The game is neat and I didn't mind the story all that much but let me ask you this WHY ARE THE POLICE CHASES IN THIS GAME SO HARD???

I GOT CAUGHT EVERYTIME

THEY RE INSANE

Overwatch 2, despite its title, is an update, and the studio has not kept that secret to no one ever since they announced it would go free to play in October 2022, directly updating from Overwatch 1... However, it is the best, most spot-on patch notes I've ever seen.

First, I want to let this clear - I fully understand why people hate Activision Blizzard, I not only agree but also incentivize people to criticize and even boycott any of their work. But also, I can't lie that, when the art and media resonate with you, it’s hard to be fully distant and unengaged with it, and much as morally reprehensive can it be.

Especially in the case of Overwatch - that finds itself in its best form yet.

I have many praises, so I will start with how the studio heavily decreased the focus on counter picking in the game. In Overwatch 1, characters were MADE to be better than others, which was perhaps the most stupid idea I've ever seen in a videogame; you could be performing very well with the Paper character, but if your opponent performs averagely at best with the Scissor character, you'll be losing so much worth and utility in the match that genuinely feels like you're just trolling if you keep using that character.

That is not entirely removed in Overwatch 2, but heavily decreased; EVERY SINGLE character in the game was reworked in a way that they felt more natural to play with and more fun to fight against.

Prime example of that is our favorite Cowboy Mr. Blacklivesmatter, who previously had a stun bomb that totally removed your control and momentum, and could one shot you easily with his M2, that unloads all of his ammo at once, killing absolutely everything that was not a Tank, on the spot. Meaning that it didn't matter how well that player aimed or positioned: if he was close to someone, he won, end of story. Now, he has easy to land sticky bomb, which deals a ton of damage, but not only it can be healed and removed with the right character, but also means that both players have to be aware of their position in the duel, even if he has advantage on you, you can more easily work around him, and eventually win. I distinctly remember winning almost every duel against Blacklivesmatter with my favorite boy Lúcio, who used to be his hardest counter, because he couldn't just hide on shields and stun me every time I got close anymore.

He cannot do that anymore because one Tank was removed, turning the game into a 5v5 team battle, which I still am not entirely sure of what I feel about it, but mostly I feel better. Tanks were far away the best class in the game, they not only had a lot of life and incredibly relevant abilities, but they also killed just as fast as any DPS, half of them having easy one shot combos; so at times, DPS and Support characters could just be a Damage/Healing bot to the tanks, and the matches would win by themselves --- In the other hand, they also felt incredibly boring to play, if you were in a bad match. By removing one of them, battles feel way less overwhelming, in the sense of preoccupying with unkillable units that can kill you in 1.7 seconds, and you feel more in touch in fights, because you can't just be a minion to them anymore, you have to be more creative and daring with your approaches to battles, and that to me feels so much better.

Not forgetting how the Tanks are way more fun to play, because now that they are alone, they made them absolutely busted and self-sustainable, a Raid boss in it of itself, which forces you to actually engage in fighting the other characters in interesting duels, before finishing off that Tank (Also, there are more cover on most levels, so you'll hardly miss a shield or protective bubble when you are fleeing for your life).

Through these changes, two others extremely frustrating aspects of Overwatch 1 were almost completely solved: The amount of Crowd Control abilities, and the extremely low TTK.

Half of the Overwatch 1 cast had Crowd Control abilities, or be it, an ability that can stun characters and stop momentum. This was made in a way that made the slowest, more boots on the ground characters be able to compete against the lunatic ninjas and frogs. It is a bit suspect of me to say that, as a Lúcio/Pharah main myself, but that felt like fucking garbage, like, "break your table in frustration" type of garbage. Imagine having a lot of fun travelling through the level, after learning and mastering the traversal skills of your characters, and all of that enjoyment being thrown at the garbage the second somebody presses the no fun button at you, then kill you in the spot, punishing you for playing with the character you like.

Almost everybody lost that ability, no stun grenade for Cassidy, no Freeze status for Mei, no Shield Bash for Brigitte. Substituted by relevant, but less crowd control-y abilities, like the Sticky Grenade for Cassidy, the Slow down for Mei and the big damage from Briggite's new Shield Bash.

One thing to pay attention about all of these characters, is that all of them had one shot combos, 2 of them not being all that hard to make. So, with 6 characters in your opponent’s team roaming around, with a high chance of most of them having Crowd Control abilities or One-shot combos (some both at once), made the TTK unbearably low. Any semblance of creativity and fun different approaches was met with my character immediately dead on the ground, with the game almost screaming at me “YOU WERE COUNTERED, SWAP THE CHARACTER YOU LIKE SO THAT YOU MAY HAVE A CHANCE TO WIN”.

And, after playing Overwatch 2 incessantly in the last 3 days... I haven’t felt something anywhere close to that.

It actually saddens me a lot that such an amazing work by the game designers are being completely eclipsed by the history of the garbage company they work with, the abysmal marketing campaign the game received, and the unusually unprepared servers on launch day that frustrated even more the experience.

Because now, I feel like I can experiment, I feel like I can have duels, I feel like I matter in a match, I feel like I’m having fun.

And by God, believe me when I say this, it already makes a distinctly different experience than Overwatch 1.