I held off of this one for a long time as it took a while to go on a sale. To tell the truth, I didn’t even buy Enemy Within for the first game as I already have too many games to play. I played this one without War of the Chosen either and I probably won’t get it. That’s not because I think I won’t like it but because I’m happy enough with the gameplay that I already got and don’t actually need more. I suppose that must be another sign of growing old.
Unlike any of the other XCOM games, old, new or cloned, this one differentiates itself with its premise that Earth has already been successfully invaded and is under alien occupation. What remains of XCOM is therefore a ragtag resistance movement that uses guerilla tactics to undermine the rule of the ADVENT government and convince the populace that the aliens are evil. In practice, this means that tactical missions often has the team start off under concealment with the enemies being unaware of your presence until you attack or get too close to them. On the strategic layer, it means that you don’t have a single fixed base and instead operate out of a repurposed alien craft that serves as a mobile base. Like the previous game, you’re the Commander and so the whole plot revolves around you, beginning with the team rescuing you in the tutorial to working on a way to foil the aliens’ Avatar Project.
As a tactical game this is as fantastic as everyone has made it out to be. The design is more stylized than ever with the different soldier classes having extremely distinct and powerful abilities. The enemies are a mix of the old and the new. While powerful, they have far less versatility in the abilities available to them. All units have a decent amount of mobility, being able to crash through windows and climb up to higher floors. It seems like almost everything on the map can be destroyed now and things can get on fire and be destroyed even when you’re not expecting it. There’s a very boardgame-like feel in how every action is important and has predictable consequences. That’s a very good thing in my book.
Unfortunately it also uses the first game’s system that enemies are part of discrete groups that are inactive on the map until they see your squad. This means that the primary challenge in fights is often to effectively defeat an already active group of enemies without moving deeper into the map to activate even more enemies. The game gives you tools to help achieve this, such the Ranger’s ability to conceal independently of the squad and the Specialist’s ability to send his or her GREMLIN drone to scan an area of the map. Still this necessitates a very particular way of playing that can feel very artificial. One way that the game changes things up are mission objectives which effectively force you to keep moving. Sometimes there’s an explicit turn limit, other times you need to protect something from being destroyed or prevent too many civilians from being killed. This helps discourage you from advancing slowly in order to only activate one group of enemies at a time.
The strategic layer here feels even more boardgame-like. You need to build the resistance network by contacting regions and linking them up. This requires building a special communications room in your Avenger mobile base and then constructing radio relays. You excavate debris inside the Avenger to make space for new rooms. Scientists are needed for research but I find that it’s more important to have engineers as you need them for practically everything: healing soldiers faster, excavating and building new rooms, manning power relays and the communications room etc. On the world map you can send the Avenger around the globe to collect resources, raid ADVENT, attack bases, respond to alien attacks and so on.
One problem I have with this game is that it tries a little too hard to have a clean interface. For example, if you want to check which soldier is injured during a mission, it seems that you need to manually go through all of them. Similarly trying to figure out how to demolish a room in the Avenger is a chore. I also had various technical issues, many of which have to do with the UI. At times for example, there is no visible button to back out of a screen and you need to press Escape on the keyboard. A couple of times, when promoting a soldier I was able to select only one of the two upgrade options on screen. It seems as if an invisible modal dialog window was blocking the other button. Rarely, I’ve also had crashes and scary pauses during the combat animations. None of these are deal breakers but they’re notable because games are mostly very well behaved these days.
Finally I found this game to be extremely difficult at the beginning. In fact, much more so that any of the previous XCOM games I’ve played. Your soldiers are badly outnumbered and weaker than the enemies in every respect, so you must rely on concealment to get a good ambush on them. But the difficulty level drops drastically later as your soldiers gain their special abilities and you are able to install weapon mods that complement their roles. By the end game, it’s trivial to demolish the entirety of an enemy squad when you activate them without them being able to make a single attack, at least at normal difficulty. Strangely mind control seems to be much less of a threat this time around as it is always obvious which alien is using it and killing or even disorienting it is sufficient to break the control. In fact, Sectoids here are a bit of a joke as they will usually try to reanimate a Psi-Zombie as their action. Just kill the Sectoid and the zombie goes down as well.
Overall I enjoyed this game a lot but I don’t feel compelled to play more after a single playthrough. I didn’t really feel attached to my soldiers as they all advance to Colonel quick enough and provided you pick the same abilities for them, they’re all identical. I also feel that the game lacks immersion. I dislike the bright, sci-fi designs and colors and find it weird that all combat is ground combat. It’s just silly that the aliens supposedly control the planet but they can’t use aerial bombardment on an area or something. It’s even sillier how quickly research proceeds and how quickly XCOM develops new gear. I suppose mods will help with that and I’ve never even played the famous Long War mod for the earlier game. One day perhaps.
