoy shitters skulls in one strike to rubbing there cheeks like my grandma, the bread and butter of Halos combat system is its melee, and there's no way a 450kg 7,2 monster needs 4 punches to kill an elite minor, so melee doesn't work? to bad cuz anything above a minor needs at least one BR clip to bring down its shields, and pray to god if you come across an ultra or a counsellor.

aside from this. the positives in depth

just from the begining you can tell that bungie has really started to commit to the halo franchise (and who wouldn't, CE sold 6.3 mill copies thats ALOT for 2001)
i mean the voice acting and cutscenes were amazing, the game starts off with The'l Vadaam becoming the arbiter for allowing the first Halo to explode, the scene sets the tone for game and allowing us to learn about the covenent first hand from the eyes of an actual high ranking sangheili wich is done perfectly in the form of story telling.

while previously mentioned the shields are flimsy as hell no matter the difficulty but i actually really liked it being displayed as a part of the motion sensor, the UI for the game is great as well as the sounds of Halo 2, every bullet fired grenade thrown and vehicle sound amazing.

being able to play as a covenant elite during the Brute take over and the start of the Covenant civil war was a great choice by the developers to give us something fresh both in terms of gameplay and story.

just play on heroic and you will be just fine.

Still as much of a slog as the other one but it only became boring half-way through instead of a few missions in. I also had the benefit of going in and not knowing what the fuck the arbiter was and actually being intrigued by what's going on with him. It was a real breath of fresh air especially since mister chief himself is still doing the same boring shit.

The battle rifle is such an improvement in terms of raw feel and feedback that it makes you forgot every other weapon is like shooting the nerf guns they resemble.

Halo 2 is visually a quantum leap above 1, and introduces a lot of neat new mechanics, but it is ultimately the inferior package.

Dual wielding sure looks cool, but it's inconvenient to use as you need to drop your secondary weapon whenever you want to do anything with your other hand, such as throwing a grenade.

The story is....far less compelling. Things happen, it's a bit of a mess, the perspective will suddenly switch between Master Chief and the Arbiter, and it's abruptly cut off at the end.

The Arbiter was a nice attempt at a change of pace, but most of his stages (as does the entire second half) suffers from awful, messy and repetitive level design. The levels past the halfway point are utterly unfun and are nowhere near the quality of Halo 1.

All in all, it's an acceptable, but somewhat disappointing sequel and easily my least favourite of the Bungie Halos.

As a sequel to Combat Evolved, the best way to describe Halo 2 is: impressive. The game takes a big step up when it comes to presentation, boasting some incredibly impressive cinematics and setpieces for its time, which give the series much more narrative substance than what the previous game provided. The story does a good job of contrasting the two major factions and giving more personality to the characters from the first game while introducing new ones as well such as Arbiter.
The game also adds new weapons, vehicles, and even the ability to dual wield! So far this sounds like far and away an improvement over the original, and yet I couldn't quite feel that it was, at least not by all that much. While I found a lot of the new weapons fun to use, some of the new vehicles were pretty slow and the sections featuring them ended up overstaying their welcome, while dual wielding kind of felt a little superficial to me and I ended up not using it all that much since being able to melee and throw grenades were options not really worth giving up.
If anything, it felt to me as if the ability to dual wield was used as an excuse to throw in a lot of bulky enemies, especially towards the end when you had to fight all of the brutes. I gotta say that having more enemies that take longer to defeat just made certain parts a bit more of a drag to me. Speaking of enemy types, there's several factions within the game that are often at war with each other, sometimes even within the faction itself, and while there were moments like this in CE they didn't feel as numerous to the point where it often felt better to leave them alone to let them duke it out. Even the "big hype" moment of the game where it started playing Breaking Benjamin was like that—so much that Cortana even told me I should just "sit this one out" and that seemed like a waste of the theme.
Finally, let me get to the story. Combat Evolved's narrative was fairly simple but pretty underdeveloped, and yet it still found ways to create effective moments such as the first breakout of The Flood. They are, of course, back in this game but they just aren't able to send the same chills that their masterful introduction did. It was incredible storytelling through gameplay, and I never found anything of that level here. The cutscenes of course do make up for this as there's much more to dive into than what CE had to offer, but even so while the story was appreciated I wouldn't consider it compelling enough for me to consider this the clearly superior game. Part of this I feel comes from the inclusion of Arbiter who, while isn't a bad character in his own right, splits up the narrative between him and Master Chief with the events happening concurrently. This sounds like a cool idea, but it made certain moments feel disjointed as I wasn't following exactly who was where and at what point so I'd find it surprising to see my other protagonist in one place when I never took him there. It just didn't really work for me as well as it should have, and in a way the increased story focus in this game ironically made me less invested in the narrative than I was in CE. The abrupt ending certainly didn't make matters any better, even if I have to admit that the cliffhangers made for some cool scenes.
All in all, I probably sounded more negative than I should be considering the score, but I should emphasize that most of what I enjoyed about the first game is still here and presented in a flashier package so I'd still recommend it pretty highly. I guess I just hoped that I'd like it even more.

An absolutely massive upgrade to the first Halo in every way. More guns (though imo, less good ones), more missions, a way better story, a banging soundtrack and most importantly, way better level designs. There are less (but not none) copied and pasted rooms and more uniquely designed rooms, each bringing their own atmosphere with them (provided you played with the OG graphics, because the new ones ruin it).

Though I said the story was good, I hate how its delivered. A lot of important details are left in secret terminals, so I was not able to experience everything unfortunately. In addition, the story is left on a massive cliffhanger, so while I'm excited to see what Halo 3 has to offer, it sucks that the story ended where I was super engaged.

I was repeatedly told that playing through this on heroic would be a mistake. "No worries, I played Halo: Combat Evolved on heroic! I'll be fine," I said, unaware of the cosmic horrors that would await me inside. However, despite my hardship I have navigated through the valley of death, and I have achieved inner clarity.

Playing this on heroic was a mistake.

(Played via anniversary on the Master Chief Collection)