(Disclaimer: I am only reviewing one little aspect of the game, if you want a full review, this is not the review for you)

»Do not name a character after your friends!« I heard this regarding XCOM in the past but I do it anyway. I name the characters like some of my friends and make them look like them too, fully knowing that the characters can die permanently. You are probably wondering why I am doing this and maybe you think I am a very bad friend too. Believe me, there is a good reason why I do this and here is why:

If my team was on a mission and one of my four computer generated characters would die, I would not care about them. In this case I am only concerned of the missions success, because with one person missing, my chances of succeeding decrease.

But when my team members have the names and looks of my friends, I care a lot more about the health of the soldiers and less about the mission itself. Caring about them so much had me play the game very carefully. I put way more thought in every move I took. Ironically, this helped me completing the missions a lot better than before with computer generated characters.

The important thing is that you don’t tell your friends you killed them off in a game - this doesn't end well, believe me. Anyway, whether I am a very bad friend or not, clearly I can't be the judge of that. You should ask my dead friends.

Thank you for reading my review and treat your friends well. 💜

Ricci

I loved Xcom 1, and scoffed when friends said Xcom 2 was even better. What more needed to be improved. I didn't care about better graphics... well I was wrong.

Xcom 2 starts the story with humanity fully occupied, and Xcom fighting a harrowing journey of resistance against the aliens as they have enveloped Earth. This creates the perfect narrative backdrop for the game, as the mystery of the aliens was already explored in game 1. Now, game 2 is what we do now that we have lost.

Unlike Xcom, Xcom 2 actually has some really solid story moments and some great voice acting. The addition of thematic missions, like hunting down "King" versions of enemies created some variation and additional layers of challenge to the game. Plus, once won, these missions dished out amazing rewards.

With aliens already all over Earth, you no longer need to balance fighting off UFOs, in hard to predict, poorly generated, space fights. Instead, you are just hitting factories, supply depots, ect. This was amazing.

Xcom 2 adds a great deal more flexibility and variation into the enemy types, and a LOT of early game for me was spent apprehensively trying to figure out enemy weaknesses and strategies as my poor soldiers got massacred.

Xcom soldiers themselves are more customizable, letting you really grow attached to them. Making losing them even tougher, but a more rewarding experience. I loved naming a Ranger Jennifer Walters, later assigning her the nickname "She-Hulk" as she leveled up. It was a great deal of fun taking the cast of Archer and watching them struggle in these tense situations (ironically only Ciril Figgis survived the whole game!). I loved this, it made leveling soldiers about more than just their stats.

Finally, Xcom 2 gives a massive overhaul to the maps, giving much more variety, but more importantly making use of cover and explosives even more important. Nearly everything can be destroyed, meaning hiding behind weak terrain doesn't help nearly as much, but targetted use of explosives can completely change around a situation. This extra layer kept the combat riveting and kept me scanning the maps for opportunities to exploit.

Xcom 1 ended a bit mediocre, and while I don't think the final mission is as epic as it could have been, it still was a satisfying final fight.

Overall, if you like strategic games, that challenge you on Macro and Micro management, and reward thinking thru plans, then Xcom2 is for you.

7/10

I actually thought XCOM: Enemy Unknown was at least an 8 or an 8.5. As far as I can see, there are two major issues with these game if you don't count the numerous performance issues (like glitching): the hit percentages and the time limit mechanics.

The hit percentage issue is just bullshit in general. There's way too much missing in times you shouldn't. Why can I flank an alien who is standing behind a tree and yet because he is behind a tree on one side he is protected on the other? He's basically out in the open if you're standing in the right place, and yet the game doesn't seem to register that. It's incredibly frustrating, and I love when an enemy pulls me through a wall and the wall doesn't even break. Like the game isn't hard enough, it has to defy physics and logic entirely.

The second issue is a more controversial one that some people won't find to be a problem at all. A lot of the important missions have turn limits, so you are forced to be more aggressive. In my eyes, this hurts strategy and kind of shits on the new concealment mechanic (which is cool) because there's no time for ambushes. Ultimately, this may come down to how you view XCOM, so if you want to be able to take your time then this one isn't for you.

You can say that it makes sense thematically that you are constantly desperate and hurried, but that only fits once in a while. It's true; you are the Resistance and you need to act quickly. But why wouldn't the turn limits start when your cover has been blown in a lot of these cases? If the aliens are destroying something but don't know you're coming, would it not make sense for them to start doing that when they see you? It seems like an effort to inject realism in awkward places in a bid to make it more difficult, but it doesn't apply this same realism to anywhere else.

Anyway, outside of that, XCOM is a complex game. The strategic elements outside of combat come quick and dirty, and you're constantly doing stuff like scanning, promoting troops, building different things to make your airship work, researching elements, etc. It's a lot to take in and it's very difficult, but that's part of the appeal to people I think. There's always a lot to think about, and decisions to make, so it's easy to screw yourself.

I started off with this game being like an 8.5. I don't have the emotional investment in the series that some do--I saw one reviewer state that he cared for the characters but to me they're just stats since they have no stories--but I do enjoy the games. This fell down hard when I realized that I was being frustrated more than I would have liked. Part of that is my fault because I suck (and I don't detract from the final score for my own follies) but a large part of it is because of the two negatives I discussed earlier. They're not just minor annoyances to me.

But other people are really digging the game and that's great for them. 7 is not a bad score by any means because it says that there's still a lot of great stuff in here, with enough bad that keeps it from being a truly great game as a whole.

I can see why this game has so many fans, but there are just too many elements I find irritating or lacking for me to continue to push on with my playthrough. Because of this I went back and forth about writing a "formal" review or just plopping my feelings into a status update but after some thought I decided I can articulate my issues well enough that I might as well do the former.

First off, XCOM 2 feels pretty good to play for the most part. The animations are slick and the UI feels responsive. It does a solid job of providing you with the bucket-loads of information you'll need to strategize effectively-- even if it's a bit overwhelming for a new player such as myself. I also found the mouse controls intuitive even as someone who has mostly stuck with console games in the tactical RPG genre (Fire Emblem and FF Tactics). Because of all this I felt right at home whenever I was playing a mission.

The thing is I found most of everything that surrounds the missions themselves to be kind of obnoxious to put up with. The whole game is on a sort of timer, which I typically don't mind inherently, but it added to frustrations in other places. Missions become available as time progresses but you have to scan for the precious resources you need as well as...most things, to be honest, which also takes time. Whenever I went to scan for a few days, I was always, without fail interrupted several times by an NPC telling me an important mission just came up and it was oh so crucial that I drop everything I was doing, move across the world map and go do that, even if I was entirely incapable of properly supplying said mission with my current resources. And then the game scolds you if you choose to ignore the mission and you get one step closer to a game over. Just... ugh. Leave me alone.

Approaching this game as someone who enjoys Fire Emblem a lot, I was ready for the notorious XCOM permadeath. I always play with it turned on in the newer FE games because I view it as an essential part of the experience. I want to care about my units. It makes me work harder to keep them alive. So I was surprised to find that XCOM 2 totally failed to endear me to my soldiers. Theoretically I could name them and I guess maybe customize to some degree, but they're still a bunch of randomly generated blank slates. There wasn't any personality there to latch onto so I didn't feel a single thing when they died but disappointment, especially since it often felt out of my control when they did due to the way combat leans into RNG.

The way this game handles randomized soldiers, recruitment, etc. actually reminded me a lot of Darkest Dungeon. Except in that game what worked really well was the recruits always started with a set of personality traits, positive and negative, and I was in a constant battle to lock in the best traits while minimizing the damage done by the bad ones. It added a ton of literal personality to the slew of people I sent marching straight into Hell that endeared them to me and made me care when they died. Personalities also had a very tangible impact on the gameplay itself. XCOM 2 does none of that and feels lesser for it.

The story has a neat premise, with humanity having already lost to the aliens, but failed to captivate me beyond that. It felt more like an excuse for a bunch of "infiltrate the facility" and "rescue the hostage" style missions. Maybe it would have hit better if I had played the first game? It seemed like the Commander and other characters may have been referencing some events from Enemy Unknown. They also just won't stop talking though even when you're doing other stuff. It can be tough to differentiate flavor dialogue from something I actually need to stop and listen to, which gets old quick.

I can tell that there's a lot of depth to the systems at play in this game though and definitely see how that would appeal to someone who isn't as bothered by the above things as I am. The way this game uses cover and elevation in combat is actually super cool. While it can lead to some silly situations like a 25% chance to shoot someone who is standing still while an arm's length away, it provides a lot of versatility in how you can approach every problem. The fact that you can also destroy cover with grenades and other weapons is just another layer to this onion.

I just have too many tactics games I expect to enjoy to spend more time on this one-- even in spite of its strong core elements.

Reviewing XCOM 2 almost 5 years after its release is both a blessing and a curse. It’s great to play XCOM 2 at its greatest potential with all of the DLCs including the War of the Chosen add-on. XCOM 2 is a complex, challenging strategic game with potentially hundreds of hours of enjoyable gameplay. It’s unfortunate to report that even with XCOM 2 at its apex, the game is horrendously buggy, especially when playing vanilla XCOM 2 (without the War of the Chosen add-on). The previous games in the franchise XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within were also notoriously buggy with characters clipping through environments and random framerate drops. Unfortunately XCOM 2 bugs are even worse than those: there are UI bugs where menu choices can get obscured or behave erratically if you click too fast, turns that will feel like it takes forever to end and on rare occasions characters glitching through the environment such that it is impossible to move them afterwards. Even with all of these game breaking bugs they can be tolerated because XCOM 2 is that good.

XCOM 2 can best be summed up as the events following the bad ending of the original game. The aliens have taken over Earth and have begun their process of assimilating humans for their nefarious research under the guise of providing life-saving gene therapy. You play as the commander of the remnants of the XCOM force. XCOM is no longer a defensive global network but now an agile moving guerilla force. You are tasked with launching targeted attacks on alien supply lines, beacons and facilities with the hope of eventually overpowering them before the aliens complete their secret project to wipe out humankind.

The gameplay of XCOM 2 is mostly similar to the prior games. Each soldier has two action points and there is half-cover and full cover. The same XCOM quirks are still there, it is absolutely possible to whiff a 95% shot and also frustrating to get a soldier KO’ed with full health and in full cover. While there are many new twists to the gameplay like the ambush mechanic and the ability to hack mech units, the real key difference is in the enemy design. Every alien you encounter in XCOM 2 is a legitimate threat: there are the Sectoids that can mind control and resurrect dead units, the Vipers who can pull a soldier out of cover and asphyxiate them and even the lowly ADVENT grunts who can toss grenades to get your soldiers out of cover. The game also forces players to be on the aggressive as many missions require you to complete them within a limited amount of turns.

The War of the Chosen add-on doesn’t feel like some thrown together optional DLC but a requisite purchase to fully experience XCOM 2 at its best. The WotC add-on fixes many of the bugs that plague the vanilla version XCOM 2. It adds the Chosen which are 3 mini-bosses that randomly appear during missions and adds three new rival factions with their own unique units and meta-game layer. With all that said, I would still recommend playing vanilla XCOM 2 at least once to get a feel for what you need to do and play the two missions (Shen’s Last Gift and the Alien Hunters) that are not available in WotC. Playing XCOM 2 WotC with no prior experience might prove daunting as the missions come fast and furious often with few breaks in-between. Keep in mind that WotC runs in a separate launcher than vanilla XCOM 2 but is still more or less the same core game with new features and improvements.

XCOM 2 beyond its obvious bugs and excellent strategic layer has a lackluster story arc. While the first XCOM wasn’t exactly Emmy award winning material, it at least had a straight-forward objective of repelling the alien assault and destroying their mother base. The story in XCOM 2 on the other hand is aimless. There isn’t an overarching objective like the first game and instead you are tasked with investigating, researching and building several alien Macguffins until your team suddenly stumbles upon the final mission. The story is wrapped up in so much sci-fi technobabble that the final act is an incoherent mess featuring the “chosen one” powering up and overcoming the alien masters with (most likely) a millennial’s worth of experience and skill.

The ultimate reason why you should play XCOM 2 is not for its story but for its strategic gameplay and it exceeds. There are multiple viable soldier combinations to choose from, an incredibly diverse and unique map pool and constant surprises to keep you off-guard especially with WotC enabled. For the save-scummers out there, you will find that it is possible to escape almost any bad situation with correct positioning and ability usage. Even if you lose your best soldier, the game grants options to course correct like recruiting a highly ranked soldier from the Black Market or earning one by completing a very difficult mission. XCOM 2 is a more difficult game than the first XCOM but the payoff feels tremendous when you have a fully decked out squad of alien killing machines. The only problem is no matter what you do, the bugs will eventually rear their ugly head like in my experience. The jubilation I felt during the end of my vanilla XCOM 2 run was amazing until I saw the final FMV cutscene where the lip-sync was completely off and the World Statistics didn’t show up properly.

Although Enemy Unknown was a bewitching introduction to XCOM and the tactical strategy games for me, its affection has worn off before I could finish it earlier. It wasn't until I gave its sequel a try on the free weekend and, boy, didn't I realize sooner how much its overall improvements would set its genre on the map again. And it was strong enough for me to go back to play through the aforementioned XCOM games in chronological order.

The story picks up 2 decades after the events of Enemy Unknown, when the alien invaders have occupied the planet Earth and integrated the human society with it. With the mankind put on a firm leash, a guerrilla resistance movement has been formed to rise against the bullying authority, endeavoring to restore the former liberty once again. We get to see Central Officer Bradford back in action (even literally at some point, especially with the Tactical Legacy DLC), along with a new cast that are memorable at best.

Like in every XCOM game, you start out small and have to perform missions vital to your progress before you get more management under control. XCOM 2's new approach is your main base being a large airship, which means you can position yourself in all world's locations and decide where to move next. To add incentive to your productivity, the story mode sets a progress bar for the Avatar project, devised by the alien authority for its complete victory. It gives off an alarming presence but the game also gave me space enough to focus on my asset improvement and other missions, before I set out to stall and hold back the project through available means.

The combat has the same foundation as Enemy Unknown, albeit much more improved and intuitive. The level environment is livelier, the characters have plenty more tools and options (spending only half a character's turn on reloading has been one of the most embraced improvements, in my opinion). There are also new mission types that add to the freshness of XCOM, such as securing or eliminating targets. In base rescue missions, the War of the Chosen DLC also features guerrilla NPC that have some fighting chance against the alien attackers.

The customization of your squad members has been further extended, allowing for more liberty in looks (except face features that come in presets). I've had my fun designing mine after my favorite or original characters and the reward was even more top-shelf with Steam Workshop featuring looks and voice-lines. Now, my squads include Team Fortress 2 characters (courtesy to Walker, Texas Ranger) both kicking ass and getting theirs handed to the aliens at times.

As much as I thought XCOM 2 would be great enough to keep me in favor for tactical strategy games, the aforementioned DLC "War of the Chosen" takes the contents and experience to even higher levels, expanding the cast, story and assets even further. I suggest you buy it along with XCOM 2 and see why WOTC is a proper example of a DLC well made. And if you have been on the fence with XCOM and the genre it represents in this millenia, I could recommend going for XCOM: Enemy Unknown before immersing yourself with the more perfected form of XCOM 2, or you can start with the latter.

I don't know if I can really criticize this game. There are things I don't like about it, but as someone with no previous experience in the X-COM series I don't know if my complaints are from not being used to the series or actual poor game design. Nevertheless I'll air my complaints & give the game some praise.

My favorite part of the whole game was the Character Pool soldier customization. I spent the first X amount of hours just creating 10 different soldiers to fight the alien menace. They give you plenty of customization options to give their faces different looks from grizzled American soldier to bookish Italian medic. One issue I did encounter is they didn't have enough foreign languages. I had an Italian, German, & Mexican, but if I wanted to make a Russian or Chinese soldier they had to speak some non-native language. I know getting more voice actors in would be an expense, but maybe halve the available 10 voices for each language & give us some Russian, Chinese, Japanese, or African voices. And on an aside, when you're troops are all in the transport going to and from missions, they all have the EXACT same 1 animation of "lean forward, lean back". I know it's just the load screen, but it's weird seeming them do it in synchronization. Just create a few new animations, maybe tied to what class or "personality" your soldier has. Have one of them cleaning a gun or smoke their cigar if they have one.

Now onto gameplay. The turn-based squad combat is worthy of the praise it gets. The game awards good tactics, and knowing how to dispatch the aliens is a must. And the game stays entertaining & varied cause they introduce new aliens that have unique looks and attacks. One part where the strategy does fall down a little is in the "hit percentages". I get it may be a necessity, but that kind of randomness goes against thorough strategic planning, especially if you are at close range. Another thing that hampered my strategic planning were the crushing turn limits most missions had. I couldn't really set up any good positions or traps to lead aliens to me cause you have to charge across the map in 5 turns or fail. From my perspective, I felt the game introduced Sectoids awfully early. Their psych attacks can devastate a player who doesn't yet know how to manage the battlefield. Give me a few fights with just the ADVENT troopers.

I played the game on Rookie difficulty, because on Veteran I couldn't keep a squad alive for more than one mission. That did help me keep my soldiers alive, but I still ended up losing the overworld game after days of playing, & I don't have the energy to restart and beat the game. Many strategy videos I watched said not to worry too much about the Avatar progress, but I should worried a bit more. I was playing the game with a RPG mindset, "Put the main quest off and get all the side content first to overlevel your character" & that cost me the game. I think the overworld game was a little too random for a strategy game. I never knew when to expect certain mission to pop up & I was afraid to ignore any of them. You could never get a feel for when you had a chance to do a lot of basekeeping stuff, like getting new research done, building rooms, upgrading soldiers and when you'd be getting pulled into alien fights every other day. Something like a Civilization style gameplay would be nice, where I can see what the aliens are thinking and doing.

All in all, I enjoyed this game enough that I may visit it down the road to try and actually beat it, but after all the time I invested I don't feel like reloading an early save to try again yet. I may be awful at this game, but I realize it is a good game with solid enough strategy and really fun enemies & customization.