Splitgate 2 is the free-to-play follow up to the wildly popular Splitgate, which combined Portal-style portals with chunky arena gameplay. The first game was a massive hit, but it was also a small project made by a couple of people in a college dorm, making it difficult to build upon despite all the success. This led to the team at 1047 Games taking a risk and announcing they would no longer support the original, so they could build Splitgate 2 and it seems like that bet is going to pay off.
Refined, Not Redefined
Splitgate 2 feels like a natural evolution for the shooter, bringing in modern elements and designs without losing the appeal of the original. There are now factions to choose from, loadouts to customize, and special abilities to turn the tides, but all of these are features. The star of the show is still the shooting, which feels fluid and precise. The game still has its slower time-to-kill, making it a bit more methodical compared to the Call of Duty’s of the world.
The map design and movement do take inspiration from those faster shooters though. There are only a handful of maps in the Alpha, but it’s clear that the Splitgate arena-style maps have been traded in for three-lane style maps, creating defined areas where combat is going to happen frequently. The movement in Splitgate 2 does feel a bit faster than its predecessor, but just because you can sprint, slide, and jetpack around doesn’t make it a movement focused game.
The portals were the most impressive part of the original, so it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that they feel pretty similar in Splitgate 2. The portals are still limited to a specific type of wall or floor found around the map and can be quickly fired from any distance. You can still shoot through the portals, allowing for surprise flanks.
One of the few places the alpha felt like a step back from the original was the game modes. I only experienced two game modes in my time with Splitgate 2: Hotzone and Team Deathmatch. Hotzone is based around capturing a moving zone, while Team Deathmatch is all about getting kills. While there will certainly be more modes in the final release, both of these modes had strange round-based formatting. Instead of just playing the match straight through, you would win the round with a reset in-between.
For Hotzone, this meant the first team to capture two points would win a round, with three rounds needed to win the match. This killed a ton of momentum of the match since each round had a roughly minute-long break since you could change factions and loadouts in between rounds. This setup felt even stranger in Team Deathmatch, where each round could be won with 15 kills, with three wins needed to win the match. I’m not sure if this is in place to try and prevent one team from running away with a match early on or to allow for players to swap loadouts, but either way, it gave each match some strange pacing.
Loadouts and Factions and Perks, Oh My!
When it comes to new additions, Splitgate 2 has plenty of new features to keep the shooter fresh. Factions have been added, offering a variety of new abilities and weapons for you to use. The alpha featured three factions, all of which have unique skills and passive abilities. Aeros is made for moving fast and rushing the enemy, Meridian provides support, and Sabrask can define objectives.
Each faction has one active ability that you can use, along with a passive. For example, Aeros rush ability provides a speed boost for both movement and reloading, along with a small amount of health, and the passive boost reduces cooldowns for the whole team. There are no ultimate abilities and relatively long cooldowns keep Splitgate 2 from going full hero shooter, instead just offering bonuses for specific playstyles.
Within each faction, you could create three loadouts, where you choose a primary and secondary weapon, along with two perk slots. All weapon attachments and perks were unlocked from the start in the alpha, but it’s unclear if that will be true at launch. Each faction had different weapons available, tailored to their skills. Aeros was the only faction with an SMG, while the Meridian had a strong long-ranged rifle. There wasn’t any specific weapon that felt better than the rest and I didn’t see my opponents gravitating to one single choice, so these loadout weapons feel pretty well-balanced. There are still power weapons that spawn during matches that aren’t available to pick for your loadout.
The perks were fairly limited in the, but again, they were more small boosts than game-changers. For Aeros, it was bonuses like faster reloads or sliding, but it wasn’t a massive boost when playing. All of this feels great for Splitgate 2, with 1047 Games finding a great balance between customization and balanced arena gameplay.
Overall, Splitgate 2 feels like an improvement over the original, offering more customization and options for combat, without losing the slower, arena-style pacing of the original. The map design has shifted from arenas to three-lane maps, creating more focused hotzones for combat. The portals still feel like magic in a first-person shooter this polished. While the modes available were held back by some strange formatting, that could easily be fixed by launch. Splitgate 2 is set to launch sometime in 2025 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC as a free-to-play game.
