Gaming

you're reviewing a different product

And making comparisons between the two products is perfectly valid.

ow1 was shut down to avoid splitting the playerbase.

I'm sorry, are you an Activision/Blizzard employee?

I ask because only one of their employees could come up with such a bullshit statement. The core gameplay loops aren't different enough to cause that kind of split, and OW2 Is free-to-play. Anybody that wanted to voluntarily jump from OW1 to OW2 could have freely done so at literally no cost, if they so wanted.

They shut down OW1 to a) pump up the numbers for OW2 and b) to get OW1 players forcibly exposed to their F2P market.

when kaplan went on record saying that he'd fought to get ow1 owners a copy of ow2 for free everybody loved it, but now it's bad, actually? yes that makes sense

Definitely an Activision/Blizzard employee. Nobody else would miss the disingenuity of making such a statement about a free-to-play game.

comparing the entire landscape of gaming to a game is a very different thing to comparing it to a specific game

And my point is, taking into account the landscape, even in a macro level such as Activision's own behaviour with the series, including this very game, is relevant context worthy of being part of a review.

it would be like if somebody reviewed Baldur's Gate 3 by saying it was bad just because they liked the source powers from Divinity 2. as part of a review maybe it works, sure but as the bedrock and sole item of substance, it's useless.

Your analogy falls flat because Divinity and BG, though they share much of the same inspirations and development staff, are very different games. OW2 is basically OW1 with some minor tweaks and microtransactions.

The problem with OW2's mtx though is that the game makes it as hard as possible to ignore its microtransaction nature as possible, and they willingly hamper the user experience to do so.

Other than the MTX, OW2 is so similar to OW1, that without it, these reviews would be saying that they're essentially the same game. So what they're saying now, that it's OW1 enshittified, is valid.

your entire argument so far has been "I preferred the previous game therefore OW2 deserves to be the worst reviewed game on steam".

If that's what you took away from my comments, then I'm afraid you cannot read. That, or you're unable to discern from different users. All I've said was that people calling OW2 basically enshittified OW1 is not review bombing, because it's a valid review.

even ignoring the fact that you've failed to articulate any differences past a vague notion of not liking that it's free-to-play

Because there are very few differences and none of them are improvements. Like the shrinking of team sizes and available modes.

Also, F2P can be predatory as fuck, and Activision/Blizzard have most certainly been so here. they've even broken sales laws in countries like Australia.