Is High Charity Halo's Worst Level? 

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I’ll play High Charity 1,000 times before I ever play Halo 5’s campaign ever again

I honestly think that the atmosphere of escalation is what makes High Charity such an intoxicating set piece, the flood will literally overpower most enemies that they come across and it just feels like the end of the world, especially for the Covenant’s perspective

Gameplay wise yes. Its pretty repetitive and is just basically one big corridor repeated like 3 times. Atmosphere wise it really is good. The haunting sounds and the gravemind messing with the covenant citizens and mocking the prophets over the intercom was very good.

I think High Charity was a level that was really hurt by Halo 2's development cycle. IIRC there was supposed to be a new Flood form introduced in this level, which could've mixed up combat a bit, as well as a big set-piece in the form of a warthog run at the end. I don't think these would've completely fixed the level but they could've at least made it a bit more interesting

For gravemind, being forced to rescue the marines just for them to barely last a few rooms, especially on higher difficulties really annoys me. If it was optional objective I think it would have been better

I wish there were missions that allowed us to explore the city areas of High Charity. Kinda like how(for a lack of better comparison) you fight your way through the streets in New York and Paris in MW3.

Hang on, people disliked this level? I thought it was pretty good! I love how you revisit the city and see that the Flood has started consuming everything left and right, and it was such a beautifully creepy level in general.

High Charity is actually one of my favorite Halo 2 levels due to all of the unique sandbox interactions that happen in it. It's the only level where magnums, SMGs, battle rifles, and sniper rifles can be used against brutes, the only level where the brute shot & brute plasma rifle can be used on flood, and the only level where brutes and flood can fight each other. The atmosphere is excellent, due to that transition from pristine Covenant city seen prior and the rapid disrepair & infestation seen here. Maybe it's cause the sandbox really forces you into mostly Covenant weapons the last 4 missions, but High Charity was a nice mix-up and my only complaint is that it was so short in comparison to the level Gravemind, which dragged on. Also, you have never felt helpless until a flood combat form with a UNSC sniper rifle kills you in one hit on Legendary during this level...

This is the only level where you get to use the Battle rifle, magnum and the Rocket launcher against the Brutes

Sacred Icon is worse than this. High Charity at least gives you this awesome dialogue between the prophet of Truth, with his religious statements, and the Gravemind taunting him. I also liked how you notice how high charity gets slowly absorbed by the flood. Pretty good storytelling.

I hadn't thought about it before, but I definitely would like to see more of the city aspect of High Charity. And, true, more environmental storytelling would be excellent!

The atmosphere was so damn creepy and good. My only issue with it was it was so damn short. If it was long as Gravemind or other levels it’d be my favorite level easily.

I actually really liked this level. It is certainly the most memorable, since I remember nearly everything about it. It may not have the best combat, but it has the best atmosphere.

So, when I was a kid I noticed none of this. When I played a lot of missions for the first time I was completely engrossed and I would almost role play the way I'd complete the level. This was one of those levels. I felt the urgency of Truth escaping and the encroachment of the Flood, so I kinda just sprinted through the whole level. Don't even think I died once, and I didn't stay very long to fight things cause I had to find Truth and stop him. I haven't gone back to it cause Halo 2's campaign isn't my favorite, but I always had fond memories of that mission because of the way I played it and the atmosphere around it.

I think it would have been a bit better if there had been another chunk of the level where you have to fight your way to the keyship while moving through the streets of the city itself and taking on Kig Yar and Unggoy civilians fleeing, and may be some three way encounters between the brutes, elites and flood that you can take part it. In one of the books, Halo: Shadow of Intent we get a heavy focus on a prelate (a sanshyuum who had been enhanced to take on the Spartans) and his guilt about not going back for his family, who died on high charity. In the Novel he has a repeating dream about fighting through hoards of flood to get to them in the city streets and that sounds like a lot of fun.

My gripes with High Charity often involve it missing its potential when compared to the preceeding Chief mission, Gravemind. That level gets a lot of justified criticism for its difficult sections and bland level design, but damn if it isn't one of my favorites in the entire series. The beginning is slow, but as soon as you get out of the prison section and get to experience the Great Schism firsthand, I love it. It's so satisfying leading a squad of Marines throughout areas where the various Covenant species are duking it out with each other. Plus, where Gravemind lacks in level design, it sort of makes up for in enemy encounter variety. You make your way through fighting Brutes, various Elite ranks, Drones, a few pairs of Hunters, etc. High Charity begins and the Flood is thrown into the mix. But now Elites and Hunters are MIA and Grunts have gone back to fighting alongside the Brutes, Jackals, and Drones. It would've been so cool to enter a room where Elites and Brutes are still fighting each other until the Flood come to attack all the survivors. Or anything to that effect, really. It's just so disappointing that the Covenant's civil war was kind of ignored during that one level, outside of a single line of dialogue from Cortana. They nailed the atmosphere of the level though. That makes up for some of the disappointment.

I will say that I absolutely love the dark room about halfway through High Charity. It has those tall, cylindrical floating pillars that look gorgeous hovering in the darkness, while the Flood lurk

Heck no it isn’t! But this should have been called Gravemind, and vice versa

This was one of my favorite levels in the game despite the redundancy.

Mate, I think that Gravemind is worse than High Charity, simply due to its difficulty. I kinda like that ambience throughout the level even though I hate the amount of fog in the OG Halo 2

it's my favourite halo 2 mission simply because of the soundtrack. High charity suite you'll know which part

To this day Im convinced they got the names of High Charity and Gravemind mixed up

Hey, I love the channel, you make great videos BPG. But most of what you said in this one felt like utter insanity to me. I love this mission, it's one of my favorites. To me, your criticisms essentially boil down to, "this mission didn't do the things I like, so I'm going to arbitrarily decide the plethora of things it does well didn't make up for it not doing that one thing, even if for the sake of variety." I respect your opinion, I can't and won't say you're wrong to feel that way. I just very strongly feel the complete opposite and would like to represent that. G'day.

I normally skip this, Oracle, and Sacred Icon, which happen to be Flood levels 🤷‍♂️

Nah I really enjoyed this one recently. Don’t forget the flood will have consumed everyone Btw I seen a skull in the lift near the end how do you get it?

Yea, I agree with these points. Along with the fact that this is the only mission in Halo 2 that we fought the Flood as Chief. The rest was with the Arbiter, who also had the badass moments in Quarantine Zone that, if you aren't playing on Legendary, the beginning is fucking memorable.

Gravemind and High Charity are the levels I REALLY dislike, they feel like slogs at times (Like the Library from CE) aside from that one moment in the Mausoleum near the end of Gravemind. By comparison Uprising and Great Journey are my favorites. Uprising starts off with Heavy Price Paid stabbing you in the heart, the dying Elite telling us of the betrayal of the Brutes, the view of that Control Room on the next island... It still sticks with me... Then there's the whole 'Escorting a Scarab' part of The Great Journey and allying with Johnson to kill Tartarus. 3:29 This line here just sums up what you can feel at times playing Reach, the hopelessness of the situation is just so oppressive you can feel it. Also, can I just say that THIS (4:11) is a terrifying sight?

For the environment complaint, I think the fact that Chief is basically fighting through the Covenant's White House/Washington D.C. excuses the lack of more "lived in" surroundings. It's where the political, religious, and military leaders hang out, while the city is spread out below. That being said, perhaps if there was a city segment between the Prophets' tower and the Forerunner ship that was like the opening level of Dead Space 2 (civilian Covenant getting completely overrun while Chief just sprints for the lift), that would really drive home the impact that the Covenant have lost their home and been abandoned by their leaders.

The ending cutscene makes up for ALL the flaws you mention imo. The prophet's voice over also makes up for a lot of the shortcomings too. It's basically a video-game level, which I kind of like. I agree on basically all your points, just not the analysis as a whole because the setting is quite good externally. In terms of the surrounding world, which is this bizarre half blown up planet of the prophets, having a chance to play in it is first of all very nice of Bungie to do, and ambitious too. Then you make it so that the flood have invaded it as well? wow so much potential, that even slightly fulfulling the potential is well appreciated. Because it's Alien world, it's kind of limited in what we can do, like do the covenant read books, should we have book shelves? do they travel in sceptres and ghosts to work? do they have roads? electrical wiring? that would make it too human right. So, it makes sense that they watered down all those details, and just focused on a narrow linear mission and used a dark night-ish colors to hide that it's basic. Personally, I liked the purplish dark hue, and the little chambers here and there, and the gravity lift, and the background showing the dreadnought, and the subtle eerie music, and Brutes wearing the Knight Guard armor was cool too, switching of the hats, and bringing religion/hierarchy into the game. The title is totally click baity, and High Charity though is a pretty basic level, is FAR away from being associated with one of the worst levels in Halo. Also, The Gravemind level was the first part of the high charity level right? So when the game is done, I end up thinking they are the same level, so all in all, if anything, I'd say it's the most emotional level in all of the halo series, not because it should be, but because of how things like atmosphere, music, voice acting, and setting and cutscenes came together.

I think it's one of the best levels. High Charity is a beautiful place, and seeing it being taken over by the Flood is interesting. It's the only level were you fight Elites, Brutes and the Flood. The only thing that its missing is the cut Warthog run at the end. EDIT: Turns out there's no Elites in this level. Shame

Fun fact, the city part of high charity is just the tippy top of it so high charity is actually even bigger than what’s first thought

Just like you mentioned, it has tons of potential and it had plenty of cut content. It's a shame, the ambience was incredible and i feel they could've done so much more with this. Although this might've not made much sense story wise, I'm sure many would've loved to see how this invasion of the flood felt like in the central city of high charity. A bonus level where you play as an elite trying to hold back the flood and find an escape or play as one of the spec ops troops that tried but failed to reclaim high charity. It can be more enjoyable with the use of the map editor but due to the length of the level it feels restricted on how much you can build of that. I still find it a better level than some of the others, the first half of the oracle level was probably the worst for me.

High Charity is the penultimate level of H2 as we got it but keep in mind the story of Halo 3 was meant to be included as well. It was meant to be the halfway point originally but the rest had to be scrapped. Halo 3's campaign was what we got from the remainder.

The best flood battle was that snow field with the wraiths firing at you. Idk seeing zombies in the snow just feels even more creepy. Snow is suppose to be happy.

I think of high charity as a breath of fresh air and a time to just kind of relax after beating grave mind during legendary runs as it the flood fighting the covenant just makes life so much easier.

Ingame, High Charity is called a city, but I think its setpieces and function makes it feel more like a mobile command post of sorts. Something like the death star of the halo universe (without the planet-destroying weapons and such).

2:35 It's not that Bungie tried and failed to do this, they didn't try at all. Despite being inside High Charity, you never actually visit any of the holy city itself in Halo 2. The game's entire exposure to High Charity is contained in the towers that serve as a sort of combination temple / palace / government complex.

You’re high if you think this level is worse than cortana….

I was able to actually get through this level without firing a bullet by letting the Covenant and the Flood kill each other.

I do not remember this mission at all now that I think about it. It's been a long time since I played through the campaign, and this level gets so overshadowed by the great opening cutscene, and the level that follows it, that the bad parts of the actual level probably were forgotten. With its short runtime, definitely cements itself as a forgettable level at the very least.

You hear a lot about how unfinished Halo 2 is, and imo this is the level that shows that the most. Great potential, they just needed more time on it.

Before watching the video: I'm presonally not a fan of Sacred Icon/Quarantine Zone, but you have to remember that H2's mission sort of meant to be played in pair. So this one is like the final act of Gravemind, even if Uprising separates the two missions.

I think this level is great. But to each their own

A level similar to Alexandria but suffering a Flood invasion would be awesome and terrifying if done well.

"In a spot of bother" *literally being eaten alive*

What you describe actually makes me think of a famous problem with level design in early Dooms. Sure, they work as game levels. But these are supposed to be spaces people work in. Nothing makes sense for that purpose. IE, take E1M1, Hangar. What about the level says it's a hangar? Nothing. If you look at the WHOLE level in that context, nothing makes sense.

This is one of my favourite levels in halo 2, it reminds me of Keyes in halo 1. Working your way backwards through a flood infested ship while taking part in a three way shootout

Something that irks me about the missions within high charity that you didn't touch on is the multi-faction firefights. In other Halo games it feels like you are just one small spartan in the middle of a greater conflict. Drawing attention as you charge in. But with Halo 2 every time you enter one it seems like you need to sit on the sideline until one faction remains because engaging at all pulls agro from nearly every enemy. When they should be fighting against each other and you it instead feels too gamey. If you let the scripted scene play out it will be interesting, but just being seen will cause the curtain to fall as "player noticed engage player at all costs"

With Halo 4 and 5's existence, there's no way this can be the worst halo level.

u do know high charity is a piece of cake if u ignore most of the enemies because u are supposed to get to the forerunner ship as fast as possible story wise

Every time I play through halo 2 I always feel like Gravemind is the last chief mission because you are assaulting the covenant holy city, with the objective of killing the rest of the prophets. And the way the music carries you through the level once you get past the marine prison is perhaps some of my favorite gameplay/atmosphere in the whole series. Then you end it and realize there’s one more mission for chief and I pretty much would run through High Charity just to get the cutscene. Always felt like high charity could have been apart of the gravemind mission but that would have made an already very long mission even longer so they probably split them up. For worst in the series I’d probably go with a mission from Halo 4 or Halo 5 because they are this mission amplified by 10. Narrow corridors with uninteresting gameplay, I just can’t bring myself to play them again.

I love High Charity from a lore perspective. Seeing the flood slowly takeover (Slow is a stretch) that alien city is pretty horrifying, and more than proves that they are not to be messed with.

Gravemind gave me ptsd

My issue with this mission, as an avid Halo 2 enjoyer, is the fact it's so short compared to the other levels in Halo 2. Makes me think there was a longer version of High Charity sitting on someone's old early 2000s computer. The gameplay in this level is a little repetitive, but the atmosphere is fantastic and the faction battles you see are very fun so I wouldn't put it as the worst mission in all of Halo, but easily one of the weakest. Also one of the few missions in Halo where you actually can use Chief's flashlight!

0:46 the way Mercy says “None of you” cracks me up

i imagine this level would have been a lot better if it were like floodgate from halo 3 but obviously with covenant architecture, like fighting your way from "street level" up to the conduit, maybe even have a flying section at the end before the final area

This mission nearly broke me and my friend going through it on legendary with most skulls on lmao

This mission is supposed to feel helpless and rushed. Had it not been for the time constraints on Bungie, it’s likely that this mission would have had a warthog run

The end of it was supposed to be a warthog run, which would make the mission better. I imagine

Short answer: Not quite. But it's up there. It's not NEARLY as bad as the level "Gravemind". Long answer: This video.

This is like my go to level for halo

How could you think High Charity is the worst level when Sacred Icon is in the same game?

I love it personally, the worst Halo mission to me is one of H5’s

My opinion of halo 2 is that the gameplay balance and the sandbox is what holds this game back the most. Yes, some of the levels like this and the sacred icon would still feel meh even if this wasn’t the case, but the fact that chipping your nails instantly kills you, 3/4ths of the weapons are completely useless or redundant, and enemies are too tanky. Honestly, dual wielding was a big mistake. That, and the fact that the difficulty is either too easy or annoyingly bullshit with no inbetweens.

you can just use some weird trick to get down to the platform and beat this level in mere seconds. ive never tried it though as it looks difficult.

I actually think this mission is great. My biggest problem with it is that it is too short. I wish there was more to make you explore the areas that are there and added some more variety, for sure, but I always enjoy it. I find myself just running past 95% of the enemies since it's so easy to do so. Even on Legendary. But, nevertheless, I like it a lot. I feel like Gravemind fits the bill better, but that's just my opinion. I like Gravemind too, but that one is too long with the same environments over and over.

i thought the level high charity was a spaceship landed near the city lol

Gravemind's combination of brutes, length, repetition and bungie checkpoints (few and far between) makes it worse in my eyes and I find it unplayable without the so angry skull

No. I'd rather play through High Charity on LASO with a hydraulic press hooked up to a death counter around my balls than replay the Halo 4 and 5 campaigns.

Ben likes Bioshock and Halo. A man after my own heart. 😎

It's definitely not, just the fact that your invading the covenant holy city is sick as fuck

If I had to pick a worse mission in the series, this one wouldn't be one since Halo, The Library, Sacred Icon, Gravemind, Rat's Nest, Tsavo Highway, Nightfall, Forerunner, Infinity, Reclaimer, Halo 5 and Infinite exsist.

It is not the best level but to me was memorable because it is the level where the Chief finally engages the Flood and finally is what I said on my first playthrough when the level starts

Let’s go… and… wait for it… wait for it… I mean like wait until 2007/8 ish

I would love a book of this. The fall of high chairty.

The Library exists.

"A certain leniency can be given due to the limitations of the original xbox compared to the 360," Given that Half-Life 2 came out on the original xbox 6 days later with a well realized lived in city, I don't think that we should be giving Bungie any slack due to the limitations of the xbox.

Wait…. Why didn’t Cortana detonate In Amber Clad’s engines?

It's got to be Sacred Icon as the worst Halo 2 level. I don't know what Bundie were thinking, when they made that level

This mission owns. Its just odd that it kinda let's you sprint to the finish after the room with the grav bridges

High charity was one of my favorite games in halo 2

There is just no consistency between view counts

I don't hate this level and I especially appreciate its atmosphere. And there are some encounters in it that I actually enjoy. However, I have to admit that I often rush through this one. It probably is the Halo 2 level that I like the least. Again, still don't hate it. For me even the worst Halo levels are "alright." But certainly when you're rushing through a level and skipping encounters that's never a good sign.

the level is "forgettable" but not the worst in my opinion. The worst would have to go to "Cortana" from Halo 3.

My issue is that High Charity doesn't look anything like a "city", it looks like ambiguous Covenant...Crap, a ship, an outpost, I dunno. Not a city, there is nothing that resembles a livable space or even a space that people would convene.

I think “Unearthed” from Halo 5 is probably on my short list for worst missions. The Promethean encounters are incredibly generic on top of relying too heavily on spawning in waves of enemies in the same area over and over again. The environment isn’t very interesting since it’s the same Meridian stuff you see in the levels before and after. There are no interesting set pieces. It debuts the Warden Eternal bossfight, but with how many times that gets repeated throughout the game I can’t call that a strength of this mission in particular. To top it all off, there’s an extremely underwhelming fight cutscene between Master Chief and Locke that is way too slow and badly choreographed. The Library and Cortana may be more tedious and longer, but at least they felt like they were going for a specific tone or idea and fell short. This mission feels like it wasn’t really trying to be much of anything and doesn’t have anything to offer.

I think this would probably be the worst mission if Halo 5 and Infinite didn’t exist. Even Halo 4s missions were usually fun to play, if not a little tedious at time

This is one of my favorite missions ever. Of all games.

As far as encounters is concerned I think you here describe why I’m frustrated by a lot of H2s levels in general. Tho, weirdly, I still like The Library far more than this. For I suppose a big part is that I just find the brutes of H2 very tedious to fight. Worst Halo level for me? Probably some of the H5 levels toward the end, mayebe The Breaking? Just filled with tedious tanky promotheans

Not even close. Especially with quarantine zone in there

I think both Gravemind and High Charity are such monotonous levels but Gravemind even more-so because you are just going through the motions of monotonous corridors and hallways, at least with High Charity there is a sort of progression as things start to decay. I'd be soo much better if you had to fight your way through the city, taking train to train to get to Anodyne Spirit.

how could it be considered the worst when Halo 5 exists

Nope two betralys and assult on the control room are definitely worse same goes for all of halo 5.

As long as there are the horrible levels of halo 4 and 5, this is a great level.

Too be fair halo 2 strained the Xboxes capabilities

If Bungie had the power of Xbox 360 back then, they could make this level on just as scary as dead space 2.

High Charity isn’t the worst. The worst is the Library. I wanted that mission to end after spending at least one hour and realized it took me at least two hours just to get it done. It’s like some developer got this idea to torture us with this grind fest of rinse and repeat and thought it was fun. It was not fun. It was so goddamn boring.

It’s short and sweet

No, still the library.