Halo: The Master Chief Collection: Halo 2: Anniversary

Players describe Jackal snipers that kill in one shot from across the map, Brutes that take whole magazines, Elites and Flood that kill with a single melee hit, constant grenades and rockets, and checkpoints that sometimes do not trigger. Difficulty comes up in 23% of reviews of 15 words or more, at the same rate in positive and negative ones, and reviews that recommend the game complain about it too. Legendary gets the most warnings ("this becomes almost comical on legendary when you die in one shot from a jackal sniper across the map that you couldn't even see."), and several players say the problem reaches lower settings: "It's noteworthy when Halo 3 or CE on Legendary actually feel more fair to play than this game does on Heroic." A first-time player on Normal wrote: "when I am randomly one shot by a Brute with a shotgun while I have full shields on NORMAL DIFFICULTY, there's a serious problem." In Legendary co-op, one player's death sends both back to the last checkpoint. The boss fights, especially the Prophet of Regret, draw separate complaints for giving no hint of how to win. A committed minority loves the challenge and argues that "you cannot judge a Halo game if you haven't tried Legendary or at least Heroic."

Co-op comes up in more negative reviews than any other subject: 79 of 324 (24%), nearly all of them complaints. Players describe crashes during cutscenes and vehicle sections on specific missions (The Oracle, Delta Halo, Metropolis, Quarantine Zone, Uprising), disconnects that throw both players back to the menu with the whole level lost, and heavy lag for whoever is not hosting: "Host player is fine, but the other player gets about 1-2 seconds of delay for EVERY action." One reviewer warned: "you're gonna crash every hour and be FORCED to restart the entire level". Others found that only the host earned the mission achievements. A few reviewers single Halo 2 out of the collection ("It's ONLY Halo 2, btw. All other games work fine."), one calling it "the most unstable MCC game on coop, which is tragic", though others report co-op trouble in the collection's other games too. Several of these reviewers love the game and still vote it down: "I WOULD strongly recommend it, except that several missions are unplayable in co-op due to crashes." Some pairs finished with workarounds such as locking both games to 60 fps, turning on the scoring HUD or skipping cutscenes. The missing split-screen and the lack of campaign crossplay with Xbox also come up, but those apply to the whole collection.

Uneven performance in Anniversary mode is a frequent technical complaint outside co-op: stutter in the first seconds or minutes of each level, frame drops in big fights and long loads. Players with strong PCs report it too: "i can run every other halo game on ultra and be just fine but as soon as i slap on halo 2 i go from 144 FPS to 12 FPS". Another wrote: "I had to dig in the Steam forums to find out I had to make changes to my NVIDIA control preferences just to make this game playable". Launch-month reviews add crashes to desktop, black screens, allied AI that drove vehicles in circles, enemies that froze or turned invisible, and audio that cut out in cutscenes. A few reviewers later noted that patches fixed the worst of it ("Hey they finally fixed this so it's playable (mostly)!"), and other players report the campaign running smoothly from the start.

First-time players describe finishing the last mission and landing back at the menu, some without any credits: "That has to be the most abrupt ending i think i've ever seen in a video game". The cliffhanger ending, a result of Halo 2's rushed original development, is the most repeated complaint about the story. Inside the collection it matters less, as one player pointed out: "at least you dont have to wait for 3 years to find out what happens next." A few reviewers like the cliffhanger as a setup for Halo 3.

Multiplayer players who bought in May 2020 met hit registration they called broken, rockets and grenades that vanished or killed teammates ("the rockets and nades are broken and do not work as intended creating accidental betrayals"), and controller aim assist strong enough that keyboard players felt outmatched: "it feels like I have to play with a controller to be competitive." European players complained of being placed on US servers and of matchmaking bans for leaving. The aim-assist, server and ban complaints apply to the collection's multiplayer in general. The hit registration and projectile bugs were specific to Halo 2 Classic at launch, and some reviewers later in 2020 described them as patched.

Cutscenes have captions, but dialogue during missions does not, even though much of the direction is spoken. Deaf and hard-of-hearing players, and people who always play with subtitles, find this a serious gap: "if you're hard of hearing you're just left guessing as to what you need to do." The most upvoted review of the game is a deaf player's complaint about it ("Captions are a base necessity for me for any video game, since I am 100% deaf"), and a couple of reviewers point out that Combat Evolved Anniversary does subtitle its in-game lines.

These complaints belong to The Master Chief Collection as a whole, and Halo 2 inherits them. Players describe downloading the game again through the collection's own menu after Steam had already downloaded it ("3 lots of updates to install one game"), installs stuck at 100% or reported as missing, and install sizes they put anywhere from 20 to 55 GB, with no way to skip the remastered assets for players who only want the classic version: "this bloated the halo 2 install size from a few gigs to FIFTY FIVE". A few could not get past the Microsoft account sign-in.