Overwatch 2 on PC
Real talk: my feelings and thoughts on Overwatch 2 have definitely been a bit of a rollercoaster ride since the initial beta with Sojourn. Things started out pretty positive as I’d just been glad to be back on the Overwatch hype train again, then that hype took a nosedive with the Junker Queen beta when I realized how much shorter the time-to-kill was. Look, it’s no secret that I’m awful at competitive shooters, and dying within seconds always feels bad especially when you can’t even react.
Having spent a lot more time with the game over the past couple weeks during the review period, and having gone back to Overwatch 1 in that time as well, my overall feelings on the game have taken yet another u-turn. What I’m trying to say is that as a lapsed Overwatch player who sunk hundreds of hours into Competitive mode before finally deciding that game had run its course, this has been a confusing journey, but I’ll do my best to articulate everything that Overwatch 2 got right and wrong in this review.
The biggest foundational change made in Overwatch 2 is the shift to 5v5 from 6v6 matchups. And not only that, but we’re also taking a tank out of the equation. The impact that this has had on the way the game plays and feels is immediate; fights go by much quicker as once you take out a tank, that encounter is usually over.
My initial complaint with this change was that Overwatch 2 seemed to be moving more towards the competitive FPS scene, and if you weren’t getting kills for your team, then you probably weren’t contributing much overall. That feeling had been exacerbated by the release of Junker Queen, who felt more like a damage dealer rather than a tank. However, while I’m still not a fan of the newer heroes having a larger focus on DPS, it’s clear that dropping a tank has helped to make Overwatch 2 matches a lot more dynamic.
Going back to Overwatch this past weekend, I was instantly reminded of one of the reasons why I had fallen off the game in the first place. Overwatch was largely dominated by tank and shield metas, making it frustratingly difficult to get kills, as tanks could easily recharge their shields to keep protecting their teammates and prolong the fight. This is the same game that spawned the triple tank meta in the Overwatch League for a period of time, and those matches weren’t just boring to watch, they were boring to play against.
“The faster paced nature of the game feels electrifying.”
Longer matches due to how long it takes to even wear down a shield to get kills isn’t exciting gameplay, and Overwatch 2’s shift to 5v5 helps to alleviate that issue a lot. Being able to take down a tank quickly is immensely satisfying, and the faster paced nature of the game feels electrifying as a result.
On a personal note, faster matches also make those losses sting a little less, since you can quickly hop into a new one and start all over again. I’ve spent many a night in 2016 and 2017 laboring over tough losses in matches that dragged on for 20 minutes, and those were heartbreaking. “It’s supposed to be hard,” I’d tell myself, crying, as I quoted Tom Hanks from A League of Their Own. “The hard is what makes it great.” No, Tom. Sometimes the hard just gets in the way of a casual player’s fun video game experience.
It certainly also helps that a lot of the heroes feel incredibly balanced in Overwatch 2 right now. It’ll be a little while before the community as a whole decides whether Kiriko is overtuned or not (my early impressions say nah), but right now, most heroes seem to be in a pretty good spot. Every role comes with a passive ability now that enable them to perform better; tanks take reduced knockback and give lesser ult charge to foes who damage them, DPS characters get a movement buff, while supports get automatic health regen.
“It’s exciting to go up against a variety of heroes in each match.”
All the role passives are pretty fantastic, allowing tanks to lean more into being the team shield, while supports are slightly less squishy. Damage dealers have definitely benefited the most from the movement buffs as well, and pretty much every DPS hero feels viable. There are some exceptions, of course, as Genji has become even deadlier with increased speed, but Overwatch 2’s meta feels healthy at the moment, and it’s exciting to go up against a variety of heroes in each match.
With Overwatch 2, a lot of team compositions and strategies still revolve around picking and counter-picking, but it rarely ever feels like a match is won or lost based on the heroes you picked anymore. This can be a good or bad thing, depending on what you liked about the original Overwatch, and with Blizzard opting to lock new heroes behind the Battle Pass, this could be a positive for free-to-play users. More on the Battle Pass later.
Now don’t get me wrong. If you’re having trouble against an enemy team’s Pharah, you’re probably still gonna wanna switch to a hitscan DPS hero like Soldier to deal with her. That said, with the introduction of role passives and small tweaks here and there to various hero abilities, the balance in Overwatch 2 feels good at the moment. If I lost a match to an enemy Pharah, it wasn’t because we didn’t counter-pick against her; it was more likely because our team as a whole just didn’t deal with her and let her run loose.
If you liked the concept of constantly switching heroes mid-match to outplay your opponents, then this change likely won’t sit well with you. Personally, I liked that the flow of a match in Overwatch could completely change whenever someone swapped characters and we were forced to counter-pick against that to advance. It made things exciting, but with heroes being potentially locked behind a paywall or hours of grind for the foreseeable future, this is a change that helps even out the playing field a little.
Speaking of the Battle Pass, I’m not a fan. I’d mentioned in my preview that new heroes would be locked behind tier 55 of the Battle Pass, and it takes a huge time commitment to get up to that level. During the review period, Blizzard unlocked the premium track for members of the press, which meant that I got a 20% experience boost for the Battle Pass as well. Even with that boost, it still took me about two weeks to get to the 20s, and I can only imagine how much longer it’ll take F2P players to reach 55.
While Overwatch 2 seems to be moving away from counter-picking by making all heroes feel more viable, there’s always the concern that future heroes could end up being meta-defining, and locking them behind the Battle Pass like this would only serve to alienate F2P players. Season 1’s hero, Kiriko, is extremely fun to play and while she certainly doesn’t seem game-breaking or anything like that, we can’t necessarily say the same for her successors.