TitanF2 Is good, but needs tweaks.

Titanfall 2 certainly has raised the bar from the first game after playing dozens of games so far. The animation is pretty fluid, the combat is decent, albeit from a few lag moments encountered. Still, there are a few things that set the game back a little bit, and while some of them are minor, it does add more confusion than it does explain what works and what doesn't. So what I'll do is list off the issues separately between the titans and the pilots so we can keep those issues apart from one another.

Pilots:

-Grappling Hook: This is by far one of my favorite items added into the game, as it helps increase mobility and gets a player to greater distances in a short amount of time. The problem with it though stems from the way it controls after you grapple onto a surface, be it on a titan or a building. The hook feels like one of those kinds of features where you need to hold onto the button, and upon release, it unhooks. Instead, you have to press the LB again before you can detach yourself, leaving you unable to avoid putting yourself into the crossfire. Secondly, the speed of travel is a bit too slow at times. I imagined myself slowly accelerating the closer I got to the point of contact the hook made, which could make for some interesting catapult moves. Finally, I have had issues where I was hooking onto an enemy titan, but an allied titan lumbers in between us, and ultimately ends up boarding that person's titan instead. With a few modifications to how this equipment works, it can become better than it already is.


Titans:

Shields and Health: This is the part that confuses me the most, since I was more accustomed to the first Titanfall's way of determining a titan's health, its shielding, and when to use certain abilities when doing titan to titan combat. You see in the first game, a player had a clear display showing their shielding, which gradually decays under fire, its base health, and when the player's armor bar is gone, they go into a 'doomed' state,, in which the caution taped bar quickly deteriorates until the pilot either ejects, the titan gets destroyed, or an enemy titan performs an execution. Instead, I just see one bar that gives very little information, and when I try to perform executions on a titan whose bar is caution taped, I feel like I rarely perform the execution, at all. But to add onto that, I don't see the bar going down at all. Its just the same until the titan comes under enemy fire.

Dashing:

Again, another feature that has been tampered with, and possibly not on a good level. Sometimes I don't even get the feeling that I'm dashing at all with my titan when I press the 'A' button, nor do I get any kind of display that shows that it recovered, if it does at all. Perhaps I don't have enough info on this regard, but I know that I eventually stopped using the dash button period because of this reason.

 

If I am not mistaken, there are 4 more titans that are not yet revealed to its playerbase, and so far, the Ronin is the only known one we have yet to play as. There are also weapons that have yet to come into play as of yet. The possible return of the Sidewinder and Rocket Launcher is the best evidence that there are other missing weapons too.

 

I still don't understand how the dash works exactly. I know the perk itself gives an extra dash, but it didn't exactly say it recovers the dash over time. At least in the first game, you had a bar that recovered and displayed when the dash was useable again.

 

At the very least, one could clearly tell exactly the intended roles the titans were for. And yes, the Scorch could not dash at all from my recollection. But that titan in general was great for zoning and taking on targets at close quarters with their AOE and damage over time weaponry.

The Ion is more of a long range titan, but has its own shotgun/chaingun primary weapon.

 

I like the grappling hook because it increases the vertical travel speed. I've been playing between the first and second games, and the speed of the pilots are roughly the same. Yes the TF2 pilots are a little slower, but the maps in the first game made it seem like they were faster because the way the interconnecting buildings made wall running happen more often. Wall running in both games made a pilot far more agile .

 

And I will respect that we have key differences in opinion on this matter.