I've been a major RTS fanboy since the early 2000s, and I was initially very wary of the XCOM series when my friends first told me to buy it because of its turn based nature. However, when I bought this game I had no idea how much fun I would actually end up having with it. Everything about it is engaging and enjoyable to experience. Even playing on the lower difficulties presents a challenge that will take some critical thinking to come out unscathed. The game itself earns an easy 9/10 from me, here's why: Gameplay: Simple tile-based movement and combat sounds like it would be boring, but the addition of soldier abilities, flanking, and height advantages add so much to the gameplay. 10/10 Graphics: The game itself looks really good. Not state of the art good, but very good. It targets 40 FPS with the default graphical settings, so bear that in mind and turn some things down if you want that 60 FPS. (turning down MSAA and Shadows boosted my FPS significantly) 8/10 Replayability: The campaign, unlike a lot of strategy games, is very replayable. The campaign's story doesn't change on each subsequent playthrough, but the missions do. At least, the way you play them does. It's very rare to get a mission that is exactly the same as one you played before. (Aside from major story missions) Not to mention that the campaign takes about 30-40 hours to finish on its own. Even longer on higher difficulties. 10/10 Difficulty: The game has 4 levels of difficulty; Rookie, Veteran, Commander, and Legend. Each one with its own modifiers to make the game harder or easier in different ways. Rookie and Veteran more or less cheat to make the game easier for you, but make no mistake, it can still destroy you if you aren't careful. Commander and Legend is where the game begins to cheat in the aliens' favor, but if you like a challenge then you can definitely still beat it. Overall I give it an easy 9/10. If you played XCOM:EU/EW then this game is right up your alley. Even if you haven't this game is still great fun.

I loved the first game. I didn't know how much better it could get, but it did. They added meaningful world travel, the Alien Hunters DLC adds crazy difficulty, and the mechs are actually useful. In truth I have never beat this on the hardest difficulty though I did manage in the first game. Once again the mods come through as Long War Studios publishes a huge game change add on once you get bored of the vanilla game. I just love this game. I ran into the occasional bug but nothing was too bad. Cannot wait for the new expansion pack.

Very worthy sequel to a long-running series. Proper strategy with a decent variation in mission type and tactic. Very polished interface and strong story. + Missions feel varied; something "new" frequently + Against the clock missions are challenging and well balanced + Interface is very well put together, very few glitches + Mould-breaking creatures keep you on your toes with very interesting rules for each type + / - Ability to save is useful; though be careful to not let it hamper the challenge - Overworld timers push you through quickly; I'd argue too quickly - but tail off inexplicably at the end - Ending a little underwhelming in terms of challenge, (But still fun) - Perma-mind control possibly too good when used against AI. (Hilarious, though) - Was expecting a bit more grind and depth. (WIll try Long War!) Overall, Excellent.

better than its Firaxis predecessor for a number of reasons (the foremost of which is procedurally generated maps), and although it's very different from the original X-COM games that does not have to be a bad thing -- there is room for both after all. But the real selling point of XCOM 2, the thing that makes it not just good but great, is the modding system. Less than a year and a half after release, there are several major overhaul mods in addition to thousands (!!!) of smaller mods, ranging from gameplay tweaks, to cosmetics, to extra map plots and parcels for more procedural variety. Heck, there are even mods that lets you recruit members of alien species from Star Wars or Mass Effect to join XCOM. Long War 2 is probably the most well known of XCOM 2's mods -- after all, Pavonis Interactive (the studio behind that mod and its predecessor, Long War for Enemy Within) is most likely the reason XCOM 2 has such extensive mod support. My personal favorite is the Spectrum mod, which is currently in its Green iteration. And there are others. You can tweak this game to your heart's content. There is enough mod content out there for this game that if you want, you could completely change your lineup of mods for each campaign and never run out of XCOM. The game has major performance problems as well. This is frustrating and is one of the main problems with XCOM 2, but you can get it to run O.K. even on fairly low-end hardware by editing the configuration file "XComEngine.ini." There are guides on the internet for safely editing this file. Granted, you shouldn't have to -- optimization ought to be a priority for a game studio with such extensive resources -- but eh, it's not that hard to edit it down a bit and the graphics still look gorgeous. Ultimately, if you feel strongly that you do not want to futz around with mods (although it really isn't hard to do, with the Workshop and integrated modloader) or ini editing, then you should not buy XCOM 2. Otherwise, get ready to explore the best modding community I have seen for a computer game.

XCOM2 does so much right, and improves from the already great XCOM Enemy Unknown/Within. This time you are not fighting the alien invasion, but the aliens have already won. You are the rebels, trying to fight a losing battle and free Earth from the hold of the aliens. This reversal of roles is handled splendidly from both gameplay and storytelling standpoint. It's interesting to be on kind of the invading side for once. You use this huge airship to fly around the world, trying to hold off the Advent and stop their plans. One of the biggest changes from Enemy Unknown comes in the battles. In EU you would advance slowly until you finally see the aliens, they get in position and you just hope to god you did good enough job in positioning before triggering the aliens. Here the Advent are not aware of you, you're the infiltrator. How this works is when you see the aliens, you see a red are around them. Once you get on it, the enemy notices you and the battle starts. Before that though you have plenty of time to position your soldiers and catch the aliens off guard, killing bunch of them before they can do anything and be prepared for another wave. This is extremely satisfying to pull off, and it might seem like it makes the game easy, because you can basically do whatever you want and enemy doesn't notice you, but it doesn't. Many missions are on pretty strict turn limit, which I honestly recommend alleviating a bit with mods, there are mods that remove timers completely and some that add just a turn or two which makes a huge difference not necessarily in difficulty, but in that you're not being rushed all the time and you actually have the time to make strategic decisions, and not just blindly gunning it sacrificing every good soldier you have or risk failure altogether. Enemies often can come endlessly too, so hanging around too long with no turn limit at all can be very bad thing to do also. Soldier classes are also deepened, and you can really customize them the way you want. Not only are there loads of cosmetic options available in-game, the modding community has done some amazing stuff creating different armor. My favorite is definitely different Stormtrooper outfits to create my own clone army who miss every shot, classic XCOM style. And not only cosmetics, but also the abilities they have. You can choose different specialization for every character, and you can really make them how you want, for example sniper can be more classic sniper who shoots from far away, can shoot extremely long distances in overwatch etc. or become a gunslinger who uses pistol truly effectively. Modders also come in play here as they've created some great new options, many of them actually balanced too that fit the team perfectly, not just one man armies like some modders like to do. The gameplay changes and improvements really bring XCOM2 to whole other level in terms of tactical, squad based strategy games. And embracing modding gives it a lot of longevity and options to truly play how you want. XCOM EU did a fine job rebooting an old franchise, and XCOM2 innovates and improves from it in every aspect, modernizing it without sacrificing the core of XCOM.