REVIEW: Overwatch 2 is a good “more of the same”

On the 4th of October (October), we finally had the launch of Overwatch 2 for major platforms. As expected, those who thought the game would be “the same game, part 2” aren’t completely wrong, as the new game is basically a big game. patch for the first game, full of news in maps, visual identity and the way the game will sell itself now that it's free.

First contact with Overwatch 2

I was not one of the people who managed to play the game in versions Alfa e Beta, so I went through all the struggle of the game's launch week. The game, as I mentioned, was released on October 4th, and on that day, he was UNPLAYABLE.

For some reason, the Blizzard seems not to have noticed that the “continuation” of a game like Overwatch would bring in not only new players but also most of the veterans who have lost interest over the years. To make matters worse, the company suffered from several DDoS attacks on servers on launch day.

Over the course of the week, I managed to log into the game a few times, but without being able to merge my accounts, so it was like I was playing the game for the first time, without my characters, skins, golden weapons and the like. It was three days with the game completely buggy until, at the end of the week, things started to settle down and I managed to play for real.

Because it is “a major update” of the first game, all the cosmetics of those who already played were migrated to this new version. And yes, we had a lot of issues with that at launch too. The ideal would be to enter the game, accept the connection of the accounts and that's it, all the cosmetics would come back. In practice, there were three days of queues, characters being blocked and unblocked for no reason and this image here:

What has changed in Overwatch 2

When the second game was announced, I found it all very strange. After all, the first game was going through a bad phase in which the characters were all unbalanced, the search for a game was slow and I believe that not even the Blizzard knew a lot about what to do there. However, it did not mean that a new game was needed to “fix” the first one.

At the end of the day, we were introduced to a new cooperative mode that we haven't seen the face of yet and that would bring news to the title, with a story, a unique system of perks and much more. With the release of the game, what happened was that we had a great call update Overwatch 2 and this one, after several attempts in the first game, brought significant changes.

The first big change is in the composition of the teams. Now, instead of six team members, we have five, with two supports, two DPS (DAMAGE characters) and a TANK. At first I thought that this idea would be a shot in the foot, but after I managed to play, I noticed that it made the teams think better about strategies, whether attacking or defending — even though I only played with people who don't care about it. team.

Another point that received an interesting change was the characters. Some of them were extremely powerful and game breaking. Orisa has been reworked in every way, with new abilities, and has now become one of the main TANKS of the game. doomfist it was an extremely broken DPS that single-handedly decimated a team. From now on he is in the TANKs category as well and, although he is still not the best in the category, he seems to have fit in better that way.

However, we still have serious problems involving the Moira, for example, a support character who never quite fit in. She has always been troublesome for not doing her job properly and doing much more damage than healing. That hasn't changed much around here.

As a novelty, we have three characters, the TANK Junker Queen, the DPS sojourn and SUPPORT It's there, the latter unlocked through the Battle Pass. Watch Kiriko's animated short:

The Battle Pass and Microtransactions

Being a trend in the gaming market, even more so now that the game has become free-to-play, Blizzard decided to implement the Battle Pass em Overwatch. being a player of Fortnite, I admit I like the idea. However, the way this was implemented in the Blizzard game is not the best. The value to purchase Pass it's relatively more expensive than the competition's games and as much as they have several cool items in it, not offering any kind of monetary reward in the game is a hell of a shot in the foot.

I say this because in games like Fortnite and even Warzone, once you buy the Battle Pass, if you don't spend the coins on items from the store, you'll always have enough to buy the next one without having to spend a penny more. Here in Overwatch we don't have that and everything is extremely expensive. The pass costs around R$40 and the characters' clothes almost R$100, very high prices.

The argument that this would be “fair” due to the fact that the game is free now could even stick in other eras, but currently it only seems like consumer exploitation. The already mentioned Warzone is an example of a game that has its “coins” in a similar value. However, the items in the store are always filled, in addition to having packs where you pay the amount of R$78, equivalent to 2400 coins, with a character, weapon skin and others and still earn another 2400 coins, making your purchase worth it. but worth it.

This brings us to the point that, however random the system of loot boxes were in Overwatch, it worked much better with the public. After all, even if you didn't get any of the event items in the crates, you could always accumulate coins by playing and buy whatever items you wanted when they became available again.

What makes the situation worse about the new microtransaction system is that, regardless of when the items were released, if it is one of the “legendary” type, it will have a value of 1900 coins – also known as R$92 –, even though it is 2, 3 or 4 years ago. And as I mentioned, the game used to reward you with coins when you play, but now the only way is to spend our hard-earned money. You can even earn some coins by doing weekly missions, but it's so little that the effort isn't worth it.

For comparison, legendary items cost 1900 coins and these quests are not cumulative, so if you don't complete them within 7 days, you've already lost 60 coins for that week. And oh, if you have accumulated a lot of coins in the previous game, know that you will be able to spend it here, but only with selected items, not including the coolest things from events, for example.

Finally, the Pass has 80 main levels, but it is full of items that are not so important until level 200. The progress of the levels is ok and not as slow as in Warzone; if you decide to buy it, you get a bonus XP.

I believe that, over time, this issue of microtransactions will balance out in values ​​and the game will offer more incentives to players, both to buy items and to buy the pass. For now, I think it's simply unfeasible and a lot of exploration.

Game Modes

I mentioned briefly that the game now has 5 players on each team, instead of 6, as it was before. In practice, this creates a much more interesting window of possibility, at least in the time I've been able to play so far.

Currently, the game has free game modes - quick game by function or open -, mysterious heroes, in which you always play with a character given by the game at random and fight to the death, the famous kill Kill.

No competitive — which I still haven't had the courage to test in the second game —, as in the first game, we have ratings ranging from bronze until the Top 500, going through the classifications talk, gold, platen, Diamond, mestre e Grand Master on this journey. You can play in both role-play and open queue mode as well.

There is still the way arcade which is where we have the most fun side of the game, always with playlists of games with a specific map or mode, low gravity “mods” among others. The last two options are custom games e training. In the former, you can explore a range of user-created modes, create your own game, or take time to gather your friends. The second, you have access to the tutorial, training ground and even a simulation against the characters, controlled by the game's AI.

Even keeping the game modes of the first game, Overwatch 2 brings with it some maps and some of them bring a new game mode. One of them is the map called Coliseum and the idea of ​​this new type of map is similar to a tug of war. We have a robot in the middle of the scenario and the two teams have to face each other and see who can take the robot the furthest. If your team takes the robot to the end, or goes the furthest until the end of time, you will be the winner.

Visual appearance and dubbing

Because it's a "continuation", it was expected that there would be graphic and visual changes, right? In fact, I felt that there were no improvements in effects, explosions and the graphics in general. What has changed, however, is the setting of some maps, changing the time of day, direction of the Sun and other details that bring a novelty aspect to the game, such as the HUD.

Also, all the characters from the “first game” had their look reworked. The new designs only apply when you choose these versions and this is a very positive point. All the characters that received this new face were very well done and, as usual, we have an excellent voice acting here.

Practically the entire cast of the first game has returned. Everything that was present in Overwatch It's still here, but we have more interactions, new lines, and new characters. Even some voices have changed, such as Ana e Mercy.

In other cases, we have the same voices, but with a different timbre, as in the case of Brigitte. This could be maybe because of the studios home-office still being implemented with many actors and actresses.

Worth it?

In these cases, people would say “for free, even a shot in the forehead” and while that even makes a bit of sense, I believe this is not a good excuse to treat the game with disdain or turn it into the most anti-consumer thing. possible.

The game was just released and it wasn't a good launch, but compared to what we had in the last few years of the first game, we've already had considerable improvements in character balance and in the game's lifespan.

The real problem with the new game is the new microtransaction system, which doesn't offer anything really interesting and is way too expensive. I hope they rework this issue, offering more items and even coins as rewards for Battle Passes in the future, but honestly, I have my doubts. You can download the game for free at official website of the same and in the main platforms, such as PlayStation, Xbox and even in Nintendo Switch.

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