The game purposefully left the fate of Doctor Vahlen, the chief scientist from Enemy Unknown , a mystery throughout the game. While she was mentioned briefly, it looks like XCOM have been unable to establish communication with her. In the prequel novel for XCOM 2 , it was revealed that Vahlen escaped a brutal ADVENT attack on a research outpost by taking a boat to the sea. We have little doubt that Firaxis left her fate open for a reason, and we suspect she has been one of the first to work out that a new threat is due to emerge from the dep

Strategy fans who want to stray away from the intense army-versus-army nature of other titles can go to turn-based tactics for the same tactical"thrill." And in the case of tactical RPGs, the XCOM series definitely takes the cake. In this series where alien conspiracies are real and the world has built its own anti-alien force, players become Earth's last line of defense against the extraterrestr

XCOM 2 is not a game for those who think about what’s going on in a single instance. Everyone will need to think three turns ahead in every aspect of the campaign, and even then, it’s mostly about luck, creating an incredibly random experience in the process. Even from the beginning, players believing they’ll be able to keep everyone alive will run into a harsh reality check, whether they’re on the easiest or hardest difficulty settings. It’s not primarily the combat that can be difficult though, it’s the world management that can be a bit stressful. Similar to Enemy Unknown, there’s a time component to XCOM 2, ensuring you don’t take your sweet time to level up characters and accept every side mission that becomes available. There will be crucial choices to be made, but instead of ruining reputations based on countries and risking resources, these are classified as larger reaching outcomes to alien progression in the world. There’s so many systems at play that anyone could easily see themselves overwhelmed, and it doesn’t help that there’s an unfortunate lack of explanation on the various mechanics.

One feature that could have been great for Firaxis to implement is stealth. At the beginning of most missions, your team is concealed and unknown, so getting the drop on at least one enemy is fairly easy to accomplish. Unfortunately, there’s no way to actually keep concealment once an attack lands, so going back into the darkness to get the jump on another group of aliens is absent. As mentioned before, there are some characters such as the Ranger who has a skill that allows her to not be revealed when things go off, but after everyone in the vicinity is cleared and you progress further, enemies will instantly become aware of your position as they patrol their routine programming like nothing is going on. This is more of a half of a step rather than a full step in the right direction, something that could have benefited the core gameplay enormously. All-out war with your new alien overlords is fun, but a stealth component could have allowed for even more combat variance other than exchanging gunfire and hoping your shot hits every round.

Unlike other 4X games, however, Stellaris plunges players deep into space colonization. Aside from having three options of interstellar travel, players can create different species. Each of these species has their own take on the known universe and solutions to weird scenarios. These scenarios include robotic uprisings, mutant rebellion, and other space mysteries that aw

In any event, it looks like XCOM 2 fans should expect some terrors to rise from the murky depths within the next few years, as the cliffhanger ending shows that Firaxis evidently has no intention of slowing things down with the ser

We really wanted XCOM 2 to be something amazing, but unfortunately it falls short. From highly customizable characters to deep and meaningful combat that has been improved over its predecessor, there’s a lot here to like, at least on paper. Unfortunately, this is only when it all comes together properly. We ran into far too many technical issues to count that taints the experience and puts even more frustration on an already stressful campaign. If the game wasn’t so demanding in its design, then a lot of these issues wouldn’t be a huge concern, but that would require cutting out what makes XCOM so appealing in the first place. Unless you plan on save scumming your way through the campaign, the outcome will ultimately end poorly. XCOM 2 truly has the makings of a great game, but it’s hidden in the bloated technical issues that drag it down.

_XCOM 2 _ can be an extremely challenging SLG game Forums, and playing on Ironman can sometimes feel like a daunting experience. Unlike the normal modes, Ironman does not allow players to load previous saves. All progress is kept on a single save that updates constantly, making every action and consequence permane

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