XCOM 2

After XCOM 1 how can someone not get hyped for the sequel, and from my experience with Firaxis, they know how to develop a great sequel; they know their weaknesses and they fix them, they know their strengths and they build on them, and that is a great policy to make a great sequel.

Every class felt a bit anticlimactic in XCOM 1; there was never an ability that you unlock that would overhaul the way you play. In XCOM 2 this isn’t the case; every class has at least one to three abilities that really change the way you play and make it a lot more effective, not to mention making the characters even more badass. And that also makes investing in a characters a much bigger deal, so when that permadeath hits it hits hard.

The developers make the player a lot more invested in each character by adding a great amount of, not just actual game impacting customization, but also the cosmetic side of the customization. There is lot more options that are not unlocked from the get-go but get unlocked gradually for each character as you level them up. So you may see one of your soldiers morphing with each level up to become Solid Snake or Mario or even Hulk Hogan, its all about your creativity. The game also let you save each and every character you make, but you can use it only in other playthroughs.

I played both XCOM 1 and 2 on normal difficulty, and I can safely say 2 is a much harder game, in both the metagame and the actual game. The great thing about it though is that it’s mostly a fair difficulty and with a great amount of variety. I say mostly because the percentage of hit and miss is still fucked; you may try to shoot a dude from a point blank distance with 98% hit chance that may actually miss, and it misses more often than 2% of the time.

The roster of enemies is not just great on it’s own, it’s also the way it’s presented and paced; every couple of battles a new enemy will pop up that force you to adapt and change the way you play. And with more enemies come more autopsies, and with more autopsies comes more research and building in the metagame, so your arsenal of weapons, armor and tools never cease to grow.

The metagame is not just grander, it’s also better rounded and explained, granted some facets may lack bit of explanation, but still it’s a better one than XCOM 1. And that seem to be the case with almost every aspect of XCOM 2, everything feels better, more thought out and presented than XCOM one.

One of the issues I had with XCOM one was the lack of variety in the levels, both thematically and from an actual level design point. The level design is in both games is procedurally generated, but in 2 they added more to the formula with more themes. Firaxis goes beyond theme and level design by offering even more mission types such as the fan requested assault on your base.

The narrative was mostly...just there in XCOM 1, in 2 it starts much better with an intro that includes you the player in the narrative, but unfortunately it doesn't take long till it falls back to its old style.

XCOM 2 is definitely made to be played for more than one play-through, add to that the support for mods and we, hopefully, have endless amount of great content to come.

One of the issues I had with the game is how heavy it runs on my pc spite me having a rather decent rigg. Mostly the game runs well but still it needs optimization.

In closing, XCOM 1 was a dream come true for me; a AAA strategy RPG on PC, it’s still the case in XCOM 2, Fraxxis fixed every issue and furthermore introduced more elements to the already amazing formula to best it self in almost every aspect.