Sup. So Halo 2 campaign on Legendary is pretty much a bitch. Halo 2's campaign is great on Easy through Heroic. Legendary is a completely different beast though. It makes level design seem worthless, since the enemies are overpowered in every situation. I also tend to give Halo 2 more credit than it probably deserves for mission design. Its missions are pretty linear, but it does disguise the linearity fairly well... through glitches. When utilizing all of the campaign space available Halo 2 starts to rival those of CE or Halo 3. That extra space also allows for missions where the player doesn't have to fire a shot. In addition to the out of map sections, Halo 2 also has a lot of loading glitches that honestly give the game a bit more replay-ability.
So my Legendary run spans a time frame of October 2012 to January 2014. I used to own a 2007 MacBook, but it crashed while I was in the middle of coding for my Com S class. Being a computer engineering student at the time, I needed a laptop so I could program and Windows 7 was preferred. So I got a new laptop that was decent(mind you it's hard buying a computer when you are on a tight budget with rent and shit). I installed my Halo 2 Vista copy on it and started the campaign on Legendary that weekend. I'd get frustrated on a level and I wouldn't play it for a couple of months. Up until about a month ago, I was only at Sacred Icon. Then I decided to buckle down and plow though the remainder of the missions. I used to say the Library was both the hardest and worst mission in a Halo game. I think that's because the invisibility glitch worked a lot better on the Xbox, and I could go through Gravemind cloaked the whole time. Now my answer has changed. Library is still the worst mission, but Gravemind is clearly the hardest mission.
Here is the story of my Legendary runthrough with some helpful advice on every mission. Sadly, I didn't think of taking any screenshots until I started writing this tonight after I finished, so there aren't any screenshots.
I can do this mission in my sleep. If you can't beat this on Legendary, you simply don't have the game.
So a fun fact about Halo 2 (and as far as I know no other Halo game does this) is that the game will detect whether or not you are inverted or not based on the look training. It won't tell you to look at the lights inverted and ask if you want to keep it that way or switch it back.
So if you're doing a Legendary run through, do you want to pick up the skull(Whuppopotamus or something like that) on this mission? No. It generally makes it harder and Arbiter's cloak becomes worthless.
So this is where stuff starts to get hard. And it gets hard fast. For the first encounter, you'll simply want to BR everyone to death while dropping the SMG for a PP in the break between the first and second waves. When travelling between encounters, carry the BR in your back pocket and dual PP. If at all possible, stockpile as many PPs as you can before an encounter. This allows you to carry more PP overcharges, which is incredibly effective against the Elites.
The rooms that give people the most trouble are the hangar rooms. My solution to these was to come into battle with like 10 or 12 PPs and a fully loaded BR. There will usually be a BR that is placed on the ground for more ammo when necessary. Only use the BR on the Grunts and the noob combo'd Elites. Try and stay on the second floor as much as possible and get the crate routes to the top nailed down when going to the ground floor.
Another hard section is the lift room with the drones. I simply stayed along the left wall and BR'd the Drones. It's also good to bounce a grenade off the ground into the air to knock out a bunch before they get to you. The lift with the enemies can be very challenging if you let it get to the top. If at all possible, ignore the last two or three Drones to jump to the lift and send it back down as soon as possible. If the lift hasn't reached the top, the enemies tend to stay on the bottom level of the lift, making that fight a bit easier.
The turret and Jetpack Elites aren't too bad; the PP locks on from a fairly decent range. The trick is staying behind cover once they start blitzing you with PR shots. The final room on the other hand is hell. You will want the dual PPs to take down all of the Elites safely. If possible, target the Needler ones, because they have hyper tracking on Legendary. Stay in the middle section with the random Marine. The Elites will continue to shot the area which you were just at, so use that to your advantage by swapping sides and noob comboing.
Do you want to pick up the skull(Thunderstorm) on this mission for your legendary run through? Maybe. If you plan on doing a lot of sword flying and don't want to go out of your way, then I'd say yes. I'm also going to say that there are better and safer options to get swords on many levels.
This is one of the missions where glitching makes it more fun. First things first, you'll want to steal the Sniper from Johnson. Then go up as if yo're getting the Blind skull, but turn around and jump up across the gap(it's the corridor you just came from). You'll want to grenade jump onto the wall and jump across the street. If you aren't playing on Legendary, jump onto the rooftops and continue fighting the enemies in the courtyard. Even more fun is to co-op it and have one person in the courtyard and the other sniping from above.
But back to the Legendary run. Stay on the rooftops by the Rex sword, and jump down right in front of Hotel Zanzibar. Once you've gone through Hotel Zanzibar, instead of waiting for the Phantom to drop off enemies, jump down to the right and follow the road to the end. Jump up on the dumpster, and you'll have to do a grenade jump to get on the top of the garage looking thing. Then follow the roofs close to where you were. Now jump off and go in the water. Don't get too close to the action or you'll get shot,but don't get too far or you'l get lost. When approaching the final area with the watchtower, snipe the Jackal. Then in order to get back in, you have to go in by the wall. Avoid getting shot(lol) and grab the Ghost in the entrace to the tunnel. Boost intelligently to the end of the mission.
Do I want to grab the skulls(Blind and IWHBYD) on this mission? No. No no no. Blind makes shit hard. Too hard. IWHBYD is hard to get and it requires more fighting than you need to do. The effect is neat, but it's not worth it.
Get in the tank at the start. Always hold down the left trigger. Fire the right trigger whenever it will let you. Make your way across the bridge and down into the tunnels. Use the buses and cars to your advantage when fighting the Jackal snipers down below. The park requires a lot of patience. There will be a ton of jackals the will run up to the top position of the weird structure. Snipe the Elites out of the Ghosts. If possible, save the Gauss Hog and park it so you can hit the Elite and Jackals in the next section without getting obliterated by the Wraith.
To take out the next section, snipe the Ghosts again and snipe the Jackals. The Wraiths are going to be a pain. There's a rocket in the previous section that you can pick up and bring along, and if I remember correctly, there's some ammo on the back alley. If you can approach a Wraith from behind, do it.
The Scarab is an easy fight. Kill enemies as the exit the bay or jump onto the Scarab and go up near the gun. Fall down into it and kill the two Red Elite pilots and the White Elite. Otherwise just keep running along the top sniping and rocketing enemies. When you reach the end, grab a PP of the top of the Scarab and the BR ammo when the Scarab gets stuck. Then hop on and kill everyone else with the noob combo.
Do I want to pick up the skull(Catch) on this mission? Nah. Grenades are going to be plentiful even without the skull.
This mission involves a lot of running and cloaking. Speedrunners will kill all of your allies, but we aren't worried about time. Keep them alive, because they will provide the enemies with something to shoot at that isn't you. Kill the Elite right in front of you and jump to the top level. You can run by almost all of the enemies here, while they are focused on your allies. Then do the elevator glitch to start the elevator going down and hop on it. When at the bottom, I like to cloak and run past everyone, using the pillars along the wall as cover. Then I activate the switch and hide outside.
I let my allies kill everyone here, except the Fuel Rod Grunts (because sometimes the allies will attack them, sometimes they won't). When going down the corridors, I've done two options: Kill everyone with the noob combo, and run past everyone. The former is the safest way, while the latter is riskier and quicker. For all of the rooms along the way until the last one, I find it easier to kill the Grunts and Sentinels and hide from the Elites. For the final room, the big thing is getting lucky with the doors. I like to park by one of the doors and melee them as they come in the room, and then cloak past the Elites. If they go to the other door, you can either sword fly to the other side or hide behind the pillar thingy in the room and fight from there.
From here you can fly directly to the end of the level by going right and landing on top and jumping down. Alternatively, you can fly to the skull and grab it. This will allow you to play from a distance a bit better, but it makes close encounters much more dangerous. It's really up to you if you grab it.
So do you want to grab the skull(Grunt Birthday Party)? My playstyle leans towards yes, but it made a few encounters really tough when I did use it. To those that haven't played Halo 2 or never got the GBP skull, it isn't just Grunts exploding with confetti. It's any headshot explodes with a plasma grenade explosion.
So this is a long mission, and it's fairly tedious too. When you start, kill all of the Flood bodies on the floor with your current Sword and pick up the one on the floor. I like to grab the Carbine or the Sentinel Beam too. For the elevator segment, I learned from the Halo 2 Done Segmented that the Kill Barrier is linked to the elevator itself, and that it does have a range downwards. Unlike them, I'm not great at wall riding to prevent my death, so I wait 1 round after the Sentinels show up to jump down to the door. I also have my sword ready at the bottom, because there are enemies that will jump out down there.
For the hologram room, just kill everything. And when the Heretics come out of the door bee line to it and kill them when they are clustered together. Go outside and only cloak when the Heretics come down. Run past them and cloak before you enter the door to avoid the last group of Heretics. Approach everything else like it was on an easier difficulty until the end boss. If you're good at sword flying, do the speedrun trick of sword flying up to the Heretic Leader and slice him. If not, you can use the pillars on the bottom floor for cover and slice whatever comes near you. Eventually, you'll get it.
Should I grab the skull(Famine) here? No. That shit makes it harder than it needs to be.
Here is my favorite mission in Halo 2. Start off by dropping the SMG for a BR with the first Marine. Shoot the Grunts and the first turret. Rocket the turret on the building, and swing down to pick up the BR ammo. This next part will require a bit of twitch, because you want to BR the Jackal Sniper in the face before he hits you. After that, drop the BR for the Beam Rifle on the ground up there and turn around as if you're continuing the mission. Now the next section of twitch. There are 4 Jackal Snipers around the corner and one of them will be behind a bush. Kill them all and pick up all of their snipers. If needed, run back to the first section and pick up your BR and juggle it to the snipers. You'll want to pick up all of the Beam Rifles, because they'll despawn if the player doesn't pick them up.
Now you play the sniping game, by sniping all of the Ghost drivers and turret peeps. Save the Rockets for a white Elite that gets in a Ghost. Once everyone is dead, I like to go on top of the structure and rain plasma grenades into the bridge control room. Then jump in and kill everyone. Take the tank through the level until you're near the skull. Make sure all of the Ghosts are dead and jump up to the skull by jumping onto the mountain and hopping down on top of it. Then continue through until there's nothing but Jackal. First and foremost, kill as many of the Snipers as you can. Then grenade jump to the ledge on the left so you don't land in the bottom. This spot will trigger the Drones, and quite frankly we don't want to fight them.
Now that you have the Envy skull, you can cloak past the last group of enemies. Go through the ravine and snipe the two Jackals. Kill the drones out here and pick up a PP. Use that to kill the Honor Guards in the room.
So do I pick up the skull(Envy) here? Yes. This is the most definitive yes ever. If you can, create a profile that has the last checkpoint right next to the skull.
This is the only level I beat on Legendary using M/K, because using the mouse for hitting Hunters with Beam Rifles is much easier. Basically this level will be a lot of brute forcing yourself through the level. Jackal Snipers have highest priority and Honor Guards have second highest. When doing the gondola rides, pile on as many weapons from the previous engagement as you can.
IMO the hardest section isn't the Regret section, but the hologram room. There are waves of Jackal Snipers. And depending on what side you pop out on, it will change what side they pop out on too. As you move through this room, if you hear a door open, go back to the start of the room, and go out the other door. The Jackals won't know which side you're actually on, so you can then get the snipes on them. As for the Huntes, I found that using the M/K was easier than the sticks, but it might be different for everyone. When fighting Regret, I like to hold the top center with PP/BR. When Regret teleports near you, jump off and punch him until he teleports again. If you hit X to board and B when the Chief is completing his boarding animation you can actually get one more hit off on Regret before he teleports. It still will require 5 boards, but it is slightly faster.
Do I pick up the Assassins skull here? Negative. That makes the game infinitely harder.
Get good with the Plasma Rifle. You're going to be firing it a lot at glowy walls. Basically this mission is running past enemies and shooting walls. For the first super sentinel, just shoot the glowy pillars and then activate the switch. The second super sentinel can be stuck a few times before it starts shooting at you. The only real combat occurs at the end of the mission. Even then, you can just run to the sniper platform and hide out until Half-Jaw kills everything.
Do I pick up the skull here? Mythic makes things harder, so no.
QZ has a lot of trial and error, and a lot of running by enemies. To start off, grab the Spectre and hope the Elites get in it. Kill the super sentinel and go through the door. Here is a bit of luck. Kill the two super sentinels and boost down the bottom. If you're lucky, one of the super sentinels killed the driver of the tank. Grab it. Continue through the level until you're forced to get out of it. Then cloak intelligently around the enemies. The destroyed sentinel factory is annoying, but manageable.
Eventually, you're going to reach a point where you can grab a Ghost and the goal is to boost past every enemy, avoiding Gauss shots and Wraith blasts. The last outdoor section is where the last bit of luck occurs. Hopefully the turret isn't right in front of the door or you're going to have a bad time. If it's not, then you'll have to trial and error the boosting path to get in. Once you'e in, boost to the gondola.
When on the gondola hide in the bottom tube until it stops. Plasma grenade the cluster of Flood and Sword the others. Run to the end and prepare for the hell that is the next mission.
Skull(Sputnik)? Maybe. It can help or it can cause boxes to splatter you. It's one of the easiest skulls in the game, so if you want it later, it's not much of a big deal.
"Fuck you" Love, Bungie.
If you're on the Xbox, do the infinite camo glitch. If not, get to know as many glitches like sword flying and spawn positioning as you can. When I did this on the OG Xbox, I used the camo glitch. For this run, I pretty much followed the Halo 2 done segmented route with a few exceptions. For the hallways, I just fight through them. And I don't have a Sword for the Marine segment. Otherwise, I practiced sword flying and plasma grenade jumps to get past enemies. Instead of describing it in detail, I'm just going to link to the Gravemind portion of H2DS.
http://youtu.be/hyfZnmDhCvk?t=1h7m45s
Do I pick up the skull(Anger)? Lord no.
This is surprisingly an easy mission. You'll want the Sputnik skull from QZ, so you can load up QZ and grab it real quick. You'll proceed through the mission like normal until you get to the Ghost section. Kill the Brutes on the Ghosts and stack the Ghosts on top of each other by the ledge. Then throw a grenade at the bottom and get in the top Ghost. The explosion should propel you up onto the ridge while keeping the Ghost alive. Boost to the area where the mission would end from on the ridge. Make sure to wall ride down with the Ghost or you'll blow up.
Skull(Ghost)? Nope.
So here, you're going to want to restart until you get the Elite with the Sword. This will make the Flood fights a bit easier. Use the Carbine to kill the Brutes in this room. Carbine/Sword is the go-to combo for the entirety of this mission. The room that gives people the most fits is probably the room after the lift. So my tactic was to headshot the Jackal snipers, stick the Brutes and just Carbine the stragglers while running to the door. When going up the elevator you could pick up the skull, but it doesn't matter. The last section I used the side pillar things and Envy to cloak past and set up the cutscene at the end.
I'm playing solo. Should I pick up the skull? Sure. It makes zero difference if you do or don't.
I'm playing co-op on the Xbox. Should I pick up the skull? Jesus no.
This mission is the best for doing loading glitches. Monopoli and the speedrunning community found a lot of loading glitches and as far as I know, there's only a cluster of enemies that you have to fight. Like the speedrunners, the first thing I do is park the Spectre to take it later. Then I jack a Ghost, and boost past everyone else to where the Scarab is parked. Here's the first loading glitch. You should be able to boost up to the Wraiths and then boost out and around the edge of the mountain. This will despawn the Wraiths. Now you can enter the building and fight through the few enemies here.
The prison room has a few enemies, but if you can destroy the door controls on the Hunter cells, they will wreck the enemies for you. In addition to the Hunters, you can save an Elite councilor, but he doesn't do jack for you. I'd also recommend sticking one of the Brutes to make it a bit easier. You'll exit out at the top and just backsmack the Brutes up here. Once the cutscene rolls, go back the way you came until the "Loading... done" pops up. Then go back outside and grab a Banshee. That despawns the Wraith drivers in the next section. Fly the Banshee to the parked Spectre. Take that and go through the water to the structure just outside of where the next cutscene would normally start.
After the cutscene, your Spectre should be in the hallway. Get in the driver's seat and pick up Johnson. Another Johnson will spawn and he'll get in the passenger seat. Repeat this until your vehicle is full of Johnson. Now boost across and get the Spectre to flip. All of the Johnson's will pile out and shoot Tartarus. All you have to do is fire at Tartarus when the shields are down. And just like that he's toast.
Should I grab Black Eye? Nah. It's cool to get 4x Overshields, but meleeing to get shields back at all is trashamundo.
I have a bit more, but I went over the character limit...