XCOM 2 is an improved version of XCOM in every way possible. More options, better strategic and tactical gameplay, everything is there.
I guess there are performance issues, since people mention that a lot, but I didn't have any.
A good thing to notice is how nicely the Firaxis people got the players out of the comfort zone by including the timers in many missions who need a completely different approach and this is obviously enraging people who wanted to win the game by playing it the same way, by overwatch creeping. That is not going to work anymore people, you have to think anew!

Xcom 2 feels exactly how the sequel to Xcom 1 should. It has everything i loved in the first game and just more added on to it. The stealth mechanic is fun and adds diversity especially when using some higher tiered soldiers who can duck in and out of stealth. The new found overlay map adds a lot to the decision making process of what type of supplies i need at the moment

This is not a "perfect game" but it is a perfect xcom game. Bugs are occasional and are always going to be around on launch (What little there is)

It seems to me the majority of negative comments don't like the difficulty or the fact that numerous missions are timed. Unfortunately for those people they must not know Xcom because the pure fact that it is difficult, grueling, and punishing is what makes it shine. You will never forget those soldiers who fell under your command. I don't think I've ever been so torn up with deaths in a strategy game.
The percentage system (Thank god) seems overhauled from the original in that over 70% is pretty guaranteed a kill so no more standing with your shot gun up someones bum and watching your man hit the ceiling.
There is much more i can say positive about this game but if you are honestly still reading this review and haven't scoffed at-least 3 teams at my remarks you should just go out and buy it. Its like the old Xcom's but better!

The game is a 10 and I didn't rate it that to troll with the Zero idiots! It's the perfect continuation to the XCOM series,yet it feels independent on its own and it improves so much in terms of gameplay, technicalities and story over its predecessor. The graphics are excellent in par of what you expect from turn-based tactics genre Forget about tall the negativity in some review they are either sore consolers or some MOBA freaks who never played this genre. The game has steep learning curve for newbies and punishing gameplay for veterans but it's the most rewarding game you can play on your PC right now! Now, there are few bugs like few stuttering here and then but i'm sure it's gonna be patched nothing will effect your overall gaming experience.

It is a very cool game with a tactical missions which makes you think strategically and think twice about every your step, This is exactly what I want to feel from a strategy. Good Job!

Absolutely one of the best games I've played in three years.

I will not derate a game over minor bugs on launch (Almost every game has some problems at start)

This is a fresh blow of air in the right direction, the gameplay is stunning, the new mechanics is stunning, the story is stunning.

All in all, 9/10¨
Whether or not you find this useful, try remembering that prejudice over simple quirky bugs upon release day is rather foolish as there has hardly been one game without flaw upon release these past years.

Xcom 2 is one of the best strategies in history,the same as xcom only 20 cooler at all.Yes optimization is lame,but I think I will correct in the patches.

Better than Enemy Unknown in every single aspect. It isn't perfect though as there are some performance issues and some bugs. Still the performance issues are just one aspect of the game, everything else is vastly improved over Xcom EU. From the improved combat, to improved base building, to the new concealment aspect and so much more. This is how you do a sequel! Improve everything!

Yes the performance issues suck, but this is one thing out of so many things this game does perfect. If you love turn based games or the Xcom series, pick this up ASAP or if you are on the fence maybe wait for a patch or two to come for the performance issues.

Nothing gamebreaking but it can be annoying, especially when everything else in the game is so damn well made.

Alien attacks my soldier and causes him to panic.
My soldier turns around and throws a grenade blasting his squadmates and blowing their cover.
Enemies finish off my squad.
It's ironman mode and I am now doomed and must restart.
How I love XCOM!

11/10 will die again

Game is awesome-If you like XCOM 1 or tactical turn based strategy, it's a must have.

Compared to XCOM 1:
-improved graphics
-better story
-more and better cutscenes
-same edge of your seat difficulty
-new soldier types and upgrades
-tons of facility improvements and research
-more destructible environments (i.e. threw a grenade at an enemy on the roof and roof blew apart making him fall to first floor)

I have not experienced any performance issues that many are giving bad ratings for. My rig is: i7 4770k, 7970 ghz card, 16gb ram. It runs great at max settings.

I honestly feel the game deserves a 9.5/10. It's almost perfect in my opinion. Tactical strategy games are my favorite genre, so YMMV

Quite simply the game is brilliant. It looks gorgeous, it plays very well, and it is one hell of a challenge. If you liked X COM the original, then you simply have to buy this. They have improved practically everything about the original. This feels more much more dynamic. Gone are the days of satellite spamming your way to victory. This game provides meaningful choices throughout so that you really dont know which way you want to go. And i think that many different paths to victory will be possible. I think this is probably the best looking turn based game we have ever seen. Kudos to Firaxis on a job well done. A sure contender for game of the year. The only thing that slightly spoils it are a few buggy camera angles and some dodgy hang times, but you can forgive it that as they dont spoil the fun. And it is in infinitely better shape than most games when released. But the real gem of this is the mods. Oh my goodness what a year we have in store.

Welcome back commander!
+Good combat abilities
+More enemies
+Mod support
+More soldier customization
+Better story

-Bug
-Performace Issues

Score 9.5/10

Found so many reviews speaking that this is a extremely difficult game and because of this 0/10. WTF?! Xcom 2 have same issues but it is still very good and qualitative game.

What astounds me about XCOM 2 is how often it’s not **** With such high stakes and so many intertwining systems constantly pushing the player forward, it could easily have devolved into a hair-trigger, save-scumming frustration fest. It doesn’t. XCOM 2 masterfully creates the illusion that the odds are completely against you, while giving you numerous opportunities to Rocky your way back to the top. You’ve just gotta stay nimble. You’ve just gotta think.

Great game. It's a more fast paced version of the first but with more goodies and customization. Though this one has way more surprises than the first.

While in need of some optimization, overall XCOM 2 is huge leap forward for the franchise that should please both new and old fans alike!

PS Turning off MXSAA should help with FPS.

I really enjoyed the entirety of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Good game design is my thing - and the combination of suspenseful tactical combat with strategic base/resource management achieves a campaign way more than the sum of it's parts. Firaxis' design is flawless. I've only played 4 hours of XCOM 2, but so far this game has delivered at or above my expectations in every meaningful way - I can't wait to uncover more!

Of the negative reviews I read, they seemed to be primarily "The game is too hard..." or "It runs like crap..."

I am not saying the game runs without a hitch (hence the 9, rather than 10) but I get a strong feeling that the people saying this is making the game unplayable are playing it on **** rigs... I turned it down to high because I got a few drops in FPS when new enemies spawned and some in the loading screens. Being turn based, NONE of this makes it unplayable... The game runs absolutely fine for me now, only very minor drops.

As for difficulty... It's XCOM ffs. Don't jump in to a game that's designed to be difficult and then complain it's too hard and thus mark it down... A 1-3 is for genuinely 'bad' games, not because the reviewer sucks at it...

I've been playing for 4 hours and have not yet lost a soldier (granted I currently sit with 4-5 out for the next 2 weeks, but that's expected) so no, the sectoids are NOT that hard to beat, even with the backup...

Anyways, rant over stupid reviews over...

Graphics - Not great, but they don't need to be. The art style is nice and fitting with the previous game, so in short it isn't ground breaking, but looks nice.

Gameplay - Same as XCOM, little more difficult but not much so far. (Not X-Com - By that, I mean it doesn't have the "OMG I am going to smash my PC" of the originals, when a sectoid blows your entire team up as soon as you step off the lander).

Story - Couldn't say yet, not far enough in but I'm enjoying it so far.

Launch - Shaky, but not game breaking.

As a staunch fan of XCOM and its predecessors, I can not recommend this enough IF you like the style of games.

This is more of a summary of other reviews because people keep rating 0/10:
+This is a great game in the tactical sense and why professional reviews love it.
-Graphic design is bad according to most opinions. and isn't as good as in trailers. i think most people don't like the simplistic futuristic stuff. me too.
-a lot of optimization issues and some people recommend waiting for patches before playing.
I wait for patches anyway because crashing the game on ironman can be a serious pain.

XCOM 2 is pretty much an welcomed update of XCOM and XCOM Enemy Uknown.

Lets start with the Soldiers. From the beginning you have 4 Soldiers, which gain Experience in battles and get promoted for their own calss. The classes are kind of the same as before but a bit changed ( Heavy has instead of a rocket launcher, a grenade launcher) The Weapons dont look like Toys anymore. The soldiers can be customized as before but they added that also for the Weapons.

The Gameplay hasnt changed. But the fact that your are an underpowered Rebellion is pretty much existent at any time in the Game. They changed a lot of Enemys. Some are very powerful from the beginning and new Players will have their Problems.

For myself I didnt expect a sequel at first but I was happy to see one. Nothing is better than the feeling of an hard fought victory.

+ Nice strategic map gameplay improvements over previous version
- unskippable cut scenes
- bad performance, constant mini-hangs, long loading times, need to wait all the time despite top of the line hardware.
- high difficulty & learning curve, no useful tutorial help to introduce strategies for new aliens & new challenges. Missions constantly require you to rush... I like hard but combined with the two items above it gets frustrating to no end

Overall very disappointing - am hoping it will be much better after a few patches.
Yet another game where I wonder how the game site reviewers all rate it so high. No credibility & integrity at all.

Prepare to be constantly reloading.

Xcom 2 is definetly more refined then its predecessor and i, personally, don't see the timers as inherently unfitting. They just may appear in too much missions. Xcom 2 tries a different approach on some things like the covert mode at mission begin. Also you're forced to use more soldiers, trying to make it less dreadful if you loose a soldier. And sometimes it works, but othertimes the mechanics trip over themselves.

For example, during the covert mode you can't see the sight radius of an enemy that you haven't discovered yet. Also, if you attack a target during covert mode, you pull every enemy that is in your visibility into the fight. Which means that you want to have as little sight as possible or else you might easily pull a cascade of enemies that will completly destroy you.

Enemies are far more dangerous now, with more special attacks and variety. Which is cool, but they're too strong fot the most part. A pack of 3 vipers will disable 3 of your soldiers in one turn, leaving you with another 3. If you have pulled two or three groups, you might as well reload. A mission may either run perfect or not at all. Which is a shame, because like this, there are no stories your soldiers can develop. Because they either suceed or die. There is no in-between.

Also there are some bugs and a rather questionable performance.

Overall, it's a good game. But it feels like it could've done well with three months more balancing and bug hunting.

A Tactical Approach game which forces you to forego tactical approaches...... strange design choice.

The game overall is quite decent actually. For me it looks good, plays well and there's seemingly a lot to do.

However the mission design is poor as the game forces you to rush forward most of the time, which means you do not spend much time being tactical, but hoping for luck with the *miss* roll engine.

It seems like a half a try and that the developers expect modders to fix their game.

The game is decent for the first couple hours of game play but it gets boring very fast because it's extremely repetitive. There is too many missions and they are all the same.

Graphics are nothing special. They are ok but could be better. The game feels very cartoony to me which I don't like.

Other than that the game doesn't bring any spectacular new features. At full price of $80 this game is not worth it. It also has first day dlc which is a let down. Wait till you can buy this for around $30.

Once you mod away the arbitrary timer which restricts the number of turns you have to finish a mission, it's not a bad game at all. Combat is much harder and the base/worldmap feels completely different, although it's built on the same basic principles as the previous Xcom games.

I just want to say this review is 100% not about the bugs those will be fixed and i can deal with them
.
I am a long time Turn based game player. I thought Xcom:Enemy within was one of the best games i played in a long time . The long war add on/ expansion made it one of the best games I ever played (After some minor ini editing) I managed to beat the regular game on hard and long war on classic so im pretty good at the strategy games so when i say the following its with experiance and wisdom ;

The devs took WAY to much of a page from the long war guys. Long war was made to be super hard but fun and while that what all the hard cores liked it was only 100k people that played it. Normally i am made about games catering to the masses and dumbing things down. But this time they took the opposite approach cator to the super hardcore. I am playing on normal (classic) and getting my ass handed to me at some points.

First the games power creep for the bad guys so out paces you there are some points where a single unit can all of a sudden show up and if your not perfectly prepared for it it will wipe out half your squad on its own with your whole squad trying to take it out (I am looking at you Andy) This should not be again about following the perfect single path to get things done.

So great you can try to play a bit more conservatively right....NOPE they put a timer on everything. A very short one that makes you constantly rush forward using very little startegy , often needing to rush through over watch or into areas you know where you will trigger another pod of bad guys while still fighting the first to reach the objective before the time runs out. So its a Tactics game that forces you to use limited tactics and rush most the time. When your not rushing the enemy i can basicly 1 hit your best guy with the best gear.

Now the 2 things I have seen in other reviews that people try to counter 1) Probably not researching the right stuff) But seriously its not fun if you HAVE to follow a set path . Maybe i shouldnt of focused on weapons as much.
2) you can mod the timers: Mods should not be a fix for a base game, they should be there to make a good game better.

I should not be losing 4 out 6 guys on normal when not rushing when i can beat the other one on Hard/Iron-man with less losses .

I just want a game that is a fun turn based strategy game that doesn't punish you for not following the exact perfect building/ research paths.

Slow the game down a bit...less power creep , longer research maybe.

OK, I'm huge fun of x-com series, been playing since original x-com back in 90's.
so, whats wrong here, why low score?

- graphic: better than previous game, there's much more objects and scenery, so maps will look very different. Also, they are created right before you go in, so every time it will be different (not sure if this is true for story missions, didn't start new game). But its not great, its pretty but technically lacking. And hardware requirement is simply unimaginable for turn based strategy. You need a beast to play it without frame drops and on high details. That's just bad optimization.

- gameplay: this title should be named: "xcom 2: prepare to die". Cause you will. A lot. In some missions I have to reload various saves for 3 hours in order to finally keep all team alive. Now, in my book this would be a good thing since in first xcom from 2k I didn't have a need for more soldiers, only dead were first 2 (or 3?) from tutorial. Game starts moderately difficult for first few hours, but then ramps up considerably. So whats the problem? Game isn't hard because enemies are smart or tactical in approach. They simply have way better stats than your soldiers and they outnumber you 4:1. The most basic trooper will hit you from 20 tiles away behind hard cover on elevated position with no problem whatsoever. 8 out of 10 times. Sectoids will wreak havoc in your ranks since their psionic hit chance is 100% and since you will be wounded in almost every mission your willpower will be nonexistent. Alien rangers can run up to you from beyond your field of vision and hit you with a sword.
And forget about hiding behind the wall, they will shoot straight trough it. While I first thought this is cool idea since even weapons of today can shoot trough walls with no problem, later i realized that they don't have any penalties for shooting where they cannot see you. Also, they can shoot trough solid rock or cliffs like it is a wall. Their crit chance is waaaaay better than yours.
It's actually very bad idea to try and remain concealed for too long because all enemies walk towards you (I tried this for several hours, they don't have patrol routes, they walk towards you), and if you delay action, you will be swarmed eventually. If you put all your squad on overwatch and then start combat with last one, you will lose 1 turn of action (this must be bug, so i guess it will be repaired).

On a bright side there is still that good old "just one more turn" feeling, and i really hope that they will repair some obvious bugs with fields of vision.
For a die hard fan of the series: go for it! For casual strategy gamer: wait 6 months 'till they update and optimize it, and buy it on sale. For non-strategy gamer: nothing to see here :(

I'm re-writing this review after beating the game (giving slightly higher score than initially)
So this game was rushed with release and has many problems, it doesn't feel completely finished and polished. So you should seriously consider whether to buy it in such state or wait for more serious patching.

THE BAD.
1) this game has serious optimization issues - the fps in this game is all over the place, jumps between 25 and 80 on decent rig that tops recommended settings by quite some (and not, it's not even max settings). Anti-aliasing solutions are super heavy taxing, except FXAA which is good as nothing. The game has no triple buffering for vsync, and because fps is very unstable, you jump between 30 and 60 periodically, or if you decide to turn off vsync, you have massive screen tearing - again because of very unstable fps. The game runs poorly, even it's not visually exceptional in any way. And this game is not even a consolish port done by some 3rd party rookie studio.

2) Glitchy camera, some weird issues with line of sight and other minor issues that were not resolved from previous installment. Like shouting thru walls, floors and other objects which are confusing and break the immersion.

3) the game has some very bad design choices and some balance issues. Timed missions are very badly designed, they not make the game much harder, but definitely make it more stupid and leave with less options for your strategy and tactical decisions.

4) Balance is bad in a lot of cases only because of how poorly RNG is designed, which acts in very weird way - you can reload multiple times and same action will have same result - RNG is predefined, the dice is not rolled when you take specific action.. I failed a mission because I missed 95% at point blank situation (seriously), there was no time for backup plan since it was timed mission.. There are so many things in this game that don't increase the difficulty fairly, but instead make it unfairly frustrating.

THE GOOD.
Now with some more and less serious issues this game still can be good and fun. Overall mission design is great, tho later on I'd say it becomes easier and easier as you progress (except maybe final mission which I liked a lot, now this is what I call proper challenge). The customization is satisfying and you unlock many items and gadgets to play with. Game is pretty flexible here. Now gameplay itself would be really great if not earlier mentioned glitches and weird RNG, but it's manageable. Also I loved the whole presentation, they put good effort into it - like mission launcher, returning from mission, showing injured squad members etc. There is a lot of nice detail to it.

Final note: I don't thing games in such state should be released. Things should be sold when they are finished and meet certain criteria of overall quality. I was even considering a refund, because I don't like to pay for unfinished games and here is that case. So if someone still consider buying it, think twice about issues this game has!

My biggest complaint about the game is the mission timer. Almost every mission now has an arbitrary turn limit. This takes away from the tactical feeling of the previous XCOM. It's also totally at odds with the guerrilla/ambush tactics the game wants you to use. Setting up a good ambush takes time and the game won't give it to you.

The game is definitely not optimized. It performs poorly on my above-average rig and has tons of graphical glitches, choppy cut-scenes and inexplicable pauses in game-play. I hope they will fix most of these issues with some patches later on.

If you enjoyed XCOM 1 with a gamepad, skip this one as they have dropped gamepad support. This is really infuriating because they had excellent gamepad support in the last game. So they actually took it out of the engine. It does support Steam controllers, if you have one of those. I bought one; it's not great. Almost every action requires using the trackpad like a mouse. They've totally missed the point of a gamepad .

It's pretty disappointing to see such a sloppy sequel to an awesome game. I am sure it will get better over time. Once they patch out the graphical and performance issues and patch in proper gamepad support.

I beat a campaign run with about 45 hours of play time and played on veteran difficulty with some save scumming.

The Bad:
1) Terrible performance/optimization. The game run terribly for a lot of people (if not everyone) even if you have a good rig. I have a GTX 970, i7 3.4ghz, 12GB RAM. I could even turn all of the graphical settings to the absolute bare minimum and even though the game looks ugly it STILL would not run completely smoothly and would have FPS dips. Also, every time enemies are triggered there are awkward ~3 second pauses which ruins the flow of things. This is the worst problem for me because it affects your enjoyment of everything.

2) Line of sight issues. Some walls, floors, and roofs in the game do not properly block line of sight. This is especially evident in the urban city maps when you are trying to be on roofs. Firaxis should not have release the game with these issues in place.

3) Chrysallids aren't the only bugs that will make you have a bad time. The game has numerous bugs and glitches. Some are as bad as completely ruining saves SO DO NOT TURN ON IRONMAN MODE (just do honest man instead). Others include animations not playing, damage numbers not showing, and etc.

4) Some questionable/bad design choices: For example, you'll get voice over messages from a person during missions. He will say the exact same thing every mission and he says these things very often and the whole time he's talking you aren't allowed to do anything. So you have to sit there waiting, doing nothing while he says the same thing you've heard him say or the 20th time. Another example, the new HP bars are inferior to Enemy Unknown.

5) Debatable: the music is worse than EU. This is of course subjective and some people think the music is good or is fine, but I'm pretty sure more people would agree that EU's music was superior.

6) Debatable: the majority of missions involve timers or scenarios that force you to rush/run and gun. I'm on the fence on this issue. Some people say they're fine and people need to "git gud and not rely on overwatch crawling". I agree that XCOM should be very difficult and the round limits did make for some exciting escapes. I think though I would've preferred that instead of the vast majority of missions being about being fast and praying you don't trigger 3+ pods, that there be more missions with more lenient timers but with some other kind of difficulty that isn't rushing against the clock.

The Good:
Aside from the above, the game improves on EU in most every other aspect. The game could've been a real work of art if it didn't suffer from these issues.

XCOM 2 is a serviceable sequel that has a single major misstep that winds up nearly destroying the entire game around itself.

Namely, a majority of the missions are on a turn limit. Remember those missions in Enemy Unknown that involved moving a train in a certain number of completely arbitrary turns? Yeah, that's the entire game now. Nearly every mission is complete and utter frustration as you try to savescum your way through the map to find where you need to go.

The tactics in the game are just as solid as before, but with this completely forced speed on every level, I never felt comfortable actually trying the new stealth or ambush mechanics, because they took longer to complete than just sprinting around the map, trying to avoid the instant game over time limit.

Once there's a mod to remove this, I'll get it. Until then, they've turned the game into a frustrating slog.

I loved XCom: Enemy Unknown very much, it's one of the best games I ever played. XCom 2 is, unfortunately, a letdown. It's still a decent game, but terribly flawed. My most pressing issue with the game is that most of the missions now apply time-pressure to the player - which, when uses from time to time, like in XCOMEU, is a nice twist - but having a turn limit in 3 out of 4 missions spoils the core, tactical gameplay. It forces you to push forward instead of following your own style and/or strategy. It also spoils the new concealment feature, which else would have been a great addition. While there are, no doubt, also some positive changes and additions, like a greater enemy diversity than ever and (most importantly) dynamically generated maps, there are also further drawbacks, even if none of them is as bad as the mission design. One to mention should be the terrible performance of the game - while the game looks good, it's really nothing special. And that's fine, XCom does not need to be a visually stunning game on the bleeding edge of technology. But still, it pushes even higher end hardware to its limits. To me, it seems this is what the developers meant by the advantages of targeting PC only: the ability to be lazy in optimizing your game as you can always push the player to invest into expensive hardware instead investing in a decent performing game yourself. But the main flaw, again, is the time-pressuring mission design, sucking all creative fun out of the gameplay most of the time. I happily prefer XCOMEU which much less sophisticated visuals and pre-defined map layouts anytime over XCOM 2. Because XCom is not about graphics, it's about gameplay - and this is the area where Firaxis unfortunately underperformed the most.

I like the previous game a lot but not this one, at least for now, because I really dislike the "turns limitation"(timer), 8 turns to do this, 12 turns to do that, or you're screw..., what a tactical new "feature", it's almost a game breaker for me, so I'll keep the negative review unless the developers can make some changes, such as provide an option to disable it or decrease the mission ratio which has timer in them.

Another thing, the characters faces in customization need some improvements,too, especially females, most of them are just too ugly, I can't bond with my team mates if I cannot even stand with their looks.
Yes, they're soldiers/warriors, but that doesn't mean they have to be ugly.

In XCOM 2 every mission is a bomb defusal mission. Firaxis failed in their effort to artificially speed up the game through timers that are both explicit (turn counters) and implicit (civilians, objective defense, etc). And that's without mentioning the performance problems that plague the game as of now. XCOM 2 is a competent game that improves a lot of mechanics from EU, but at the same time shoot itself in the foot because of some poor design decisions that turn the experience into something stressful and infuriating most of the time. While almost every piece of media praised the title, the user reviews both here and on Steam gravitate towards a 6/7 which is something to consider going forward.

Promising but released way too soon. I literally can not recall the last game that gave me as much technical difficulties as XCOM 2.

Very poor FPS on a system that ran Witcher 3 fine on Ultra@1080P. Worse than that, cutscenes that lead to hard locks, some that are 100% reproducible.

Wait until there are multiple patches before picking this one up. No idea how this got a 91 from the Critics given its current state.

If you can try this game out before buying it. Very glad I was able to do so before wasting money on this. Maybe with the future DLC and GOTY edition I will change my mind, till then im sad i wasted 4 hours on it.

Under no circumstances is this game even a 7/10. I played about 5 or 6 hours before uninstalling

It runs horribly. My rig GTX770, Xeon E3-1231v3, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD (runs Fallout 4 high/very high quite comfortably). I turned AA and AO off, turned rest of the settings to medium, and it still runs like crap. Constant fps drops, hangs, graphical glitches, jarring microstuttering, you name it.

Most of the missions are now timed, which means you usually have about 8-12 turns to complete a mission. This heavily encourages running and gunning, which in turn means that you will lose a lot of squad mates, and if you want to keep them alive, well you have to reload the entire mission so you get new RNG-seeds for the enemy shots, and pray to RNGeesus that they dont hit you.

No more tactical advancement, no more strategy, just run in, shoot aliens, hope that you hit them, rinse and repeat. The game also puts in sectoids against you right from the second mission. They can mind control, raise dead soldiers (which get a HP boost because **** you thats why), use panic attacks, and oh they also have 8 HP (your starting weapons deal 3-5dmg, usually 3 though), and they usually run deep into cover, inside a building where they cant be killed, while they destroy your squad with Psionic attacks that have 100% accuracy. Sounds fair, no?

Did you get frustrated in the previous X-Com, when the aliens, once discovered, could freely run to cover on YOUR turn? Well, dont worry, because they still do that in X-Com 2 too! The only time this doesnt happen is when your squad is in concealment, but the missions never give more than 2 or maybe 3 enemies to shoot from concealment, and there's no way to regain the concealment. Then you advance on the map, you discover another group of 3 aliens, and off they go, sprinting to cover for free. Because **** you, thats why.

On the starter weapons you have 4 shots before you have to reload, which further slows you down, because again, yep you guessed, **** you thats why. This couldve easily been 5 or 6 shots.

Enemies get reinforcements on almost all missions, and you never know where the dropship comes in from, usually behind you, and then, yep you guessed it, they get free movement to cover while they flank you. And you know the reason why.

An example mission: Need to get to EVAC zone, 3 turns left before mission fails, one of your squad mates is already dead, others on low HP. 2 enemies ahead, between you and the EVAC zone. And boom, reinforcements from the back (they literally appear out of the dark), now you have no cover anywhere on the map, clock is ticking, each enemy shot kills a squad mate, and how did I forget to mention that one of the mission objectives was "Extract all X-Com soldiers", which mean if one of them dies, you have to pick the corpse up (and you cant shoot when youre carrying a body), and get it to the EVAC zone.

That was mission 3, btw, about 1,5hrs in the game, while youre still in starter gear, starting weapons, starter everything.

I dont have a problem with challenging games, but only if the challenge is fair. This game is just dice rolling, in timed missions, against superior numbers, superior gear, and superior skill-moves all the time.

This is the first time I am writing a real negative review for a game. A game I really wanted to enjoy.

I know XCOM can be a tough game to play. But this time the word "tough" needs to be replaced with
whatever suits the following:

- I started playing the game on the third of the four difficulty levels, because I know the first game
and wanted an intense gameplay experience.
I realized that the aim percentage you see while attacking an enemy is seemingly reduced by 15-20% because of the difficulty level. I missed four out of five shots when the percentage was between 65-80%. Long story short: no fun - executing tactics where a disaster. I perfectly flank an enemy to kill him, I miss and get kicked right away losing one of my best soldiers.

- I started overs four times before I realized, I would have to lower the difficulty. Did that, enjoyed two hours of gameplay, until I went through a routine mission with the first time facing the snake like enemy. The moment one of my soldiers was grabbed and pulled to the this enemy through three walls without any line of sight was the moment I just had to quit this game and give it this review.

My conclusion unfortunately is that this game is unplayable if you like a strategic challenge, because the game just does not let you execute any strategy - it just keeps kicking you in the face from out of nowhere.

If you like the story and do not bother about the gameplay experience to much, then play on Rookie and go ahead.

Definitely not recommended. A pity.

What seemed to be great game, turned out to be another good concept buried under the pile of frustrating bugs, poorly executed mechanics and other annoyances. Game runs really bad, you can frequently get stuck on some of the menus and the amount of bugs is just enormous. They didn't even fix bugs that existed 4 years ago, back in Enemy Unknown. We live in sad times, once again promising game gets ruined by the laziness of the devs.

Not sure how this game is getting 100%, which equates to a perfect game, when it has more bugs than a bethesda release and I am already over the timed missions. I have done 8 missions so far, and 7 have had a turn limit imposed. The missions are getting boring after 5 hours of play. There are basically 2 mission types, they are, get to the objective within 6 turn, then kill any remaining enemy forces, or, kill all enemy forces and take as long as you want. The stealth mechanic in the game sounds nice but is a pointless element that hasn't been fully developed. In reality, the stealth concept hasn't added anything to the so called strategy part of this strategy game. I am still not sure why the enemy gets a free movement turn during your turn when they discover you, this really makes the whole stealth concept stupid and irreverent. This was a big annoyance for me in the previous game, when the enemy discovers you, they get to move all their units into cover during your turn. Really breaks the immersion and idea of creating a strategy of getting the enemy caught in a cross fire as they can just run off behind some cover. The looting system is a dumbed down element from the previous game, it doesn't matter if you use explosives to kill enemy's , you still get all their crap, corpses, upgrades etc. The graphics issues list is a large one, there are camera issues, line of sight issues, shot through 3 walls issues, see through walls issues, excessive loading times during the missions and loading in and out of missions. In it's current state it is almost unplayable, another game release that doesn't work, just add it to the list. The gaming industry is in an absolute shambles atm.

XCOM 2 is challenging, but for the wrong reasons. Most of it comes from the randomness that exists as its core mechanic, from the level design (procedural), to hit chances, to turn limit sizes, to world map events. Whether you'll like it or not depends on what you want out of it.

Personally, I'd prefer a more tightly designed game that is harder than this (more enemies in maps +bigger maps +more "puzzle-y" encounters), but without the timers and stress and RNG everywhere. I'd rather have developer-designed maps and missions with tough encounters where you need to utilize the terrain and your equipment in the right way, rather than proceduraly generated missions with a turn limit that is barely enough for you to sprint to the objective and destroy it, and then pray as the 4 pods that you aggroed along the way rain down on you from the ceilings and wipe out your entire squad while your overwatches miss. Only to go back to the world map and see the Avatar gaining its 3rd ping in the same week due to RNG dark events.

XCOM 2 is overwhelming in a way that makes you feel helpless. Because you are. Better read some Reddit threads and restart the whole thing, doing only the absolutely most optimal things. Why do the rest of the options exist again?

You can mod out all the crazy 8 turn limits and massive random spikes in Avatar progress though. Great. What you are left with then is an extremely easy game. Guess why. Because that's what it is. An extremely easy game, made hard only through RNG rigged to screw you as a core design philosophy. The encounters themselves are easy and the maps are poorly designed, like everything procedural. There's no actual depth. There are no "damn, I'm a genious" moments as you lure an overwhelming force back to a well fortified position with half of your squad lying in the perfect ambush. The game gives you no time to think. No time to strategize. No time to have fun.

"Hey, Commander! I recently bought this new strategy game. It is called Chess - The X-Com 2 Edition!"

"An X-Com 2 edition of chess?" the commander replied. "What's different about it, Colonel?"

"I'll teach you. You can be the white knights of X-Com, I shall be the black Advent aliens."

They started playing.

"Ha, I've got you now!" the commander said, grinning, as his knight attacked the colonel's bishop.

"Not so fast! First we need to spin this." The colonel pointed to a roulette wheel that came in the box. "You see, whether a piece can take another piece is random! Fun!"

The commander seemed unsure about this concept. "That makes no sense," he said. "My knight is clearly right in front of that bishop, and he is well trained, so why would he not succeed? Ah, whatever, just spin the damn wheel."

A few minutes later, the commander's peasant moved close to the colonel's queen. Quickly, the colonel moved several pieces out of the way and placed a new knight on the board, which defeated the commander's peasant. The colonel was so into the game that he did all this in slow motion, like a kid playing with action figures.

"What the hell did you just do, soldier?!"

"Oh, that's a rule," the colonel said excitedly. "The black advents get free moves while it's your turn to play, and some newly appearing pieces even get to hit your pieces without the roulette wheel most of the time!"

"Are you kidding me?!" the commander said, an incredulous look on his face. "This is not a strategy game if you have random events like this. And in a turn-based game, pay attention to whose turn it is! Oh, and for the love of advent burgers, stop with the slow motion and killing animations already! You're wasting my time!"

"Sorry, commander, but these are the rules! You chicken? If you'd like, you can just reload your piece and try the same turn again until the outcome suits you. Hmm, come to think of it...basing a game on a probabilistic scheme should always lead people to reload, which means any such system ends up being tedious and no fun for most players. Ha! This is pretty dumb game design, ha ha ha!" The colonel beamed anyway, pretending it was just difficult and challenging.

"I don't need no frickin reload!!"

They continued playing, the commander getting more and more frustrated with the strange rules of the game. Despite all odds, he ended up devising an ingenious strategy, circumnavigating the defenses of his subordinate, when suddenly ...

"Ooh, well," the colonel said. "You lose."

"What?"

"It has been 15 turns, and you have not defeated me yet, so you lose," the colonel explained. "Didn't I tell you? The white knights of X-Com only get a few turns to win the match. I already cheated on your behalf and gave you 7 more turns than normal."

"What in the absolute hell?!" the commander yelled. "That is the dumbest thing I've heard since the incident with the microwave casserole at Black Mesa! On the one hand, I am supposed to devise a strategy to avoid your stupid rules, but on the other hand, you give me no time to do so and waste half of that with roulette! This is not chess, this is not a strategy game, this is a casino!"

The colonel frowned and took a closer look at the box of the game. "Warning: May cause gambling addiction," he read. "Oh, so that's why I'm so hooked on this thing... Anyway, this casino-chess-simulator comes with a story, but it consists of many, many nearly identical matches like this, more time limits and forced gameplay, and I will also be compelled to explain your goal in every match as if you didn't know it already." The colonel smiled brightly. "We can try that, if you like -- you know, for the benefit of the story!"

The commander sighed. "Is the story any good, at least? Proper characters that grow and change as the plot unfolds? A fine ending with a shocking twist, a clever idea at its base and an emotionally significant boss battle?"

"Hmm..." The colonel's face fell a little. "Actually, at the end, I'm just going to throw a large number of pieces on the board for you to defeat, after which I shall act out a meaningless cutscene. The characters have as much personality as a sea slug and come from the planet of hats. Nothing else to it, I'm afraid. On the bright side, these chess pieces and the board are visually really impressive!"

At that moment, a piece glitched through the table and fell in a stuttering motion to the floor.

"Alright, that's it!", the commander yelled as he stood up. "I've had it with you and your badly designed games! We are going to use this one for target practice tomorrow! Star Wars Battlefront - The Board Game Edition, is relieved of this position immediately!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

Hit expand to see this with proper spacing. Metacritic threw a 503 error and erased my original review. Since most of it was a warning about the poor design/performance, this will just be a point form listing of the cons (too few pros to waste time on). This could never *honestly* be considered a 10/10, even with a reviewer optimized copy unless you are essentially brain-dead as to what the term gameplay means. Anyone claiming the gameplay is the same as the previous release clearly has not played this.

Cons

-Performance Issues

-Run&Gun as missions are ~85% timed now (artifical and pathetic attempt at difficulty or suspense). This also eliminates the value of all but two classes.

-Little-to-no tactics or strategy (see Run&Gun)

-Many silly/lazy gameplay elements (RNG used without consideration or believability) both in, and out of combat

-Scripted elements within the the missions (spawns), and the way the game unfolds at a pace that is far too quickly advanced, robs this of much of XCom 2's advertised replayability

-No active Physically Based Render engine as it looks nearly identical to their original game, just with higher resolution textures that are not nearly as realistic as the procedurally generated GTA5 car paint-jobs

Mods will be needed to save this, as Firaxis has shown it does not have a clue. So much for all their promises about listening to fans of the Long War mod. Collapse

- Enemies see and attack through the walls
- There's basicaly no height advantage since everyone can see everyone and aim perfectly through the roofs, walls etc.. more than ridiculous.
- Patrols are triggered without seeing you, only because your guy noticed them 5 miles away
- You noticed the enemy? Don't worry you won't get any tactical advantage since they always see you as well, get a free turn to position themselves behind covers. Lazy lazy programming and ?????? design.
- Removed secondary weapons because too much tactical depth. You have to reload your plastic guns every few turns.
- There's nothing that makes sense for this game being a PC exclusive, as it's basicaly an overall dumbed down experience.
- They were praising Long War all this time, but made basically no changes to the overall formula. There was a massive amount of improvements in Long War that they were very much unable to include in the sequel.
- Turn timers for each mission...
- No optimalization aka game runs like ???
- 3 of my soldiers were killed by exploding walls while shooting in the overwatch stance
- Awesome Enemy Unknown music was replaced by a stereotypical hollywood strings.
- You can't realistically hide in this game, because even if you are positioned behind a solid concrete building, waiting to ambush an enemy, you are instantly exposed and being shoot through the walls.

I can't even imagine what kind of people design their games in firaxis. It's just unreal.

To say it briefly, XCom 2 is to turn-based strategy what Call of Duty is to first-person shooters (a corridor shooter with no gameplay freedom whatsoever).

Golden age games (1994 Xcom, Jagged Alliance, etc) gave player full freedom to decide how game's going to play. XCom 2 is for some dumb reason very scared of this, and what you get is boundaries at every aspect. Numerous mods to those games which expand freedom even more should be very clear message what players want. I guess people at 2K just don't care about this and imagine that average player is paralyzed, braindead and and of course, extremely bad player.
No ammo, inventory management is basically non-existing, and even seemingly free movement on globe is constantly broken up by game forcing you with "critical" missions. I swear it took 6 times to finish one "contact rebels" quest (which takes 4 game days) due my Avenger being constantly called off to the other side of world due some "crisis". The game even forces you to have full squad all the time, unless you take time to manually remove soldiers each time before mission. Why?

XCom remake wasn't good game to begin with - compared to original, and they just managed to dumb this down and restrict player even more. For a PC exclusive, I also wonder why almost whole tactical combat can be played with plain keyboard... in 2016.

Storyline is rushed and interesting for maybe 10-year old, especially insultingly bad ending with some Dragonball Z or whatever going on. Science is not interesting (unlike in 1994 original or recent Xenonauts) and I found myself not even reading at research results after few tries. Game is ridden with bugs and runs very choppily here and there. Final mission is harder than one in XCom: Terror from the Deep, and that is saying a lot!

Graphics look like it were developed for Playstation 2, but still pop-in and break at any chance. Music, now without Michael McCann, feels mostly like stock hollywood "heroic scene" soundtrack, which also kills all and any mood previous game had and doesn't even come close to "Fear simulator" the 1994 game had.

Long story short, get Jagged Alliance 2, install 1.13 patch and you'll forget XCom 2 existed in about 5 minutes. Forever.

Things you could do in the original XCOM (1994) and you can't do anymore:

1. Air combat, because now there is only one vehicle disposable.
2. Inventory management, because now your soldier can' Exchange or drop objects anymore.
3. Shoot more than 4 shots without going ot of ammo, because...?
4. Have several bases around the world, because aliens have conquered Earth and...? and they are so many there is no way to put up a base even in Antarctica or Gobi desert?
5. Have a fighting team of more than 6 elements, because now you are a guerrilla leader, and...?
6. Research more projects simultaneously, because you had several base with several laboratories and several teams, like it should logically be, and now your scientists can only work on one project at time, because...?
7. Take enemies by surprise, catching them from behind, and now you can do it, but only once during concealment phase, then surprise a hidden enemy is no more possible, because when discovered, enemies automatically see you and go in cover mode.
8. Plan you tactical battles carefully, using overwatch and advancing slowly to minimize risks, like every good soldier should do, and now it's too often not possible because you are on a turn limit that forces you to dash under enemy fire, because urgency really makes a game more tactical, or so the experts say.
9. Have tanks fight alongisde human soldiers, using them as disposable scouts, mobile covers and heavy artillery, and now....?
10. Have a balance in enemies progress, and now you have aliens who can revive their comrades and mind trick your soldiers in 2nd-3rd mission, because the world out there is cruel, and kids must learn frustration and videogames are the best Teachers.

And I'm not even going to list all the bugs and glitches. Others have done it well enough.

And now you know.

Here are my thoughts after 10 hours with this game. 10 hours of trying hard to like this game trying to forgive all those bugs and crahes and trying not to get mad when the game's state again is sent to no-responding-land. This is it, I'm done. This is not a kickstarter early access title. This hasn't been developed by a young studio with little money. This is a full priced triple A studio title.
But even with a decent PC which runs games with similar (and better) graphics flawlessly, the performance is disastrous and btw I'm running medium settings. The framerate often drops so hard that it feels like playing crysis 2 on a gameboy. The UI responenses sluggishly. Clicking buttons in XCOM2 to me feels a bit like using a cheap Android smartphone from 10 years ago. XCOM2 graphics overall have not improved that much to justify those high system requirements. In addition I don't like the overall look and feel of the game. It often times is so hard to tell what is going on in this game. The levels are often dark and the colors don't vary much -its like an all dark blue, grey, black soup where you often try to find your soldier's and your foe's position. Don't get me wrong you CAN and WILL find characters but it is exhausting to do. Also because the camera is really bad. It acts like a monkey on steriods trying to capture a michael bay movie. I often times find little me trying to adjust the perspective with spinning and clicking the mouse wheel to zoom in and out and pressing q and e repeatedly for rotating back and forward to find a good view. It's just so unsatisfying.
Sound design is quite ok but i personally would have liked it a lot more if characters from non english speaking countries would speak with their specific accent just like the characters from Jagged Alliance 2 back in the days. God I miss JA2 -a game where you actually are able to perform tactical decisions. In XCOM2 you now have a turn limit which forces you to rush forward with no cover and get face melted by the enemy.
Oh and those bugs... god I am so sick of jumping cursors, displaced soldiers, blocked characters, shots through walls and all that stuff.

If I were you I would wait a few more month until some patchwork has been done and non 2K-designers with a brain brought out a UI mod.

First time reviewing game here due to this unoptimized pile of game. Not giving this zero as there are some elements that i kinda like in here but the sum of all not so good elements is far greater that the positives.

To get started the first thing that puts me off from this is the enemy movement. Setting up ambushes and the triggering the end of concealment is ok but having reinforcements drop in byt transport and then allowing enemies to move into position is not.

Then the ammo capacity. 2k apparently did the exactly opposite what is even close to realistic and made clip size even smaller that was in Xcom 1. Which is just horse manure. Point me to a soldier with AR who wastes clip with 4 shots. And 1 grenade (without perks) oh really?

What comes to timed missions can understand that they create sense of urgency but yet again the presentation is greatly flawed as the mission just ends stating that xcom was disbanded and everything went to hell. Then why the F"@# they send only 4 soldiers with equipment for one to mission so important that resistance and humanity ends if it fails, yet spend time designing fancy looking avenger and armour. Yes i know these are design choices by devs but to me it show how little they put thought onto this particular thing and instead made roller-coaster ride out of turn based tactical game.

I might be able to live with some of the choices made while developing this game but the condition it was released is just shameful. I can't understand how it runs so poorly (i could play Fallout 4 without problems) and has so many bugs and yet it looks just the same as xcom 1. Seems that every site that reviewed it and gave max scores have forgotten that not everyone has ultra gaming rig and developers have forgotten to optimize this because of how scalable pc is. In that regard i would've liked to see console version as that would've forced devs to optimize this a bit.

All in all.
+ idea behind the game

- Presentation (enemy movement during our turn, ammo clips size, equipment capacity, shooting thru walls, etc)
- Bugs and glitches

After years of using metacritic I finally joined JUST to pan this PoS game. I can't take it...85% (and that is -not- an exaggeration) are timed missions (missions that have parts are all that must be completed in a certain number of turns). To add insult to this injury the loot despawns after three turns...not three turns AFTER it drops but three turns including the turn it drops. Seriously.

I have no idea what the devs were thinking and why they feel that forcing people to rush recklessly across the map is 'fun'. It is NOT fun to play well only to be forced to run double moves and BAM...right in to a pod.

Seriously, is this a joke? Are you all just swimming around naked in a pile of our money laughing at us? Clearly your plan to release preview copies to critics that only allowed them to play for a month worked! Look at that metascore! Well, enjoy the free fall of the user score.

20 hours and I can confirm that this game is a pile of cheating junk, but it looks pretty and has nice character generation. So it depends what turns you on.

Sneak into enemy base undetected after spending hours on a flight. Suddenly (again) you hear "Right we have 8 turns (2 minutes) to get in and out. No recce has been done, so rush in, press a button/hack a terminal/free a dweeb - whatever then rush out again. 1.2.3 TANK RUSH
That is not tactical, it's not clever. it's
NOT WHAT GUERILA WARFARE IS IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM

Real guerilla warfare is 90% about gathering the intelligence, setting the trap and getting into position

YES... the actual firefight may be short and sharp, but the preparation is absolutely paramount - every rime

There is no prep in this game. No time. On many maps the maths of the distance and your squads movement limit barely allows you to reach the objective at a full sprint.

Ready steady TANK RUSH!!!!

No guerilla warfare is fought like that. Not from a guerilla group that expects their troops to fight more than one battle it isn't. Recon, planning, set up then a short fire fight then out.
Mad rush to objective is not the way small forces fight against large ones anywhere - ever.

Why do they rely on this timer over and over again?
Because the enemy AI is risibly poor and the sense of urgency and tension is completely and 100% down to the timer in the early game
Later in the game enemies have uber HP levels (so the programmer typed a bigger number into the enemy HP when designing the game .. yeah, great - top strategy... yawn)
Then their are the faces of your troops. OMG. Like melted waxworks. The extra detail only show cases how damn ugly they all are. YEUCH!!
Real disappointment, Terrible design decisions destroyed the franchise for a second time after the Interceptor did almost 20 years ago.
What a shame.

Vanilla Xcom 2 4/10 /// Modded Xcom 2 6/10
TL:DR

In some ways, better than EU but still no way near as good as the originals and without mods to rebalance the game, you'll find it frustrating. Firaxis needs to do better with this franchise, and as always don't listen to most of the critics and 10/10 reviewers, this is strictly for the fans of the reboot.

After being a fan of the original trilogy, let me rephrase that as a huge fan of the originals - the reboots have angered me greatly as they have not done any justice in my personal opinion, if anything - have been a travesty to the Xcom franchise and Xcom 2 is arguably the worst because not only do you have the same cheating AI with miraculous almost impossible shots to spawning extra alien squads at the worst possible times making some missions all but impossible to add further insults.

A large chunk of missions are timed with very tight limits making a front frontal assault the only viable option to meet the limit and that method almost always puts your prized troops at risk with each and every mission. The balance of the game is just dreadful, along with EU the enemy units out class you, and out gun and out number you forcing you to rely on guerilla style tactics and ambushes, which is good and all, until the AI decides to cheat and shoot you through walls or shoot you half way across the map with near 100% accuracy.

Xcom 2 complicates it even more with many different units this time, not to mention some of the classic ones returning, but in a beefed up version than before - even those pesky sectoids are considerably more dangerous now, and will PSI attack you all the time, often with very high success rates. Another very major problem is related to the avatar project, the aliens can power through construction sometimes making a game over situation possible just because you miss-managed your time, or didn't discover enough ways to slow down the project in time, this aspect in Xcom 2 doesn't work very well but luckily there are enough mods to balance this.

Time Management is a huge problem, you hardly ever have time to breath in Xcom 2 without a new 'important' mission appearing that you must do, either extract VIPS, protect the rebels, attack dark sites and the list goes on and on and you hardly get any peace without being interrupted, it gets incredibly tiresome after the 200th cookie cutter mission has forced you to abandon your supply collections.

Xcom 2 needs a huge amount of mods to essentially balance out the game, even with major rebalances almost to the point of outright cheating, the game can still be stressful and frustrating - essentially you'll be save scumming a lot if you become attached to your favorite crew.