Being a newcomer to the series, I must say that I really didn’t know what to expect. I did very little to no research into the game until I bought it. From what I’ve gathered, XCOM 1 was about the commander of earth coordinating the counterattack against an alien onslaught. XCOM 2 takes the same path. So much so that you play the same commander, who was brought out of cryogenic storage to single handily run the resistance(Those lazy pricks.)
Starting on my own, the first thing I noticed that it was turn based combat, similar in some ways, to the Fire Emblem series. You select your unit, place them, and tell them which alien scum to attack. The chance of you hitting your target is presumably based on their rank, how close they are to their target, and which cover is between them and the alien. The first thing I found frustrating though, is that sometimes, despite being two “squares” away from my target, I only had a 60 percent chance of hitting the bastard. “JUST POINT YOUR GUN OVER THE COVER” I shouted in futility, as I threw my controller down and began licking my toes… but anyways, the point is it can sometimes be frustrating finding out that your sharpshooter, that should hit things with pinpoint accuracy, often has less than a 70% chance of hitting someone. This doesn’t sound like much at first, but when your’re facing three aliens that have as much suicidal tendencies as I have, the need for a sure thing once in a while is appreciated.
The second sticky problem is the overarching “time” mechanism. Now you may have noticed that I put time in quotations. Basically time moves as you choose tasks to complete. Certain events, called “Dark Events,” will hit you if you don’t counteract them. But what I found more often than not, was that I had wasted too much time taking side missions when I should have been taking down the main alien facilities. If too much time goes by, the “Avatar Project,” (which does god knows what, but apparently is world ending) will complete, and you lose the game.
So although I won every mission, often times without soldiers dying, I started getting my resistance boss on the phone telling me I was doing a bad job. But f##k him anyways, I do things my own way. At the end of the day, the time mechanic, which is supposed to make you weigh your decisions, and choose the loses you carry really turns into a muddled inconsistent mess.
The third, and final thing is the story. By which I mean there isn’t one. The game is mission based. My biggest complaint about this are the “rescue” missions, where the aliens ransack a defenseless village and you send in a squad to save six of them. And it’s six every mission. I couldn’t help notice that when a civilian got killed it told me their name, as if I was supposed to give a flying F##k. So there’s no story. I couldn’t tell you if you if the first XCOM had a story, but who cares? I don’t play xbox 360 games anymore.
At the end of the day XCOM 2 is good for passing the time. If you are already a fan of turn based strategy games then you will find something to like about this one. If you’re not sure, or you break out into hives every time you hear the word “micromanage,” like me, then give it a pass.
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