Overwatch 2 Review: Heroes Sometimes Die

Overwatch’s explosive success can’t be understated. Even though it helped usher in loot boxes, its vibrant art style and personality-driven characters in the online arena helped inspire many others, but few could even come close to what Blizzard Entertainment established. The studio spent the following years honing that incredible debut before transitioning to Overwatch 2. While Blizzard is known to make even better sequels, Overwatch 2 is a bewilderingly misguided follow-up that loses sight of what made the original such an industry-shaking title.

Overwatch’s satisfying sense of teamwork is the first and biggest casualty in the second game. Overwatch 2 has taken the six-on-six format down to five-on-five by eliminating one tank on both teams. It’s seemingly a small change, but one that has drastic negative effects on the whole experience that are evident after only a few rounds.

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Tanks are meant to shield the team or soak up damage, so taking one away means that everyone else is just less protected. To compensate, Blizzard has buffed all the tanks to give them stronger abilities and more utility (and is a level of power creep that will likely have a negative effect in the long run). However, these buffs have made tanks even more akin to damage dealers than defensive tanks.

On the whole, fights are way more chaotic because of this shift. Team wipes happen much faster and battles have significantly less push and pull. Just one fallen teammate can cause the other four to die seconds later, robbing firefights of their tension. It peaks almost immediately and falls just as rapidly.

Abrupt team battles get even worse when zooming in. Even with the handful of useful new healer-specific user interface upgrades that provide better feedback, playing a support character in this atmosphere is a hostile and unfun experience since they are usually easy prey. Having one less tank to hide behind means it’s far too easy to get pounced on and instantly deleted. And since tanks have been rebalanced to be more offensive, the enemy tank is just one more damage dealer to look out for. Constant pandemonium means it’s often overwhelming to stay alive and dish out enough healing to offset the damage that would have previously been blocked or absorbed.

Players often complained about shooting barriers in the original game, and Blizzard responded by appropriately toning them down. Shields were still there, but not as durable. But fully eliminating one tank’s shield, morphing the whole class into something more combative, and entirely taking away one tank slot has had profoundly negative rippling effects throughout the whole game.

Team-oriented play with a healthy offensive and defensive mix was crucial to Overwatch’s unique pacing of peaks and valleys and belligerently moving away from that has led to a worse and less distinctive experience. Fast deaths and deemphasizing teamwork mean the game is conforming to more boring standards and isn’t why Overwatch excelled and attracted over 50 million players. By hamstringing Overwatch’s defensive half, Blizzard has perverted it to fit a style it was never designed for in Overwatch 2. Overly aggressive tanks and out-of-place heroes like Zenyatta are evidence of this ill-fitting switch, which, cynically, seems like it was made in order to make the Overwatch League more exciting.

Regardless of how much or little their abilities or roles have changed, the heroes are all still endearing and are brought to life through wildly charismatic and stylized animation. New intros on the selection screen, specific one-liners that trigger in certain rare scenarios, and matchup-specific voice lines sprinkle in more personality and further build out the roster of iconic and well-designed characters. Junker Queen, Sojourn, and Kiriko, the game’s three new heroes, fit in well, as they all have distinct attitudes, designs, and abilities that match Blizzard’s prior work.

Sojourn and Junker Queen are free for everyone, but Kiriko only unlocks instantly for those who had the first game or bought the battle pass and is a damning sign for the game down the line. Hitting level 55 in the battle pass is the only way to unlock her for free for new players, which is an absurd grind to tie to a gameplay-relevant feature. And since original Overwatch owners (currently) aren’t entitled to future heroes, the pool of characters is going to shift against those who don’t plunk down the cash or want to spend dozens of hours unlocking the newest addition.

Free-to-play games often charge for characters, but Overwatch has only previously given them away for free, so changing it now reverses one of the best features of the first game. The thrill of being able to try a new hero every few months is — barring a big change — going to be locked behind a payment or a sizable amount of matches. 

This hostage scenario is even more egregious when taking the monetization as a whole into account. Cosmetics are ridiculously expensive and are usually around $10 to $20 each. Blizzard has even taken seasonal skins from the first game and slapped obscenely high prices on them, which is a gross move that even more plainly highlights how radically the whole game was changed in order to be more easily milked.

Most games like this also provide a steady drip feed premium currency to ease the pain, but Overwatch 2 is laughably frugal. Players can only earn up to 60 premium coins a week by completing weekly challenges. The free and premium battle passes for the first season don’t even yield any coins at all. And since most skins cost anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 coins, it becomes a months-long Sisyphean effort to unlock just one new set of duds. Bringing in items from the first game and its cross-platform progression are two smart moves that make this only marginally more tolerable; a luxury that won’t be afforded to all players.

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Stingy unlock systems are just part of why Overwatch 2 is just a less rewarding experience overall. Regular matches hardly contribute anything to the battle pass. Endorsements and winning Play of the Game don’t add more points to it, either. Unlocks are few and far between. Portrait borders, the medal system, and voting for MVPs have been taken out, too. And although the voice lines remain, the “on fire” HUD elements have also been erased, so it’s harder to see who’s doing well and feel good after a sequence of clutch plays. Actually playing the game should be its own reward, but Overwatch 2 has taken many small steps to diminish in-game feedback and the surrounding elements that made the first title so welcoming.

Blizzard might overhaul the monetization and progression systems down the line in later seasons. But unless the studio reverts its unwise focus on individuality and five-on-five play, then Overwatch 2 will likely remain a disappointing and fundamentally unfulfilling game that has frustratingly taken the place of its vastly superior predecessor. What were once more tactical team brawls have devolved into blitzkrieg skirmishes that overly fixate on offense. It’s suffered a tragic loss of identity that has distorted one of the best and most unique online shooters into something more generic and incongruous with its original vision. Mercy always said that heroes never die, but they do when they’ve been corrupted so grotesquely. 

SCORE: 5/10

As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 5 equates to “Mediocre.” The positives and negatives wind up negating each other, making it a wash.

Disclosure: The critic downloaded the game for free on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch for our Overwatch 2 review. Reviewed on 1.000.001 and 1.0.62, respectively.

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