Overwatch 2 Review

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Overwatch had set a standard of what you should expect from hero shooters. However, years of development led to very little what developers can show for. Content which they did created is recycled, heavily cut down and outright poorly made. Title had awesome initial release with updates which somehow managed to make game worse as time fly by.

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Blizzard had announced PvE content for a sequel. While it doesn’t explain why we needed a sequel for that, it was acceptable to go to a different monetisation model and get tons of new content. However, what we ended up having is a lower quality game while missing PvE content. Instead Blizzard employees gave us whining how it is a lot of work. This what happens when you employ not on a basis of merit, but diversity. Nevertheless, I will review what people working from kindergarten for adults managed to achieve through years.

The greatest issue with this game is that developers promised us PvE content. It was not available at launch and later heavily cut down and even what little we received is in bad shape. It is bad not, because it is broken. It is bad, because it is painfully mediocre. What has become of Blizzard quality?

 

        Heroes

• The issue with missions is that they are limited to very few heroes. There is no reason for this limitation as there are no story elements with those heroes. They do not even talk anything worthwhile. It is decision which they had on paper to balance game mode, but in reality they did no balancing. Tracer for example was always high mobility – low damage carry. It fares exceptionally poorly when faced against PvE content where are a lot of auto-lock bullet sponges. She simply lacks DPS to be viable against other heroes. She also lacks survivability and sustainability. That is the worst part, because PvE game mode requires your team to send one hero to duel enemy elite for a repair core. While she is mobile, she simply lacks sustainability to be effective in this role. All of these issues could be resolved by augmenting her with talent trees, but alas, it is nowhere to be seen.
  
  Enemies
• It feels like a studio which is learning on a job and doesn’t have a lot of resources. Enemy variety is feeble. They are not memorable and their models are bad. Through missions you will be fighting same few enemy models which are made as an incredible bullet sponges and can dish out a lot of damage. It is just boring to play. Especially on highest difficulty settings where you feel like your entire team just has to exploit enemy AI with little room for free-style playing.
  
  Unfair
• In the end, content is poorly balanced and designed. One particular boss robot lady can just grab a tank, stun lock him for eternity and kill on its own. You can’t do anything. You can’t counterplay it. You must stand in front of her, be grabbed and hope that RNG doesn’t screw your team and they will figure out to focus her. On highest difficulty levels it is incredibly frustrating as there is little room for error and things like that can wipe your team when you almost completed your mission. Game developers added a boss with no counterplay which can wipe your entire run. It cannot be killed quickly enough. It cannot be dodged. It is just bad game design done by amateurs.
  
  Environments
• PvE content is made by individual missions. Those missions are isolated from each other. They are about irrelevant characters, goals and stories. It is in recycled environment from other maps. So, you will be fighting in relatively low detail maps which were optimised for player versus player combat. Few areas which are not available for PvP are directly connected to PvP map for transitions or start of a match. I cannot believe just how cheap Blizzard is to recycle the old content. It is very bland experience, equivalent of Free to Play games where they try to create new content on same maps by just changing few variables or adding few models. To make it worse, they are charging 40 euros for this. For low effort PvE content which otherwise is available for free. What you get is just recycled old, bland terrain with nothing interesting in it. Just pay and enjoy what you played for years…

I gave a short look to PvP and monetisation of this game. It would not be bad if not for the fact that Blizzard destroyed large parts of their old content only to reintroduce it with a sequel. Or that stuff they did are so mediocre that it is something which any generic company could have done. Long gone is Blizzard premium feel. Only nostalgic fools are left to be milked.

 

        PvP

• New Flash Conflict game mode seems to be fun. You go to fight for one point then location for a point changes and you have to run to the different place on a map to fight for it too. It is a nice, casual game mode. It is not very competitive, but I did enjoyed more randomness and less meta in my games. That is sadly the only thing which I genuinely enjoyed from this sequel.
  
  Monetisation
• With change of monetisation model comes battlepass. Personally, I do not mind it, because it doesn’t impact me and there are countless other, worse ways to monetise your game. However, Blizzard managed to ♥♥♥♥ it up. First of all, what is available in battlepass is very generic. A lot of stuff is just a filler and battlepass is expensive. Even if I would want to spend money on this game, rewards are simply not here. It is a low effort content designed to extract the maximum amount of money for the least amount of work and it shows.
  
  The greatest offence is that they monetise heroes in a PvP game. This is very bad, because it prevents people from freely picking heroes in a match which might be most optimal. It also opens a can of worms about OP paid heroes. While I’m not aware of it being a real problem at the moment, but this is a very bad path to go and people are well within their right to protest.
  
  Monetising bad PvE content
• My other complaint is just how expensive everything is. Blizzard made bad PvE content. It is just few missions long. They did not made any eco-system to make people want to engage in it. No meaningful rewards. No achievements. No community support for hardest PvE missions. Nothing. However, they charge exuberant amounts of money for it.

While Overwatch 2 doesn’t deserve as bad of a rating it has on Steam. It is however an expression of people’s hate. They once loved Blizzard and Overwatch, but that love was abused and taken for granted. Thus it turned into anger. Sadly, I do not see Overwatch 2 as a result of top management mismanagement. I see that Blizzard simply lost all of its talent over the years due to one or other thing. These people were replaced by leftist, woke individuals. Thus naturally, they cannot be as productive or talented as old crew. Seeing people behind this project and other Blizzard projects for me it is crystal clear that company had lost its talent to produce gem after gem like they did once upon the time. The old king is dead. Blizzard had fallen in Icecrown Citadel and now only petty pretenders and usurpers to the throne remain.

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