A slightly simplified real-time strategy gaming experience perfect for Xbox One but still highly playable for Windows 10 PC gamers looking for fast and frantic multiplayer skirmishes with keyboard and mouse. Also a worthy narrative addition to the Halo franchise.

If you've played the games that this current rendition stems from, you'd know that it wasn't the most compelling or cohesive RTS you've ever played. That said, is was still one of the benchmarks for the genre to come from a studio that hasn't done RTS for console before.

Frantic gameplay | Multiplayer madness | Intriguing storyline | Marvelous cut scenes

Short campaign | Slightly difficult control scheme | Some odd bugs

i love the game and its just like halo wars. !!!!love it!!!!!!

Halo Wars 2 is the best RTS you can play on consoles today. Whether you're a Halo lore junky looking to toy around with the campaign or a competitive RTS player looking for intense multiplayer matches, you can't do much better than this.

After the crew of the UNSC warship Spirit of Fire wakes up from a quarter-century cryogenic nap, they discover that humanity's war against the Covenant has ended. Stranded a galaxy from home, the crew responds to an emergency beacon only to encounter a bloodthirsty faction of the Covenant known as...

Rebuild and reclaim different areas as you race to stop a brand new enemy who is hell bent on wiping you out.

Diluvion is in that most tragic class of disappointing game: the kind with great ideas. There's so much to love and appreciate on the surface that the game's profound awkwardness and convoluted mechanics just hurt to experience.

Beautiful; painterly art styles; in 2D and 3D; Well-conceived setting; Wonderful soundtrack; Teeming with moody atmosphere

Confusing controls; Troubled navigation system; Combat seems to rely more on luck than skill; Too reliant on fetch quests

The Halo franchise is an odd one. The original trilogy was loved by the fans, be it for the hugely entertaining multiplayer content (Halo 2 is arguably the reason why Xbox Live initially succeeded) or

Accessible gameplay; but depth is there for veterans of RTS games; Story is great; for both fans and newcomers alike; Looks and sounds gorgeous; Blitz mode is a unique multiplayer addition; Skirmish modes against AI offer almost infinite replayability

Controls can still be an issue when things get hectic; Story sometimes feels like a setup for another game

2009's Halo Wars was perhaps the only game on a console to get real-time strategy right. It was made specifically for the Xbox, and the developers went in knowing that certain PC real-time strategy conventions would have to be sacrificed for it to work right.

Halo Wars 2 feels like the relic of two different histories. On the one side you'd find the real-time strategy genre, a collection of games that found a brief period of big-budget dominance on the PC and occasionally ventured onto consoles.