Well, now it’s finally in our hands, and I can say that while it’s less of a reinvention and more of an evolution of the intense, nuanced, and brilliantly colourful team-based battle that made its predecessor so enjoyable, it still brings enough new things to the table that it feels like its own distinct game and not simply Overwatch 1.5.

Overwatch 2 still revolves around the exciting team-based hero shooter gameplay that made the original such a massive hit when it launched in 2016.

Aside from the potential horror of discovering you were the sixth-best Overwatch player out of your friends and finding yourself the odd person out, it comes with both blessings and curses – it fully drags Overwatch 2 out of the stagnant meta swamp its predecessor found itself in over the past couple of years, but also denies itself some of the lustre of its satisfying team play.

This means only one of the now 10 playable tank heroes can be in play at a time, whereas in old-school Overwatch, tank heroes were largely divided between main tanks (such as Winston and Reinhardt, who control space and serve as barriers between you and your aggressors) and off-tanks (such as Zarya and Roadhog, whose job is to be more aggressive and disrupt the other team).

This makes the transition of Doomfist from damage to mobile tank even more confusing as there doesn’t feel like much of a place for him at all in the rotation as of now.

Simply put, many of the tanks still feel designed for the Overwatch of the past, not the Overwatch of the present.

While it does mean that attritional shield battles thankfully appear to be a thing of the past, moments like perfectly timed ultimate combos, like when a Junkrat RIP-tire works it way towards a group of helpless enemies caught in a Graviton Surge, are now a rarer sight.

As more and more barrier-wielders were added to original Overwatch over time, frustrations with shield-heavy metas rose.

Of course, outside of reworks, there are new heroes joining the party, too – one from each class in fact, which brings the full roster to an impressive 35 in total (especially so when you consider the original launched with just 21).

All three of these heroes are as well designed as you’d expect of Overwatch 2’s pedigree, and are packed full of character from their distinct looks to vibrant voicework.

None of these new additional heroes shake up Overwatch 2 in any groundbreaking way – I could easily imagine them fitting into the original – but they are all definitely fun to play.

Its charming, carnival-themed payload that you navigate to Lucio’s club showcases the joy Overwatch 2’s maps can bring when they fuse both gameplay and character together.

Also a thing of the past for Overwatch are loot boxes – the long-controversial gambling mechanic that has now been replaced by a more modern battle pass system (costing 1,000 Overwatch coins or around $10).

Blizzard has laid out a schedule by which each subsequent season will bring a new map, hero, or sometimes both to Overwatch 2 in a cadence not too dissimilar from when its predecessor initially launched.

It genuinely feels like an exciting time to be an Overwatch fan again, and for that I’m more than grateful.

Given the time to implement all that is scheduled to come to it over the next year, I see no reason why Overwatch can’t reach the dizzying heights that it once did again.

The fact that each hero won’t be available to use in competitive play for the first three weeks of its existence is a fair navigation of this issue, however.

So if the pertinent question to ask about Overwatch 2 is simply if it’s a fun game, then the answer right now is yes.

Perhaps that greatness will be recaptured over time as the community provides feedback through our many victories and defeats to come and Overwatch 2 fulfills the promise of its newly rebuilt foundations.