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I loved the campaign. It retained some elements of Halo CE but was still original and fixed some problems (repetitive level design being the biggest one). The AIs were still aggressive and intelligent, but had more variety to their responses than in CE, where they could become relatively predictable. The introduction of the Carbine and Beam Rifle made it much tougher to just sit back and snipe with your magnum, upping the difficulty. Drones and aggressive AIs made it much more difficult to hide in cover for long periods of time. The Flood also became more interesting to fight, or at least somewhat different. The Enforcers spiced things up, as did Tartarus, the end of the Arbiter level, the Scarab and Regret (Regret, Regret...Catchy, any idea what it means?"). Vehcile combat was more common and more difficult, and often times more fun. The massive multi-enemy encounters also created unique situations during the second half of the game. The Elites also came in more than 4 variants with a limmited weapon set (try counting up all of the ranks and loadouts that you see them with, it gets a bit harder). Finally, it was overall more epic, with more, important side characters who were cooler (Keyes, Forehammer and Cortana v. Keyes, Cortana, Johnson, Hood and Rtas Vadamee). The dialogue and cutsceens were just so much better! Still better than Halo 3's in most ways.
The Multiplayer wasn't as huge of an improvement, until you look at XBOX LIVE!!! The stuff opened up by it were just huge and made Halo 2 a game changer. The map design was improved most of the time, although the expansion packs really made the game sometimes. However, some of the additions to the Campaign were not capitalized in the MM side,Specters and Shadows should have been standard somewhere. Also, no BPR/Sentinel Beam until latter. Oh, did I forget to mention? More weapons! Sure, weapon balance was poor, but so many things were overpowered that it worked and was fun!
Finally, the fun glitches, vacations, and superbounces added to the replayability, my friends still love to pop in Halo 2 to supper bounce on Lockout.
Verdict:unpolished due to time, potential not fully realized (see the video from the Legendary edition), but still awesome (read: >Halo 3).
Side note: I think that the complaints that Halo 2 didn't change much stuck with an overworked and slightly bitter Bungie, which resulted in Equipment in Halo 3 and Armor Abilities in Reach (also the fact that Equipment sucked and they wanted to fix it into something useful).