Review: XCOM 2

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Regardless of how victorious players were in XCOM: Enemy Unknown , Firaxis Games continued down a canon storyline with XCOM 2 that assumed players had ultimately lost the fight against the technologically superior alien invaders. This more or less sets the tone for the new War of the Chosen expansion: there are some fights you just can't win, and the impressively deep expansion pack for XCOM 2 piles on the signature pain that strategy fans have come to embrace in almost masochistic fash

One feature that could have been great for Firaxis to implement is stealth. At the beginning of most missions, your team is concealed and unknown, so getting the drop on at least one enemy is fairly easy to accomplish. Unfortunately, there’s no way to actually keep concealment once an attack lands, so going back into the darkness to get the jump on another group of aliens is absent. As mentioned before, there are some characters such as the Ranger who has a skill that allows her to not be revealed when things go off, but after everyone in the vicinity is cleared and you progress further, enemies will instantly become aware of your position as they patrol their routine programming like nothing is going on. This is more of a half of a step rather than a full step in the right direction, something that could have benefited the core gameplay enormously. All-out war with your new alien overlords is fun, but a stealth component could have allowed for even more combat variance other than exchanging gunfire and hoping your shot hits every round.

We really wanted XCOM 2 to be something amazing, but unfortunately it falls short. From highly customizable characters to deep and meaningful combat that has been improved over its predecessor, there’s a lot here to like, at least on paper. Unfortunately, this is only when it all comes together properly. We ran into far too many technical issues to count that taints the experience and puts even more frustration on an already stressful campaign. If the game wasn’t so demanding in its design, then a lot of these issues wouldn’t be a huge concern, but that would require cutting out what makes XCOM so appealing in the first place. Unless you plan on save scumming your way through the campaign, the outcome will ultimately end poorly. XCOM 2 truly has the makings of a great slg Game blog, but it’s hidden in the bloated technical issues that drag it down.

So the parcel will drop down in their locations with different kinds of things and different sizes to them, and they’re not all the same size, and it will pull for pools. It will be intelligent where you can say only use from these, and then on the roads it stitches down its own sub-procedural level. It’s super flexible. And again, you can make it 100% procedural or you can change it. It’s completely up to the modder and up to us as developers, like all of our stuff is procedural, even the narrative stuff. I’m really happy with that system and, getting back to your question, it really lead us to that inspiration. At the end of the day that’s what we were focused on and the modding community is great on PC. I hope it gets more robust and flexible on consoles, but that’s where it was when we made that decision.


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Beyond this, players can bolster their own forces with a few clever additions to the original formula. Soldiers can now gain ability points for performing tactical moves, like flank shots or ambush kills, and spend them on additional skills to use in battle. While the original menu of two skill options still exists, a few seemingly random third skill slots are available for purchase now, making each soldier's respective skill tree even more unique. Soldiers can also bond with squadmates they spend time on the battlefield with (a la Fire Emblem ), and commanders will even be able to rank up these skills so that bonded soldiers can utilize unique combat moves in battle. Soldiers also require rest after each mission lest they become fatigued and more susceptible to developing fears that can impact them in bat


Ultimately, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen buries even the most tactically-sound gamer under a mountain of entertaining challenges and adds not only several hours of content to play through, but well-neigh infinite replayability as well - we can't wait to restart the fight and see how a new batch of soldiers fares against the ADVENT government. Firaxis Games has introduced a veritable mountain of new enemies and experiences to take in, greatly refreshing what was already a deep strategy title with a steep learning curve. With so many layers of new content and carefully balanced gameplay, War of the Chosen (and its accompanying price tag) isn't for the faint of heart, but it certainly packs more than enough value to back up the pr