Titanfall 2 greatly expands upon the strengths of the first Titanfall game and was nothing of what I was expecting from the open beta. It actually feels like Titanfall again, well at least the multiplayer in the game.

The campaign is the highlight of most advertisements and trailers and definitely deserves its spotlight. I can not express enough how much better the game has become because of the new single player campaign, and while it’s not spectacular it does its job very well. The game starts off with the tutorial from the open beta and is very well done. I’ve spent hours trying to get the fastest time in the gauntlet and have managed to make it very close.

The surprise was that it takes your first run on the gauntlet and evaluates your performance and suggests a difficulty for you. I ended up getting hard difficulty, and i’m glad that I chose it. Like I said earlier it’s nothing spectacular, as its only 6-7 hours on hard difficulty. Master is about 8-10 hours, medium is 5-6, and easy is 4-5.

What I love about the game is its decision making system. While simple, it shows that Respawn Entertainment is experimenting for Titanfall 3. The game itself hints to a possible new plot and in certain sections it seems almost like a Telltale game, as what you do in previous events greatly affects where you are presently. Although short lived, the experiment is a nice sign of the things to come. Titanfall 3 was hinted at greatly in the last mission of the game and while it was sequel bait, it was very well done sequel bait. The ending of your conflict with the main protagonists who, surprisingly aren’t the IMC for the whole time, has an ending that can be interpreted several different ways. This adds for an interesting plot in the third game as people won’t be able to clearly decipher the ending of the game right at the start.

Speaking of our IMC friends, you find out very early that the man in charge of the planet you first land on is General Marder, and he wants the remaining Militia forces on the planet to surrender. To be honest, that’s about it, the only other info you find out about him is through the factions system in the multiplayer. The paragraph of info you get is quite a bit lackluster, and only tells that his intentions are to destroy the Militia as their presence is the main thing stopping humanities expansion in the frontier. His voice lines show a darker side however, as “Human life is expendable” in a heavy German accent gives some Nazi vibes that sorta creep me out.

Marder has a lot of potential and is greatly under-used and I hope that he gets quite a bit of a spotlight in the next game, as he would make a very interesting villain in that universe.

Boss fights also seem very lackluster, especially the last one, due mostly to a titan named Legion. He is incredibly over-powered and with his smart-core, (smart gun) I was able to rip through 3 regular titans helping the final boss and the final boss itself without a scratch. The only battles I seemed to have difficulty with were Richter, who provides a very nice Arnold Schwarzenegger accent and reference, Viper and Kane. The boss fights were in well designed arenas and had an interesting challenge for all the loadouts you have at that time and point in the game. The loadouts you acquire in game are such a great idea! It allows people who aren’t as confident in multiplayer or don’t want to do the grind for the higher tier titans to try out everything they like and removes the grinding.

  This was a very clever move by the devs, and isn’t overpowered during the campaign at all. However they lack the same ingenuity with the pilot loadouts, as there are none in the campaign. The only ability you have the whole time is a shortened version of cloak, and that’s it. With as many abilities as the multiplayer has you would think that it would be a good idea to implement them into the campaign, but apparently the devs think otherwise. This goes into the class system of the multiplayer and with 7 to work towards, it’s a lot of grinding. This may turn people off and negatively affect the game’s multiplayer because of the lack of a “try before you buy” mechanic with pilot classes.

The multiplayer is where the game shines the most, it feels like actual Titanfall whilst keeping the game different and new, maps are varied and well designed, the titans play great and are mostly balanced at release, and the new mechanics make the game very interesting. Problems with weapon balance have seemed to completely disappear and new weapons, while a bit lackluster right now, provide a fun challenge to work for. The gameplay is very smooth on both console and PC, and so far i’ve only experienced one crash. The only downside to the multiplayer is how hard it is to get back on track after you start to do bad, as I have experienced many times in the past months. The way that the devs have decided to do nerfs is my favorite part of all of this, they don’t tell you the exact stats or nerfs that they implement they just want you to feel it and see if it works. This prevents expectations and a negative attitude before you get to actually play and experience it yourself. This is one of the smartest moves from a group of devs that i’ve ever seen, and gives me so much respect for Respawn and their dev team.

This game gets a very solid 8/10 and I encourage everyone, whether or not you have been able to play the first game to go buy it. The game is worth every bit of your money and has fallen into a bit of a bad spot with both Battlefield 1 and COD infinite warfare, and needs your help. Support this game and support Respawn Entertainment, as a company that listened to what we wanted and gave us exactly that, may not show up for quite some time again.