I’m super old and so can for a moment be a little bit helpful. Quake 2 wasn’t all that special when it was new, and it was mostly glossed over because games like Unreal and Half-Life were well on the horizon, Duke 3D had shown what we can do with environmental level design a year earlier and it was sharing the shooter stage with games like Blood, Dark Forces II and Goldeneye 64
Quake was special because it was a technological showcase, but Quake 2 was just another game in a sea of great experiences, that struggled to find its own voice.