It did well tbh but there was just an entire meme culture knocking it for some reason. I remember seeing it get a lot of shit on Reddit back when I browsed it. It kind of surprised me in a lot of ways.
I think a lot of it was driven by people wanting to dunk on Microsoft and halo fans in particular. People still dunk on Microsoft, but halo isn’t as fun to dunk on anymore now that the series has completely gone off the rails and has an uncertain future
CMLVI@lemmy.world 51 minutes ago
I think a lot of it is that it’s direction was a bit different. Halo was built on basically immortal Master Chief. Reach had Spartan 3s, which weren’t as “Master Chief”-y, and we see every one of em die on screen as part of the story. That is a pretty stark contrast to Chief never dying. Additionally, if IIRC, the multiplayer was meh, and multiplayer was a huuuuge deal at that time. The story was great (even despite what people said about it at the time) but the multiplayer didn’t carry the game, so it was generally a “play the story, go back to Halo 3” kinda game.
My perspective on it, tho.