Set in Dream Pod 9's Heavy Gear universe, the game was developed and published by Activision in 1999 for Microsoft Windows; it was ported to Linux in 2000 by Loki Software.

An atrocity caused by the New Earth Concordat (NEC) — the destruction of the Badlands city of Peace River by an antimatter bomb — leads to a formal cease-fire between the Northern and Southern Leagues.

The Heavy Gear II team was a newly formed group within Activision, composed of some of the best and brightest employees that the firm had available, each of whom had experience working on several 3D games previously.

[6] By targeting only video card equipped machines, Heavy Gear II could feature more units on screen and greater environmental detail.

[9] Offloading the visual rendering to dedicated video cards allowed for CPU cycles to be freed up for other uses such as AI systems.

The team underestimated the work needed to produce a demo, and did not factor in costs involved with employee turnover into their original schedule.

[11][12] As Heavy Gear II uses Microsoft's proprietary Direct3D API for graphical rendering, Loki had to port this to OpenGL in order for it to run on Linux.

NextGen described the game as "a big, splendid mech sim, with lots of depth and excellent balance between action and strategy".

[26] PC Zone echoed similar sentiments, calling it "a commendable stab at creating a balanced blend of strategy and all-out bot-blasting action".

GameSpot described the graphics as being "very impressive, with detailed, heavily articulated gears and vehicles, natural-looking fauna [and] vivid landscapes".

[23] Maximum PC described the engine as "gorgeous", praising it for providing "sharply rendered mechs and terrain details, as well as eye-popping explosions that light up the landscape" and other graphical effects.

[23] PC Zone stated it was "a joy to give birth to these new creations and see them succeed in the task they were created for", in regards to the Gear customisation process.

[24] Linux Journal looked at it from the other direction though, pointing out that once mastered, "the payoff, however, is extraordinary; the level of control a player has in HG2 is amazing".

Mark Asher of CNET Gamecenter called these figures "pretty awful" and remarked that it "has to be a major disappointment for Activision".