My highest leveled soldier was mind-controlled by a Sectoid and proceeds to kill all of her fellow soldiers, effectively wiping out half of my A-team. With the other half still lying on the med-bay after the previous mission, I am completely and utterly screwed. And it was only the second mission; the first after the tutorial.
XCOM 2 is hard. And I like it.
XCOM 2 did not change much from its original. Yes, there is graphical improvement across the board and now you control a flying mobile base instead of an underground bunker, but the essence of what makes XCOM such a compelling title is still there in its entirety. If anything, XCOM 2 made everything surrounding the core tactical combat gameplay more compelling than ever. First, the limitations that you have, like limited resources and having to choose which mission to tackle makes more sense. In the original it seems odd that as an international body leading the charge of protecting the earth, you are constantly strapped for cash and can only respond to one mission at a time. In XCOM 2, you are still constantly strapped for cash and can only respond to one event a time; but it makes sense because now you are a secret guerrilla army with a hidden base in the middle of the wilderness instead of an international organization backed by the entirety of the human race. There is also a more compelling narrative here in XCOM 2, although considering the lack of one in the original, better is hardly a complement. But what was in XCOM 2 is good and provides enough context to killing the Alien.
XCOM 2 oozes style and atmosphere. ADVENT exerts total dominance through fear and propaganda mirroring totalitarian regimes of old. Oh, and these are the loading screens. The art direction and world-building in XCOM 2 makes the original look barebones.
The turn-based combat also received a significant overhaul. In essence, it is still the same combat system. Each turn, each of your soldier have 2 action points to spend on either movement or firing their weapons. There are small tweaks like the removal of secondary weapons and reloading no longer ends your turn that changes the pace and flow of combat, but hardly what I would call game-changing. The big change to the gameplay in XCOM 2 as compared to the original is the prevalence of time-based objective. In almost every non-story based missions, you will have a certain number of turns to complete the mission. Exceed the limit, and you fail the mission - or have the squad members still left behind captured by the aliens. This timer forces the players to adopt a more aggressive play style, opting for riskier, but more rewarding plays instead of the the safer but slower options.
A Ranger preparing to fire on a Viper, a new alien type in XCOM 2. Note the timer on the upper right-hand corner indicating that there's only 8 turns left to complete the mission.
Another huge change to gameplay is the introduction of Concealment. At the start of most missions, your squad is concealed, meaning when you spot a group of enemies, they will not automatically notice you and run to cover. Instead, there are red squares on the ground indicating their "line-of-sight". If your soldier steps into these red squares, the aliens will spot that soldier, run towards cover and your whole squad loses their concealment status. This mechanic allows you to set up ambushes against the unsuspecting aliens. By having the rest of your squad on overwatch (read: shoot anything that moves) and have your last soldier alert the enemy, preferably by lobbing explosives at them, the enemy will run towards cover, trigger all your overwatch, and be filled with bullets. More often than not, this ambush will kill the entire group of aliens or at least severely injure them. Although ambushes and full stealth missions are amazing to pull off, the biggest benefit of concealment is that it keeps the pace up during the early parts of each mission. Before, you will have to creep up across the map, running from cover to cover hoping that you don't attract more than 1 group of enemies at any time. Being able to move up the map with less of a risk of being spotted is an immense help given most missions have a timer attached to them. Overall, concealment is an amazing addition to the game that opens up a whole new stealth-oriented play style.
The blue highlight around the screen indicates that the squad is still in concealment. Once the grenade is lobbed - or run into the red squares - the squad will exit concealment and it's business as usual. Hope those overwatches are in place...
Outside combat, however, XCOM 2 has been significantly altered compared to the original. With adjacency bonus removed and less building space available, the base management aspect of XCOM 2 has been streamlined greatly compared to the original. Instead, in XCOM 2, engineers is the name of the game. Need more power? Assign that engineer to your generator to generate more power. Need more satellite relays? Assign the other engineer to your existing relay to allow for more contacts to be made. The very, very limited number of engineers you get throughout the campaign means that you will need to prioritize where to put your engineers to have your base run at peak efficiency. Inevitably, you will come to a point in your campaign where you realize that you don't have enough engineers for all your facilities. Fortunately, XCOM 2 allows you to get more engineers through mission rewards or in exchange of a few hundred currencies. This more active approach to base management that XCOM 2 takes allows the player to react to an initial bad dice roll that the game gives them, instead of just having to just re-roll and hope that the next one will be better than the last. I find that this change makes the base management aspect more in line to the spirit of XCOM, which is to be able to react to the dice-roll that the game gives you, be it through the use of explosives in combat, or by buying more engineer at the expense of a new armor set.
This is the Avenger, your mobile base in XCOM 2. It slightly resembles the helicarrier from Marvel's Avengers with it's four turbines, but I guess they dodged the copyright claim. Also note the 12 smaller squares, much less than the rooms available in the original.
Time management also becomes much more important in XCOM 2. In XCOM 2, you need to spend time to gather the much of your resource. The majority of your Elerium, Alien Alloys, and even your monthly income requires you to spend a few days scanning to obtain them. This makes timing your research and missions much more crucial than before. Also the lose condition in XCOM 2 is time-based. Replacing the panic meter is the Avatar Project, which starts after around 30 in game days from your first mission. To avoid story spoilers, the alien wins once the project is completed. The game allows you to stall the progress of the project by attacking alien facilities. This time limit makes it so that every day you spend scanning for resource brings you closer to losing, which makes it so that timing your research is more important as not having a plasma rifle ready in time for the next mission can mean the difference between succeeding and failing.
The world map in XCOM 2 is much more detailed than the original. The Avatar project progress is indicated on the top, always a reminder that humanity's days are numbered. Also, the 3 days required to obtain your monthly income emphasizes the importance of time-management in XCOM 2.
By this point, I think you would have realized I adore XCOM 2, just as I adored the original. Some say that XCOM is all about the RNG; you win if the dice rolls in your favor and lose if it rolls otherwise. However, RNG is not what XCOM is about. Although it still hurts when your soldier misses those 90% shots, XCOM is about knowing that even if those shots miss and your soldier dies, the loss is within expectation. It is about accepting risk and living with the consequences. Is it worth it to move you soldier out of position to get that 90% shot? Most of the time it is, as a 90% is as good as a dead enemy, but what if it misses? Well, as the saying goes, that's XCOM, baby.
I told you it looks like the helicarrier. All the more amazing as the reveal of the Avenger base was around the release date of Avengers: Age of Ultron.
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