XCOM 2

I loved the first reboot. It was an awesome strategy game and it did wonders for my love of a tactical game. The second did something rarely done in games anymore. It took everything from the first, and did it better with added features. I am a save scummer. And even with save scumming this game was a challenge. The AI is smart and fun to play against. The mods keep the game fresh. I easily give it a 9/10

Have you played the X-Com franchise Before? Then I Think you will love this game. It continues on where X-Com 1 (new release, not the old) takes of. New features, adjustments to old ones. It gets a Little more advanced. That said I Think that if you never had Contact with X-Com, I would say start with X-Com Enemy Within. Then you will appreciate this game even more, and you will feel the development and understand the Changes more.

The incredible feeling of saving the world is back in XCOM 2. There's a really fun blend of RPG elements, a solid story and flawless (and improved on Enemy Unknown) strategy mechanics. The switch from defence to offence in the mission really shifts it up a gear, and the feeling of being desperately on the back foot is really exciting, it makes it all feel far more important. It's a tough game, make no mistake, but that's a good thing, and something too few games take advantage of nowadays. If you like sci-fi, strategy or even just a good game, you really need this one.

This game is absolutely fantastic. It takes the formula of Enemy Unknown and improves it in every way. The graphics are better (not by much, but it's still better), there are more weapons and armor (as well as the addition of weapon modding, allowing you to further upgrade or specialize your soldiers and their weapons), there are more mission types and maps (tired of doing nothing but abduction missions? Well, you won't be doing that in Xcom 2), and there are more enemies (everything from the Sectoid to giant death robots and flying spheres that can wipe the floor with you using Psychic powers). However, there isn't just more stuff. They take Xcom and turn it to 11. Everything in this game is overpowered, from the Sectoid's ability to resurrect your dead teammates and use them to kill you, to the Sniper which can gain the ability to kill infinite enemies as long as they keep hitting and they still have ammo. The amount of crazy stuff that can occur and make you go "Oh my goooooooooood" is insane and adds to the fun of the game in an amazing way. I would HIGHLY recommend this game to fans of Xcom or anybody looking to get into the franchise.

XCOM 2 is a huge improved over Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within. The game's missions have more variety and all mission types end up working well this time, the classes are all well balanced and based on what enemies you might be facing or what kind of mission you are going on certain skills will be more useful making it a good idea to field more soldiers. Overwatch has been significantly improved, it is more cinematic and your soldiers will no longer all fire at the exact same target. The maps are more varied, many with more vertical design giving you good spots to put snipers or ways to gain the high ground. XCOM 2 adds new mechanics such as concealment which ends up working very well, allowing you to ambush, scout, or sneak by enemy units. Weapons can have attachments added to them which is useful and changes the look of the gun, but you lose your upgrades when you research the newest weapons and you can only add one or two attachments and what type goes with what class of soldier is obvious. Every soldier can equip a personal combat sim which can cause them to have higher aim, movement, dodge, will, or health. While the PCSs are useful they seem to be very rare with me never even finding a single accuracy increasing one throughout my 37 mission campaign. The gameplay outside of battles is also much improved. Base building is better and no longer dependent on the luck of where steam can be found, if it can be at all and there is no more gaming the system to launch satellites at the end of every month to bring panic down. Your time is now spent moving you ship to different locations to do missions, scanning areas to get a little flavor text and a reward, buy and sell at the black market, contact resistance groups in different countries, and building radios to broadcast your resistance signals further. Every month dark events are shown and you are only able to stop one of them, the events might see the aliens improving their weapons and armor, hiding enemies in missions, decreasing your supplies, increasing enemy sight range when your units are concealed, etc. The game adds significantly more customization options for your soldiers, with armor you can make changes to, armor and weapon colors, armor and gun pattern choices, character bios, choosing your own nicknames and nationality, the choice of your character demeanor (which also effects their voice, tattoos, scars, hair, beards, etc. There are some strange decisions such as not being able to wear a hood with a pair of glasses or a cigar, a lack of good facial hair options, and there are not many different languages but what we get is a lot more than the first. Some problems with the game are that while vertical focus is great it can cause some camera and line of sight problems problems. The game has better characters but the story itself is still poor. You will likely run into problems with certain animations playing or activating correctly. The swords are really only good during the early game and become almost completely useless in the mid and late game, they do low damage, have a poor chance to hit compared to the shotgun that the Rangers also have, a poor chance to get critical hits, and for some reason they are the only type of weapon that you are not allowed to take utility items or attachments to improve them. Patches over time have fixed some issues and re-balanced some overpowered equipment, such as the game's decoy grenades which allowed me to play through the Commander difficulty and lose only one person my first time playing. One of the last story missions in the game allows you to spend intel on granting your soldier concealment, giving them better aim, getting you an additional squad member, etc on that one mission. This would have been a much better use of intel in the game instead of just using it to buy black market items and to contact the resistance, it could have allowed you to preview the map, lower the number of enemies by having resistance contacts do things, detect enemies, etc. The game supports mods and there have already been some good ones released including new weapons, abilities, classes, customization options, and changes to speed up or edit different parts of the game. Even with the negatives it's a great game that will likely only be improved for you with the purchase of the DLC and through the use of player made mods.