XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

XCom remains the gold standard for tactical turn-based squad combat with a compelling story campaign.

Overview

XCom has a lot going on: tactical combat, rpg elements, permadeath, strong story, quality cutscenes, great art, and voice acting. The four difficulty levels are well tuned. The AI is good. You become invested in your soldiers. My first game took around 100 hours to complete, but I think 50 is more common.

The Good

Tactical Combat

The heart of XCom is tactical combat. That's where you spend most of the game, and it's fun. There are plenty of great decisions to make, and it's satisfying. If you really want pure tactics and nothing else, you might be frustrated at everything else going on in the game, but then why are you looking at XCom?

Story

The story is good but the presentation is amazing. The head chief, engineer, and scientist are well written and well acted. On my first playthrough, once I got so strong that I couldn't lose missions, the campaign story kept me coming back.

Campaign

The strong campaign is what really sets XCom apart from other mission-based games. The buildings and technology decisions have dramatic effects on the missions. While you have to mostly succeed, you can fail missions from time to time and still win. 

Levelup

You might have 30 active soldiers at a time and they will all be different. There are 5 skill trees (8 with expansion) and like 6 ranks. There is a variety of equipment that can be passed around. Losing a high-level soldier feels bad, and if you want to keep his valuable equipment you need to carry his body out.

The Bad

Scaling Difficulty

The game does a good job at increasing difficulty as the campaign goes on, but it eventually hits a cap that is too easy. If you can survive to the endgame, the missions go from tense to easy. This is a serious problem. After my first 10 missions, I'm thinking, "what a great game! I can't wait to try other strategies". After 40 missions I'm thinking, "ugh, what a slog. I'm bored with these easy missions. I'll just let the aliens kill civilians until I can do the final mission."

Pod Activation

Tactical encounters are handled with "pods". They are small groups of aliens that don't do much until they notice you. Once they see you, they activate and try to kill you. Generally speaking, if you can do a mission with only activating one pod at a time you will do well. Activating two pods can be very difficult and activating three could force you to immediately abandon the mission. 

This pod system means that stealth is king and carefully moving around the map is critical. I don't enjoy that aspect of the game. I like the fighting. I don't like sneaking around to make sure I only fight one pod at a time. This is by far my biggest complaint about the game. It makes missions take twice as long to complete. I won't mind the occasional stealth mission, but this mechanic forces me to keep at least one stealther in every squad.

Story Pacing

There is not much reason to do the research that advances the story. In order to get powerful, you should research tech to help you win missions. By the time you are free to do research for the plot, the game is easy. There is a doomsday clock that forces you to do the occasional plot mission, but once you pass the midgame, this isn't an issue.

Clunky UI

OK, "clunky" isn't fair but there are some screens that could be snappier. Those animations are cool but after I have seen them 300 times, I'd rather just get in and out of the menu quickly. At the squad select screen there is a ton of information to consider but it isn't easy to find that information. I have to go through a lot of menus to give my soldier the same loadout that he always has.

Should You Buy It?

Yes. It's A+ quality. The story, the strategic play, the levelup aspect, and the tactical game are all strong. It's the king of the genre. If you are unsure if you like that genre, it's a fine game to explore that.

War of the Chosen Expansion

Should you get it? Probably not. It's a great expansion and does what an expansion should -- it offers more content for people who have played out the main game. But if you are only going to play the game once, I don't know if the expansion adds much. It might make the plot seem a little random and unfocused. So basically I'd get the base game and play it once or twice. Then get the expansion. Honestly I'm not sure if the gameplay is better with or without it.

The Witness

The Witness is a game of maze puzzles in a pleasant atmosphere.

Overview

The Witness is a long series of little mazes to solve. The environment hints at a deeper story, although I didn't play long enough to figure it out. The mazes themselves are fun, but after doing dozens of them I would need a break. 

Recommendation

It's hard to recommend The Witness. For me, it was too repetitive. I really liked The Talos Principle and I can't quite put my finger on the difference. While slow, The Talos Principle had a plot to figure out. Also, the puzzles felt more clever. The Witness feels like doing a whole bunch of Sudoku puzzles. I like the occasional Sudoku, but I don't want to do them back to back for hours.

Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords

KOTOR 2

Kotor2 is a popular Star Wars game, expanding on the lore of the Old Republic in the wake of Revan.

Overview

The game itself is a real-time over-the-shoulder team-based RPG. The game mechanics are heavily influenced by the d20 Star Wars game. You follow a mostly linear plot, gain levels, acquire companions, and get better gear.

Assessment

Graphics

This game is over ten years old and hasn't aged all that well. The graphics aren't distractingly bad, but people watching me play commented, "wow, how old is that game?"

The movement scripts are pretty good, though. It's fun watching lightsabers flash and deflect blasters.

Gameplay/Combat

I specialized in melee, and all encounters were far too easy. In general combat didn't feel very good. When you start to attack, you get to queue up your actions. That's great, but for some reason you can't queue up buffs unless there is an attack. Very annoying. Also, one of the companions would often do a melee attack when I queued up a spell. Also annoying. Between the annoyances and the ease of fights, combat was tedious.

On the other hand, some of the force powers are pretty cool. At the end, Force Lightning was decimating everything.

Puzzles/Bonus Quests

Ugh, so bad. I should have skipped more of these. Too much running around doing nothing, punctuated with boring combat. Puzzles were generally too obvious, with the occasional "what do I do now?"

Main Story

The actual story was decent. This is the only reason I can think to play this game. The dialogue is very well done.

Level Up

Good. Leveling up is pretty fun. There are a lot of choices. You have enough variety of companions to cover any weaknesses in case you make a mistake. You eventually gain enough levels that you start down one path and change your mind. At the end, I was gaining powers I never planned to use (melee skills on a mage, force powers on a fighter).

Items

Poor. Getting new items is pretty comparable to other RPGs. However, there is to convenient way to compare item. "Cool. I found a Mandalorian Shield. Uh... what does it do?" Instead of a quick tooltip of the abilities, you have to dig through menus and scroll through an unsorted list of items to find the new thing. For the most part, I didn't bother. Every few levels I would see if I had somehow acquired a better items.

Crafting

Mediocre. The crafting system is almost cool, but it has a few problems. The biggest problem is that it is not clear what item upgrades fit into which items. Is "Energy Absorption 3" underlayer or overlayer?

Companions

Mixed bag. There is a lot of variety in your companions and their stories develop. However, none of them are very deep, and it's not easy to extract the story. Every so often you have to talk to them and go through the same dialog choices you have seen a dozen times before you know if there is anything new. The different companions are great, though. Something for everyone.

Voice Acting/Dialogue

The voice acting is always good and often outstanding. It pairs with good writing to make you look forward to talking with NPCs. 

The Sith Restored Content Mod

Also known as M4-78 mod, this comes highly recommended, but I disagree. It adds another planet, but the puzzles and voice acting are done by fans. The quality of the puzzles are about the same as the rest of the game, except the running around is even worse. While the voice acting is very good for a fan mod, it is far inferior to the excellent work done in the game. Since I consider the voice acting the best part of the game, this Mod is worse than pointless.

Overall

Kotor2 is generally boring with dated graphics. The highlights are the voice acting. It took me 78 hours to play but 20 would have been more tolerable. Overall, I don't recommend.