A very OK game, which is apparently the greatest sin for anything to ever commit. Where's the fire here? The gameplay and story are completely serviceable, even if they lack innovation and tend to feel a bit too familiar to other games, and is definitely fun to play and explore lore and combat scenarios with a friend. Sure, its got some performance issues or whatever, but at its core this game is completely fine. Fun can and will be had. Impossible for anything with a reference to The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya to be bad, few will understand this.

Total Hours: 1938 (1536 from Xbox One and 402 from PlayStation 4)
Average Skill Rating: 3226

Unfortunately, a game that I like quite a lot. From the time I started playing it to now when the game is being completely reworked and essentially deleted, I have seen this game in almost all of its possible permutations. Some were fun (I liked GOATS, pre-role queue had some sauce (sometimes), dive) some were not fun (Grav/Dragons, Brigitte pre-nerf, double-shield) but I think overall I did enjoy my experience with this game. It was fun to be able to apply mechanical skill to a video game and have it generally reward your progress, I climbed from mid-gold to high-diamond in the course of a few years, and this experience can be further applied to other games and experiences. This, along with Cuphead, was the main reason why I bought a console for the first time in nearly 8 years, and a next gen one at that with the Xbox One. I wasn't super interested in games around the latter half of my high school years, but after moving away for college it was nice to be able to hop on the console to play with some friends. This game has undoubtedly brought me closer to many of my friends, and while that could be said of any game anyone puts time into, this is the one I spent the most time with so it will always have a special place in my heart. Many of the hours I have spent with this game have been either goofing, slaying, or just chilling which is made much easier to do with the insane amount of custom lobbies and game modes. Some of my fondest memories revolve around coming home from college during Christmas break and playing a bunch of winter-themed maps or grinding legendary runs of Archives events and I am so glad such a quality game could bring me these moments.

...Even if at your best it is sometimes impossible to win a match, or people become understandably very frustrated with the game and smurf or throw constantly, or if people abuse overpowered techniques that Blizzard were slow to rework (remember scatter arrow?), where it's really about a 60/40 split to whether or not you can really truly change the course of the game by your own performance alone in a team-based shooter. This game certainly requires a huge amount of co-operation that I am not sure most people who play this game are entirely interested in, even in competitive game modes, and I don't think the game fosters a fanbase that generally is "with" the meta and the rewards it can bring. It kinda stinks being railroaded into using only the best characters, a fact which ironically eased up a whole lot after the game was left to dry to make the next one instead of constantly tweaking the meta. I think overall this game is highly selective in terms of the kind of people who will really love it, as it is not nearly as open-ended and full of choice as it would like to be, nor did it make ample enough attempts to cultivate a more experimental approach to engaging objective design.

It's certainly a shame this game won't be preserved in this exact state anymore as the much faster pace of the Overwatch 2 betas have shown me. I enjoyed the vast majority of my time with this game and I am glad that something as generally harmless and expertly functional as this could bring me the best (and sometimes worst) experiences of socializing in gaming that one can have. This game will always represent strengthening friendships and interests with my like-minded friends, and I will ways love it for that, frustrating and fundamental flaws and all.