Regardless of how victorious players were in XCOM: Enemy Unknown , Firaxis Games continued down a canon storyline with XCOM 2 that assumed players had ultimately lost the fight against the technologically superior alien invaders. This more or less sets the tone for the new War of the Chosen expansion: there are some fights you just can't win, and the impressively deep expansion pack for XCOM 2 piles on the signature pain that strategy fans have come to embrace in almost masochistic fash

XCOM 2 is an almost infinitely replayable game, especially with mods. However, some things in the game proper just suck up too much time. Action cutscenes — a plague on some otherwise good games — have been viewed countless times. Scanning resource caches in the Avenger takes forever. Some battle animations take up half of any encounter. Why is there a 30-second animation every time a grenade is thr

A rather simple UI change, all this mod does is add an "evac all" option on the normal taskbar at the bottom of the screen when in the evac zone. Maybe not a game-changer exactly, but this is the kind of quality of life update that all large games could use. Truly, anything that reduces what would be 12 clicks with a full squad down to one is fantastic. It almost makes folks feel bad for XCOM 2 players on PS5 and their insane load times . No speed adjustments for them, the poor so

Make no mistake: you will lose fighters in this game, and the developers make sure you're aware of it from the very start. And knowing now that each fighter is one of a dying breed, every death - every death - carries an extra sting of defeat and desperation (not to mention the always-looming threat of ADVENT launching a surprise attack on your base - potentially ending the campaign in one fell swoop). But as players learn to use surprise, squad tactics, and smart, not hesitant aggression, the reasons for Firaxis' changes make perfect se

While XCOM 2: War of the Chosen does a great job shaking up the game from top to bottom, it isn't without cost: the Shen's Gift DLC mission is sacrificed by default to rebalance the game, being replaced with a simple research task. While player's can re-enable this in the options menu, we wish there was a way Firaxis could have kept the original content in balanced fashion. We also ran into a few minor glitches as late-game content progressed, so we recommend those trying ironman playthroughs perhaps consider a regular playthrough for now to avoid any potential post-launch err

Firaxis Games and Feral Interactive present the second and wildly popular entry to the XCOM franchise. XCOM 2 is the classic alien-fighting turn-based strategy game where players control a squad of talented soldiers with different skills on dangerous missions against an exoplanetary enemy threatening to rule mank

We'll start with namesake of the entire expansion, The Chosen. The three unique champions of the ADVENT forces spend the entire game trying to track down the player and blow the Avenger out of the sky (which is a thing that can absolutely happen), and have a tendency to show up during difficult missions and make things twice as difficult. If players are in a pickle trying to survive a particularly tedious mission, imagine how things go if a Chosen arrives and starts spawning down more enemies and taking powerful sniper shots from across the

After proper research and construction, the augmented body parts will be applied to the wounded soldier. Their appearance will change, and you best believe extra benefits may come from having a metal torso — like a regenerating shield, for instance. It’s a fun mod that not only fits with the aesthetic and mood of the game but adds an interesting way to boost the viability and skill set of soldi

Few companies have mastered the art of making turn-based strategy games quite like Firaxis . The studio's work with Sid Meier's Civilization and XCOM have resulted in some incredible experiences in both franchises. What's interesting is how Firaxis were able to reboot MicroProse's XCOM franchise without sacrificing much of the depth the older titles

Rebooting a beloved turn-based strategy franchise is no small feat. Firaxis did a fantastic job streamlining the original UFO Defense with XCOM: Enemy Unknown without compromising on moment-to-moment strategy. It took almost the entire development cycle to get here, Slg Beginner Guide howe

In the heat of war, especially war against terrifyingly advanced alien overlords who have already taken over the world, injuries will happen. In the base game, soldiers could sleep them off. Not with the Augmentations mod , which adds another layer of depth to soldier upkeep. This mod makes it so that grave wounds cannot be healed without cybernetic augmentati

While MECs were arguably the strongest class in Enemy Within, their pseudo-return in XCOM 2 leaves a lot to be desired. Their melee lacks the impact of Templars or Rangers, their utility is easily beat by Specialists, and their damage output can be surpassed by nearly every class. Their versatility might seem valuable, but given the cost in adding SPARKs to your team, it's essentially a worthless expe