XCOM 2

Point blank shotgun blast to the face lined up. 99% chance to hit. MISS. I get torn asunder the next enemy turn.

Unfortunately, difficulty of the game is not well balanced. During the first few hours, when your soldiers barely got skills & equipment, your enemies got stuff like mind control, grip, poison spit, extra armor etc.. And it is very hard to replace an injured experienced soldier with a rookie in missions, so it turns into a loop with fighting along with soldiers with those who got less capacity to fight them. So every mission turns from strategy & fighting to survival. Well, I'm enough of that.

barely played but it wasnt making me want to yet. something just seemed off

The game balance is not very well considered. I appreciate the timer as it adds some needed tension to the encounters but XCOM2 still suffers from early game being too punishing and late game being too easy. This is probably because the enemy AI isn't all that good and Firaxis has to rely on damage done and mountainous enemy health to smooth over the experience. There is a truly phenomenal game buried in here somewhere but the final product is sorely lacking.

More XCOM, slightly improved. Frankly, one game was enough for me.

It was a stroke of genius to reverse the story, so that you now get to grow the resistance and take the fight to the aliens. The gameplay is largely the same as 'X Com': You go on a mission, lose half your team, cry a bit, buy new soldiers, do some research, build improvements. Repeat. But having your overwatch trap sprung by some poor sectoid and watching your team saw it in half in glorious slow-motion, while you scream 'Mind control THAT you alien fuck!'? I'll never tire of that feeling.

People were pissed about the timers but I feel they wereally a mostly successful albeit inelegant solution into enticing tense and memorable gamin experience.

very good turn-based tactics but everything else is even worse than its predecessor. special mention to the nauseating soundtrack.

I really enjoyed XCOM, but I didn't like how often there were time limits in this because to me XCOM isn't about being fast. I understand that it makes sense from a story perspective but it wasn't for me. There were other issues like that one alien that literally drags you through buildings and then that hit percentage problem where point blank you have a large chance of missing. I don't know if it got worse for this or not but it didn't bother me in the first one and it did here.

All the elements for the perfect XCOM experience are here but I'm still waiting on a rebalancing mod that makes it all come together. I'm still going to give it a 9 because this franchise reboot is the greatest thing to happen to gaming since Nobuo Uematsu.

I didn't like it as much as the original but it's still a strong strategy platform and worth picking up on sale.