For those who have been waiting until XCOM 2 hit consoles to see how it follows on the story of the first game, the twist from Firaxis is the kind of bold and ambitious that would seem alien to other studios (pardon the pun). After spending an entire campaign - or two - battling an alien infestation with the backing of world governments and cutting-edge technology, Firaxis took the fate of the world out of the players' hands: Humanity had lost. The Aliens won. Twenty years have passed. And XCOM has been scattered to the w

Grim Fandango was one of many iconic graphic adventures to have been remastered in recent years, joining The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle . The point-and-click classic is considered to be the genre's final bow, with its huge 94 Metascore being a testament to how it encapsulated so much about what was great about graphic adventu

What do you think XCOM 3 will bring, Ranters? Firaxis may be injecting their own original pieces to the plot, but the series is still heavily intertwined with the original vision from MicroProse. Only time will tell if this influence will help shape the future of the rebooted ser

Announced during the most recent Nintendo Direct, Triangle Strategy is an upcoming tactical JRPG being developed by Square Enix. Though the game has a visual style similar to that of Octopath Traveler , the game's gameplay appears to be more akin to that of games like Final Fantasy Tactics, SLG Patch notes Tactics Ogre , and Fire Emb

The cover art may not have any striking images or elements of foreshadowing like the previous entries, though it does exactly what it sets out to do; show the updated visuals in a way that will warm the hearts of the franchise's pre-existing fans while making it vibrant enough to stand out to those who had never heard of the series bef

There was a time when the revival of the science fiction franchise XCOM by Firaxis Games was seen as simply a small-scale, back-up title to the main event. But long before the squad-based shooter disappointed many, the traditional, turn-based strategy XCOM: Enemy Unknown had been launched to near universal acclaim, not only doing the brand justice, but reinvigorating the genre as a whole. The expansion Enemy Within doubled down on the fiction and gameplay - but it was **XCOM 2 ** that had the anticipation in its fa

Players once again resume the roll of The Commander, who has been kept on ice by aliens for the last twenty years. Recovered after a desperate gamble by the sweater-loving Bradford, the linear plot then guides players to a climactic and intense final mission, with random events occurring all across the board as players race to beat the clock against a mysterious alien proj

This mod makes swapping out squadmates the matter of two clicks instead of several, making weapon swapping almost instantaneous, and even allows brave Commanders to send out more than six soldiers at once! Stats, health, willpower, and even skill information are all readily available without sifting through menu after menu after menu. Thank you, Robojum

This would be especially effective if particular characters weren't locked behind single decisions, rather than chains of choices that would encourage the player to experiment with their choices and greatly enhance replay value through tangible assets that are only available under certain conditi

Terror From The Deep was a sequel to the original X-COM. At this stage in that game's plot, the alien forces had been defeated, but sent out a signal before their ultimate destruction. This signal awakened a dormant force of aliens who had been in stasis under the sea for countless years. Their awakening forced XCOM to adopt new strategies in order to defend humanity once again, developing new weapons and armors capable of taking the fight to the aliens in an underwater battlegro

While having numerous endings and routes within a game incentivizes numerous playthroughs, nothing incentivizes players to keep playing a game quite like post-launch content. Whether these are free updates or DLC, additional content to a game allows it to continue to be fresh over a much larger period of time. As a tactical RPG , Triangle Strategy could theoretically add anything from new recruitable characters to entirely new mo

For whatever reason, very few tactical JRPGs in recent memory have featured PVP multiplayer. Allowing players to face off against each other simply adds more variety to the game as a whole. Additionally, as the game is centered around the player's choices, opposing players may have access to different characters, weapons, and other resources based on the choices they made, making combat even more var

While some sidequests could only be available to players who made certain choices, the completion of other sidequests could potentially provide additional context to a problem at hand, giving the player insight into how making a given choice may impact the p