XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

[glen55]

A new expansion for XCOM 2, War of the Chosen, is out and is getting rave reviews. It is large and meaty, and the crux of the reviews is that it adds so many new ways of doing things for both the good guys and the bad guys, including a trio of recurrent super-enemies, that you can play a long campaign and you are always dealing with fresh situations and novel problems. New character classes, new equipment, new skill differentiations within classes, several new enemy types, and basically all my favorite review sites are loving it.

I had grown a bit weary of the series, but these reviews have me convinced to give this expansion a try. A sampling:

http://www.pcgamer.com/xcom-2-war-of-the-chosen-review-in-progress-an-exciting-arduous-expansion/

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-08-24-xcom-2-war-of-the-chosen-review

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/08/24/xcom-2-war-of-the-chosen-review/

[JasonPratt]

...your move, LW team!  O:-)

[Greybriar]

TotalBiscuit seems to like it:

[Jarhead0331]

Don't think it's out until 8/29.

[glen55]

Don't think it's out until 8/29.

Oops, yep, not out yet, so thanks for the correction. But Steam says 8/28.

[Windigo]

...your move, LW team!  O:-)

I think they had their hands in this one too

[jomni]

Ah so this is why it's in sale. I have skipped XCom2 since release.

[JasonPratt]

Ah so this is why it's in sale. I have skipped XCom2 since release.

Almost all the missions have turn limits, so I don't blame you. But that's literally the only thing wrong with it.

[ghostryder]

Much more wrong with it than mission timers.

For one--the setup really demanded a reworked game from the first- but instead they cheaped it---even if it made no logical sense. You get the very exact same setup as in the first game- scan geoscape -upgrade one base. but then it gets worse in XCOM2. You fly around in some super carrier sized ship-dispite the game's story telling you all the time you've lost the planet-your an underground resistance and you need to find pockets of other rebels so you can take a fight to the aliens. If there ever was time to go back to multiple bases it was this game. Instead of the rather silly sell that your covert while flying around in an aircraft the size of the local mall--you really should be covert down in a single base--and you can send agents to find that new pocket of resistance and then use that base as expansion. The game's storyline screams for that--but instead we simply got a copy/paste setup from the first game.

Lastly the mission timers try as they might fail to hide a much weaker A.I. no patrol missions for the enemy in this one--and more times than not it's apt to run out and get itself murdered rather than try to flank and take cover.

The Long war 2 mod goes a long way in correcting a lot of this. In that mod your never really aware your flying around in a humongus blimp---your base feels stationary---as the only animated sequences show the drop ship. upping the monster count and 100x the number of missions soon turn into a huge repetative slomp---but it remains fun as the tactical combat is the best thing the game offers up. But other than all the new customizing of soldiers in many ways the first game is far superior in both setup-story and A.I.

that doesn't make it a bad game-just a game that could have been so much more kind of thing. They just never quite convince the player they really are an underground resistance--and there seems to be many strategic layers that could have directly linked to that that never made the game.

[JasonPratt]

For one--the setup really demanded a reworked game from the first- but instead they cheaped it---even if it made no logical sense. You get the very exact same setup as in the first game- scan geoscape -upgrade one base. but then it gets worse in XCOM2. You fly around in some super carrier sized ship-dispite the game's story telling you all the time you've lost the planet-your an underground resistance and you need to find pockets of other rebels so you can take a fight to the aliens. If there ever was time to go back to multiple bases it was this game. Instead of the rather silly sell that your covert while flying around in an aircraft the size of the local mall--you really should be covert down in a single base--and you can send agents to find that new pocket of resistance and then use that base as expansion. The game's storyline screams for that--but instead we simply got a copy/paste setup from the first game.

I'll grant a lot of that, even though I thought the mobile base idea almost worked. I don't know why multiple bases would have even been hard to implement! -- maybe they thought it was a balance issue. I don't think it was a cheap-out -- they could have re-used art assets all over the place, and they added more stuff with how the map and campaign worked, than they kept the same. Still, like you said, whenever the giant base was flying around, my belief in the inherency of the story crashed hard. ;) Even with a handwave about stealth capabilities.

The Long war 2 mod goes a long way in correcting a lot of this. In that mod your never really aware your flying around in a humongus blimp---your base feels stationary---as the only animated sequences show the drop ship. upping the monster count and 100x the number of missions soon turn into a huge repetative slomp---but it remains fun as the tactical combat is the best thing the game offers up. But other than all the new customizing of soldiers in many ways the first game is far superior in both setup-story and A.I.

LW2 also fixes a lot of the tactical AI problems, albeit by exploiting the timer: obviously if there's a timer then the smart thing to do is take up defensible positions, with a little maneuvering for angles, while waiting for reinforcements to drop on top of the player. Multiple increasing times as necessary. That isn't hard to code, and is more of an ingenious solution than an actual advance. (Incidentally, LW2 also features options for reducing the mission and creature count to more usual levels.)

[ghostryder]

Oh they cheaped it--at least as far as the programming goes. When you break it down other than art what have they added? You get new models---and a bunch of customizable parts as far as armor goes--basically the bulk of which is merely decals over a rigid set of base pieces. aside from the skinning options they threw the thing into a new engine--Unreal--which sadly isn't exactly the kind of engine that supports grand strategy gaming. Unreal is a FPS engine--and is meant to be used with low overhead languages like LUA---whereas a strategy game-if it is to have anything approaching a thinking A.I. needs a rebost language with complete libraries--and as performance bears out-when that was added the engine chokes and crawls. But it is at least moddable- but the tradeoff is you can't have those A.I. routines that would actually let the enemy patrol--surround-respond or communicate any strategy--instead what you get is an enemy that behaves like a 90s FPS node based trigged A.I.--where it sits motionless until the player pibed is within a triggered distance--then it bee-lines toward the player---and this IS the behaviour you observe throughout the game.

In addition mission types were stripped. UFO landing and crashes-no rescuing key story members-and the single base attack is merely fought on an outside platform. You may think the new models, and all the customization options add up to a lot but you have to also remember these maps are procedurally generated and are no longer individually crafted--which actually equals a lot less work as a whole. Once the assets are created = Done...there's no 200 maps that need be created-nor the mission to pair with it- leaving that time to expand on soldier options and a whole hell of a lot more....which we never got.

then there's story. the opening scene certainly starts one...and it might actually have been intended when that scene was rendered. but it goes nowhere. Dispite all the cutscenes there is no story. Certainly not regarding Advent weeding out the rebels or the rebels really doing any real covert missions. you raid for supplies, destroy statues and rescue cilvilians. that's it. There's no real missions in finding resistance cells-that's mitigated to the geoscape. Other than a blip on that same geoscape screen trying to spot your flying Mall there's no missions being inacted against you either---that is mitigated to the abstract Doom meter.

it all boils down to a lot less than what we had in the first game.

On another note aside from Bradford all the characters are as boring as possible- a couple DLC missions is all we get regarding any of them.

Hopefully this expansion will bring some meat other than 3 hero classes. Sadly we can expect it will also break the Long war 2 mod-about the only way i can play the game now.

[JasonPratt]

what you get is an enemy that behaves like a 90s FPS node based trigged A.I.--where it sits motionless until the player pibed is within a triggered distance--then it bee-lines toward the player---and this IS the behaviour you observe throughout the game.

Except for the patrols.  ::) But like many things that was fixed by the LW2 team.

[ghostryder]

Yeah, I've got at least 100 hrs into that mod. And I'm not even halfway to a win. Took me forever to beat LW1 as well- you take a huge performance hit using it but it's worth the trade off. They are saying performance seems improved with the expansion so hopefully when they get the mod compatable---which I suspect won't take long as they antisipated this release-we're see some improvement there.

[Windigo]

God I love this game. I just keep coming back to it. I love to hate the Warlock... bastard.