WARNING --- possible spoilers!

Wow! I just finished the game on Normal difficulty and I enjoyed it thoroughly! I played the first XCOM as well and loved that both in game-wise and story-wise. I did get XCOM EW but since it seemed so much like XCOM EU initially, it got buried underneath everthing else I needed to do.

Anyway, back to XCOM 2 --- I love the "ambush" mechanic now, so much so that I have two guys that can go back into "stealth mode" and act as my scouts. What gets me is that while the scouts can see the "detection radius" of the bad guys as it relates to them, it doesn't show the "detection radius" of the bad guys as it relates to non-stealth party members. It would've been nicer to have a red "stealth detection radius" and a more opaque-red "non-stealth detection radius." This would make it easier for me to set up ambushes more than just once per mission. Sometimes, I just sneak past some bad guys in order to make better use of my initial ambush and go for bigger targets. I hated how I would scout for enemies in the first XCOM, only for them to have a "free move" once I got them in visual range. While this still happens in XCOM 2 once the squad is revealed, at least I can somewhat mitigate it now with my two scouts and I also have that initial ambush mechanic available.

For those complaining about timed missions, these missions make sense anyway and do not break the game at all. As others have said, these missions are "timed" in the sense that you have X amount of turns to do a certain task. Whether you take 10 minutes to do X turns or take 100 minutes to do X turns doesn't matter... so there is no real-time pressure on you as the player, just a turn counter in the game to add a bit of a challenge and sense of urgency. For some missions, once you have done the task that is timed, you then have all the time in the world to do other non-timed tasks.

I also really enjoyed the hacking and mimic beacons! I would say the game would be so much harder without these items/skills at my disposal! My favorite hack bonus was getting my actions replenished, essentially taking two turns. I also loved hacking the enemy robots... on this play-through, I did not do much with Psionics at all. I may do it again with more focus on Psi so that I can "hack" organic enemies as well. However, because of the mimic beacon, I almost never had to bring a healer with me in missions and even then, she would see minimal use. By the late-game, I was bringing 2-3 mimic beacons with me on missions.

One of the new things in XCOM 2 is that you can carry bodies of fallen/injured/sick comrades about.... never really found much use for this (probably will on higher difficulty levels) aside from 4-5 missions which needed bodies being carried about. However, on such missions, the "loss of firepower" from the guy doing the carrying made for an interesting chage as I had to decide who would do the carrying and then the rest of the squad would try to pick up the slack and "protect the package" at the same time.

I really like the pre-mission intel as well, showing me what enemy types were expected and how many enemies were present. This would help me decide whether to bring my hacker guy or bring my shredder lady.... or whether I'd load up on explosives or if I can play with flamethrowers. The new Faceless and the burrowing function of the Chrysalids also brought in a new unknown in the game which I really enjoyed as it forced me to be a bit more careful and made the "sensor" items and abilities much more useful.

I would say that the game is still slightly buggy, but nothing really show-stopping. I save regularly and under different names and I have experienced 2-3 instances of corrupted save games, but luckily these were the auto-saves rather than my manual saves. During the end mission, the game would not seem to load as well but that was solved by a PC restart. There are clipping issues... but which game doesn't? I've never "seen" an enemy through a wall or anything like that unless the enemy has been detected in the first place, at which point a joint or weapon sticking through doesn't really give me any advantage. Same thing for my guys... the animation would be "off" sometimes, like a character firing into a wall but hits the guy on the other side and the wall just has a "hit decal." Nothing gamebreaking, and I just imagined my shot went right through the wall. On the last mission, there were a few instances of the game lagging; namely my characters would play "hit" or "miss" audio but I wouldn't see the animation or the text pop-up until maybe 10-15 seconds later. This was mostly on the final mission though and by this point, I was so amped up about finishing the story so it wasn't much of a bother. There would be similar instances in earlier missions but the delay/lag wasn't as bad, maybe 1-2 seconds only.

Speaking of shots going through walls, I really, really like how the environment is a little easier to destroy this time. Between my powered armor weapons, grenades, the enemy gatekeepers, sectopods, and all our firepower, the battlefield really looks like a battlefield once my troops are done. There have also been numerous instances wherein my scouts would detect enemies on the 2nd or 3rd floor of the building and I'd chuck a grenade or rocket into the floor below. Depending on the ordnance used, the enemy would take damage but they'd also take damage from the fall itself. Really nice when the grenade is just enough to take the enemy to 1-2HP and then they fall throught the floor and that's what kills them. Sweet!

However, I don't understand why the game takes so long to go from the mission back to the "base." The post-mission "animation" is quite longer compared to the pre-mission bit, and this is with my OS on an SSD and Steam/XCOM 2 on a separate SSD. Still, it's nothing game-breaking and I take it as a chance to try to calm down after an exciting mission.

Gameplay-wise, I find it annoying that I have to do everything myself. Want to establish contact with a sector? I have to fly there and stay in the area. Need to save a town from being wiped out? I have to fly there... okay, makes sense... but then my "establish contact with a sector" job is put on hold!! Basically, I can only do one thing at a time! Fight aliens, establish contact, gather intel, put up a radio beacon, or pick up supplies... I can only do ONE thing. I can understand it if the mobile base is needed when fighting aliens, but surely we can leave a few guys behind to put up a radio beacon while the rest of the "resistance forces" go do some resisting. Then there's the money/credits/supplies aspect. Instead of just giving me the money, it is instead dropped off at a random location on the map and I need 2-5 days to gather it all!! What?!?! There is a war going on and you leave my money at random locations that takes me a few days just to find it? Am I waiting for the cheque to clear or something? Really annoying that I have to interrupt whatever it is I'm doing, go fly to the location, and spend a few days turning over every rock and bush trying to find the money!

The base-building itself didn't take too much thought now and not having the "adjacency bonus" meant there was less planning needed. All I really needed to do was to clear out deeper in my ship to make use of the sections ideal for my power plant, and that was it. The base-building in the first game really took more planning and thinking ahead. Is this a good thing? Maybe. It allowed me to focus more on fighting, but I can see how other people will not like "losing" that aspect of the game. It took me quite a while to figure out how to destroy a facility in order to build a different one and while it was obvious by the time I found it, it could've been clearer on the outset, I guess.

I also found the "made contact" animation really funny. Central just found out where a pocket of resistance is located, he flies there, and exchanges nods with a few people. NODS!! No shaking hands, nobody meeting this unknown aircraft armed and ready in case aliens come pouring out. Central walks out and nods to what I assume are the leaders of those resistance groups. Ha!

Like the first XCOM game, I ended up with 2-3 of each speciality and it was easy enough to train them up to the highest level. When the game ended, I was training up a 3rd or 4th soldier of each specialty but I didn't really need them, most of the time they were there simply to cover for any injured "main soldier." I think I prefer the original X-COM and Xenonauts in the sense that I could field more troopers... which brings me to my next issue. Aside from the cosmetics, all my guys were essentially clones in terms of stats. One of my guys got better at hacking due to getting a bonus on one of his hacks, a few others had better Will stats due to recovering from illness and participating in a successful mission, but basically, everyone started out the same. Recruiting new guys was just about getting more bodies, and aside from maybe 1 or 2 soldiers I got from missions, I never really recruited anyone. I just went with who I had at the start of the game and that was it! In Xenonauts, I could have a recruit that was better than my advanced guys simply because he had better stats... or I'd have to retrain one guy into another "role" because his stats was more suited for that role. Not so in XCOM2, but then again, IIRC this was the same issue in the first game.

Talking about cosmetics, I didn't really care much for the end-game armor and weapons. I preferred the look of the first XCOM and felt more bad-ass with the end-game armor. Each time I saw my guys on really high-tech armor... then noticed their necks were very exposed... ugh!

I would stick my neck out a bit and say that the game might need a little more balance in favor of the aliens. As soon as my initial guys had their first 3 levels of upgrades, they started to own the battlefield. Halfway through, it was more about minimizing injuries than preventing deaths. In fact, I think Chyrsalids only really made it to melee range 3-4 times with my guys over the entire game. As soon as I knew there were Chyrsalids in the area, my squad would go into cautious overwatch mode and the Chrysalids would be mowed down before they'd get to my front line. The Faceless only managed to swing 3x at my guys over the entire game and wouldn't last long once they revealed themselves. About 3/4ths into the game, I would actually wait and ambush the enemy reinforcements and would enjoy watching them getting mowed down as they search for cover. On one mission, I easily took out 4 waves of reinforcements, on other missions I'd do 2 or 3 before wrapping up. Suffice to say I had more "oh sh1t!!" moments in XCOM and Xenonauts than I had in XCOM 2. Maybe it's because I knew more of what to expect? Maybe it's because I know what I'm doing? Or maybe it's because the game needs a little more balance for the aliens? Let's just say I wasn't really scared of Chrysalids, Mutons, or even the Faceless in XCOM 2. What gave me pause was more the Gatekeepers and the Andromedons, but this was simply because they were armored to the max and took quite a bit of firepower to be taken down. Maybe my concerns would be addressed at higher game difficulties, but I played XCOM on Normal so I'm making a Normal XCOM vs. Normal XCOM 2 comparison here.

Story-wise, I quite liked it. At first, I was skeptical about the "you lost the first XCOM war" storyline. Nope. I **WON** the first XCOM war. But then I see why they decided to go this way and it was cool... but I don't really understand the "Commander's" role in all this. I was just the guy who told the soldiers to go here, do this, shoot that, lob a grenade over there. I'm that important to the whole story? The aliens want to kill humankind but are interested in ME? And then I play a very pivotal role in the end of the game.... and it ends rather abruptly! WHAT!!!!1!!11!!! The first XCOM had better closure. This one is strongly hinting at XCOM 3. Now while I can see how "we lost the war" and thus had to research stuff from scratch (ballistics - rails - plasma), it'll be interesting to see how they'll bring in XCOM 3.

Considering what I paid for the game (about £36 for the pre-order plus season pass) and finishing it in 51 hours, that's about £0.71 for an hour of entertainment so I'll say it's well worth the admission price. I wasn't even rushing through the game at all, and was actually surprised I only took 51 hours. When I took on the final mission, the big ADVENT counter was only halfway full but since I already took all sectors and really only had Psionics to do, I thought I might as well see how the story ends. I'm excited to see what the Season Pass gives in terms of content and also what the community/modders bring in. I've heard of the Long War mod for XCOM and I read that those guys are working on XCOM 2 so this should be good. My eldest son has shown a bit of interest in the game as well so I've installed it on the laptop and now that I'm done, I'll let him have a go at it. Not bad at all for the price of admission.

All-in-all, I would say that this was an improvement over the first game and really, the only things I missed from XCOM EU was the armor (easily modded, I would think) and the fighter-UFO-investigate crash site aspect (makes for a few different mission types). It could do to take more ideas from the *original* X-COM or Xenonauts, but still, nothing show-stopping here. I may have another go at the game using the highest difficulty and see how that alters the game, but for now, I've had enough of shooting aliens.

I miss the interceptor mini-game from Xenonauts, something like that but expanded would have been pretty cool but I guess it would be hard to make it fit with the lore.

ricnunes, be aware that XCOM 1 comes as Enemy Unknown (EU) and also Enemy Within (EW). I think when you say "Complete Edition," it comes with both.... from what people have said, EW is an add-on to EU and doens't change the story much but adds some missions and abilities. I played through EU but EW didn't grab me very much so didn't play much of that.

There really is no point to play XCOM 1 if you know the story already. Play it to be able to play it, fine, but nothing in XCOM 2 is dependent on XCOM 1.

Anyway, welcome to the club!

...and most missions (if not all) having a turn limit (which doesn't happen in XCOM1).
...

I loved EU/EW and dropped more than 300 hours on the two. But I disliked the missions where you had to fight through the big alien ships like the supply ships or Overseer/Temple ship IIRC what they were called. Are there equivalents of these mission types in the new game?

I will also add that it's confusing following other people posts since we seem to be calling what was XCOM 2 XCOM 1, when XCOM 1 was 20 years ago. I know it's the publisher's fault not the posters'. But this new game should really be XCOM 3, shouldn't it? I'd be somewhat less confused if it were!

What is a "Ayylmaos"??