In Halo Wars 2, players construct a base of operations, accumulate resources to produce infantry and vehicle units, and command their armies from a bird's-eye view of the battlefield.

Reviewers thought the game was very approachable for beginners, but felt it needed more strategic depth to appeal to experienced RTS players.

Halo Wars 2 is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game, in which players command armies from a bird's-eye view of the battlefield.

[2][8] Each mission presents main objectives that involve capturing points, defending bases, or surviving waves of enemies,[1] and often require players to lead Spartan units around the map.

[1] A secondary campaign lets players control Banished forces in a battle against parasitic alien life forms known collectively as the Flood.

[14][15] Captain James Cutter (Gideon Emery), Professor Anders (Faye Kingslee),[8] and the rest of the crew wake from cryonic sleep at the Ark, a Forerunner installation capable of manufacturing large ringworlds known as Halos.

[4][16] Isabel (Erika Soto) is a UNSC logistics AI operating at a research facility on the Ark when an alien faction called the Banished invades.

The attacking carrier is destroyed when Isabel and Jerome hijack its weapon systems to prompt the Sentinels stationed on the Ark to shatter it in two.

Desperate for more supplies, Atriox orders the brothers Voridus and Pavium to search near the ruins of the former Covenant holy city of High Charity for salvage.

The pair activate a drill to propagate natural disasters and hold the Flood at bay temporarily while Voridus leads a handful of troops into a Sentinel base to reactivate the defense network.

[19][22] The studio had considered creating an RTS for console and PC for a long time, so the prospect of working on Halo Wars 2 was viewed as a perfect opportunity.

[25] While Creative Assembly is a PC-centric developer, staff from the Alien: Isolation team were able to provide experience in producing games for consoles.

[3] Creative Assembly thought the game needed more artillery units capable of performing long range attacks, however there were currently no suitable vehicles in the Halo universe.

[29] 343 Industries had initially considered supporting cross-platform play between Windows and Xbox One devices but the feature was ultimately excluded from the game at launch.

The development team wanted to streamline mechanics, such as base building and resource management, which players typically viewed as being complex and intimidating.

[4] This decision also opened a narrative thread in Halo Wars 2, in which the returning characters are placed in an unfamiliar universe with outdated technology.

[16] Grace cited the Arbiter as a great example of a character who was unique within his species; he noted that this trait was applied to the Brutes with the creation of Atriox.

[31] To subvert the notion that Brutes are just the "dumb muscle" of the Covenant, they wanted to present him as a smart commander who takes advantage of the alliance's collapse.

[17] 343 Industries explained that alterations to the appearance of returning characters were a result of upgraded technology, the use of performance capture, and casting new actors.

[36] Two open multiplayer betas ran during the production of Halo Wars 2 so the development team could gather data and make adjustments based on community feedback.

[10][37] Changes made to game following the betas included resolving connectivity issues, tuning the gameplay, and adjusting the control scheme and user interface.

[41][42] For example, the track "Run Little Demons" made use of tribal drums, electronic percussion, and heavy brass to capture the dread and terror induced by Atriox and the Banished.

[44] At Gamescom in August 2015, Microsoft Studios announced Halo Wars 2 for Windows PCs and the Xbox One video game console.

[4][33] At RTX 2016, 343 Industries revealed a teaser of the in-game cinematics, illustrating Spirit of Fire's arrival at the Ark and Spartan supersoldiers encountering the Banished.

[60] Following the launch of Halo Wars 2, a demo, featuring the campaign's opening mission and the Blitz Firefight mode, was released on the Xbox One and Windows.

[67] In late October 2017, Halo Wars 2 received a number of visual enhancements for the Xbox One X. Additionally, cross-platform play between console and PC was enabled.

[2] Rock, Paper, Shotgun was also concerned about the restrictions on base building initially, however they became fond of the idea after playing the game for some time.

[1][2][72][74] In some cases they still regarded the gamepad as a suboptimal control method, largely due to the nature of analog sticks being imprecise in comparison to a mouse.

[2][72][73][7] The unresponsive minimap, unintuitive default keybindings, and unfitting radial menus were highlighted as problems with the mouse and keyboard controls.

[2] Despite believing that there was potential for an interesting backstory with Atriox and the Banished, Eurogamer viewed the motives of the faction in the campaign as being too similar to the Covenant, which consequently made the story feel like it was retreading familiar territory.