Five years - five long years. That's how long it took us to get Aliens Fireteam Elite 2...
Spent a while debating whether I wanted to leave a review. To be honest, a lot of other reviews have said what I wanted to say. So I'll keep it short.
I really, really want to give FTE2 a good review - I do. I loved the first game and was so pumped to get my hands on this one. Unfortunately this won't be the case. I'll list my personal pros and cons below:
PROS:
- Xenomorphs, they never get boring.
- Weapons feel pretty good. Every weapon feels different than the other - give or take a few.
- Fantastic class crafting. The amount of perks that you can use to build your classes is great and most of
the synergies work really well.
- 4-player fireteam instead of 3. I'll revisit this in the cons.
CONS:
- Voice acting/NPC Dialogue will make your ears bleed and you will mute the game. It's honestly the worst
I have ever experienced.
- Main story is so so lackluster. The characters are annoying and the story is boring. FTE1 had a far better
story.
- AI for the enemies was supposed to be improved, however it seems we got the complete opposite.
- Team Bots are still pretty awful. 50/50 chance on if they revive you when you're down or just stare at
you until you die.
- Enemy bots! Synthetics play a larger role in this game. They are in almost every mission and they still
suck. They now have new tanky units that suck even more. Im sorry, but I would like Xenomrphs in my
Aliens game please. Sigh...
-Bugs, so many bugs. Sometimes doors won't open, stopping you from completing the mission.
Sometimes you can't pick up health kits for some reason (no cards equipped). Sometimes you might just
phase through the floor and fall for eternity. Some of the weapon attachments don't seem to be in the
game.
- Want the wave 50 horde armour? Well, nope. That's bugged too.
- Did I mention the NPCs?
- Massive downgrade to the hangar where you hang with your team before a mission. It's been reduced
from an entire hangar to a room jam-packed with condescending NPCs. Still no firing range.
- Optimisation is bad. Lots of stuttering and freezing during gameplay. Sometimes the enemy audio
doesn't work either.
- 4-player fireteam... love the idea but the execution and balancing don't seem to be there. Grab a team
of 4 players as specialists and you can trivialise the highest difficulty. I missed the challenge of FTE1.
- NPC Raptor... good grief. If I hear one more awful joke I'm done.
- Day-1 DLC weapons, I am mixed on this, I don't like the idea of it but I am guilty of buying them. They
weren't worth it. Would prefer if DLC was strictly cosmetic/expansions.
- Special crates in missions that give you unlocks in each mission don't work. It will reward you with an
item and then once the mission finishes, the items are still locked. Noticed this happens 100% of the
time when you unlock an emote.
Considering the cost it took to make this game and the fact that the devs have been working with this game engine for over 5 years, I am confused as to why the game is in such a poor state.
Cold Iron, please fix this game. I want to play FTE2 but the state of the game is just so bad. I will gladly come back once these issues are addressed. But for now, I'm going to go buy Star Wars Zero Company.
