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.