XCOM 2

XCom 2 is a fantastic game and easily a Game of the Year Candidate for 2016.

If only it was that simple to summarize XCom 2. XCom: Enemy Unknown was a wonderful surprise back in 2012. It rightfully won numerous Game of the Year accolades thanks to its combination of relentless challenge and addictive gameplay. Four years later, Firaxis has released a sequel that in many tangible ways improves upon an already fantastic game. And yet, numerous technical issues mar an otherwise excellent game.

As many XCom: EU players can attest to, players routinely failed to stop the reboot’s alien invasion. XCom 2’s setting rolls with the idea the aliens won. Taking place twenty years after the first game, the sequel puts you in charge of the ragtag remnants of XCom. Instead of defending against the alien insurgency, now you are on the offensive. Whereas in the first game you sought to placate the various countries that supported XCom, this time you are racing against the clock to prevent the completion of the mysterious “Avatar Project” and take back the Earth.

XCom 2’s plot is only slightly more substantial than the first game’s was, but the setup is used effectively to adjust the formula already in place. Instead of being based out of an underground facility, you work out of a converted alien craft known as “The Avenger.” Space on the Avenger is more restrained, and as a result you have much less room to build facilities. This does result in a simplification to the previous game’s base building mechanics. Meanwhile, you no longer need to concern yourself with building satellite uplinks or placating The Council. Instead, you fly to different points on the global map and establish communications with local resistance cells. Meanwhile enemies will attempt to build facilities in regions they control that can advance the Avatar Project.

There are numerous other alterations to the metagame. While base building may be less complex, time management is just as if not even more important. If you want to visit the Black Market, you’ll need to spend time flying there. If you want to establish communication with a new area, it means flying to that area and staying there for several days. Even your monthly supply drop is not directly deposited into your coffers. Instead, it is dropped off at some location on the map, and you must commit several days of game time to collecting it.

The core strategy layer and mission design of XCom 2 is so good that it makes me not want to go back to Enemy Unknown. XCom 2 is a direct response to not just the issues the first game had, but the ways it was played as well. It starts with unit and class design. XCom 2’s base classes mirror that of Enemy Unknown, and yet are much better balanced. For instance, the Sharpshooter’s sniper path adopts the best ideas behind the common sniper build in Enemy Unknown. Meanwhile, the gunslinger path replaces the concept of the “mobile sniper” by focusing on pistol skills. The Specialist splits into paths devoted to medic skills versus hacking skills. On top of this, the Psi Operative class has been split into a full class as opposed to a sub-class. You’ll quickly discover not only the variety of effective builds, but the numerous ways they work in tandem with one another.

There is a moment that will come as you play XCom 2 where you’ll realize you need to unlearn the tactics you employed in Enemy Unknown. Sitting back and relying on overwatch traps is just not a viable strategy on many maps or against many late-game units. But to counter this, you have tactical options available to you that just weren’t there in the first game. Even early in the game when your weapon accuracy is unreliable, you can fall back on grenades and the swords used by the ranger class. Later in the game, you have access to a whole range of ammo types and explosives. You’ll find yourself in situations later in the game where your squad is pitted against half a dozen units and has no hope of removing them all from the battlefield in a single turn. However, you can use flashbangs or psychic powers to disable certain enemy attacks. Your hacker specialist has the ability to remove powerful Sectopods from the battle for a turn, but also can risk trying to take over the unit at a lower success rate.

At the start of most missions, your squad is concealed. During the concealment phase, the enemy is unaware of your troops. This typically allows you to set up an ambush against the first group of enemies on the map. However, the Ranger class has access to concealment abilities that can keep them hidden after this point. While this allows the unit to scout ahead if you don’t expose them individually, it does mean you’ll have fewer units available to attack aliens. Many missions employ turn count restrictions. While for the most part these are fairly generous, it does mean you have to keep moving at a brisk pace. This often results in the player making unforced errors until they learn to calm down. If you dawdle for too long during a mission, expect enemy reinforcements to show up.

It’s difficult to offer a definitive opinion on the game’s balance without playing a few more games to completion, but I found it to be more forgiving than Enemy Unknown. For starters, the game offers you a lot more leeway with the Avatar Project’s fail condition. You have multiple methods to walk back the counter even after it has reached near completion. While you’ll still lose your fair share of troops, especially early on, there are numerous methods of resupplying them. Psy Operatives are trained outside of combat, so you can even build up fresh troops without putting them into battle. Late in the game, I even received two fully-leveled units as mission rewards. While the alien units are by most measures deadlier than in EU, the buffs to your own troops and additional tactical options are an even match for them.

There is no way to sugarcoat this: XCom 2 is technically a mess. While Enemy Unknown was notorious for its fair share of jank, XCom 2 suffers on a number of fronts. For the most part, the issues I ran into fell into the “minor jank” category. For instance, in one mission, I blew up a building, and an enemy unit became stuck in the air. Animations often were skipped or were displayed from odd camera angles. Then there are performance issues. I played the game on a build with an Intel i5-4690K, a Radeon 390 8 GB video card, 16 GB of RAM, and a Samsung 512 GB 850 SSD drive. In order to get a consistent frame rate, I needed to knock anti-aliasing down to FXAA. During some turns, it would take quite some time for the AI to finish its moves. Load times were often oddly lengthy, although the now infamous “Caps Lock” fix did improve some instances of this.

Unfortunately, this is not the extent of the game’s issues. My saves broke during one randomly generated mission. I was fortunately able to load a save before I entered the mission, and the game proceeded to generate a new map minus the bugs. A good friend of mine playing his own game alongside me wasn’t so lucky, and he managed to get into a situation where the game would not recognize that he had completed a mission. Even rolling back to earlier saves didn’t seem to resolve the issue. It does not take a great deal of effort to find lengthy forum discussions detailing a slew of similar technical issues. While the player can avoid losing an entire campaign’s worth of progress through liberal use of save files, those engaging in Ironman mode run the risk of losing their entire campaign to the game’s numerous glitches.

In a lot of ways, score fails to represent the actual recommendation to the consumer in a case like this. Though I was able to navigate some minor glitches, jank, and one potentially game-breaking issue to reach the game’s conclusion, too many performance issues and game-breaking bugs exist to recommend the game for purchase at this time. It was not so long ago I owned a GTX 760, and I can’t imagine what performance might have been on that card given how the game runs on my 390. If you have not purchased the game yet, wait and see if Firaxis can patch most of these technical issues within the coming months.

If not for its technical issues, XCom 2 would be just about a perfect sequel. In almost every facet, it represents an improvement on an already fantastic game. I’d have a hard time going back to Enemy Unknown after experiencing the breadth of tactical options its sequel possesses. Hopefully at some point in the coming months, Firaxis will have this game working in the state it deserves. Minus the technical issues, XCom 2 is an easy five-star recommendation.