XCOM 2 is one of those rare console releases that delivers its promised goods. It blends so many different genres and does so surprisingly well. Here in XCOM 2, you have a great shooter, you have an excellent turn based RPG that has an enormous pool of skills and abilities to learn from, and you have a critical and tactical strategy/team based game that requires absolute planning and assessing before rushing in guns blazing.
Coming from a first time XCOM player and not someone who has played any of the PC exclusive's earlier releases, the story to XCOM 2 is quite easy to jump into and adapt to its background. The planet Earth has been overrun by an evil alien corporation known as Advent and slowly over time, Advent has made its influence more and more popular and growing in popularity due to lies and false propaganda spread forth by Advent themselves. While at first the goal of Advent's desire to gain more and more humans for its cause, given the right amount of time and research into the matter and their true, sinister agenda reveals itself. I wont be spoiling anything for anyone but the story is captivating and the stereotypical "Alien takes over the world" thing is not the case here. The twists and turns of your findings had me hooked in suspense and wanting to learn more.
The gameplay..... Well, its different for sure but in a good way. You will go out on missions to clean different parts of the Earth free of the evil Advent aliens, and you will do so in a squad handpicked of different types of soldiers with different abilities and skills. These characters can all be named and assigned different classes and skills and can be progressed in the future as you see fit. You may want to advance this character with more explosive weaponry availability, Grenadier class is the class of soldier you would want. Along with the explosive happy Grenadier, you have the stealthy and deadly Ranger class, the proficient snipers known as Sharpshooters, the Specialists who can be steered into becoming field medics for the crew or deadly robotics experts who can wield powerful AI robots to take out enemies and the special Psionic class who wield a certain type of powerful energy force mentioned in the game several times as psionic. Each soldier has different routes and skills available and can alternate between the two paths to better suit your needs. Getting a character maxed out is one tough task here though, as XCOM 2 uses a unforgiving method and autosaves every battle and every time a character is killed and no coming back from the dead, once a character is dead they are dead!!! This can be adjusted and made a little bit more manageable but just remember, if you want to keep your most prized and developed soldiers alive, you may want to THINK HARD before blindly rushing in and getting yourself ambushed. This will make you extremely careful if you ever lose a character after having leveled them up through numerous battles and earning the title of Captain or Colonel and then losing them because you acted too swiftly. This is also a positive thing, as it will make you more aware of and careful as well as make you value your characters more. The gameplay will have you strategically move and set a placement on screen of where your selected character will move and you depending on how far you move, you may or may not be given another action to take. The enemy will then get to go and you must be extremely careful as you can quickly become outnumbered and surrounded by hidden and unforeseen enemy Advent forces. The game uses a VATS-like targeting system which gives players a % likeability of a chance to hit their target. This is one of the games downfalls as it is very undependable. More shots seemed to have hit with a 30% chance predicted than of 80%. Also, there were times when I was literally within eye shot of an alien standing right in front of me and my chances of hitting my target were too terribly low to risk.
The RPG side of XCOM 2 is awesome!! The ship you ride in has rooms that can be cleared out and here you can build various types of facilities to aid you in battle. Also, each room or facility has their own specific benefits and ways of aiding your quest. Also, the data you collect while on missions as well as the enemy types (and there are many!!) can all be brought back to your personal scientist for examination and researched for huge benefits. Certain items or bodies can progress your arsenal and give you access to powerful and deadly weaponry, or could lead to more intel and insight on certain enemies and motives behind Advents onslaught. The options and choices are many!! I remember at times being overwhelmed and left not knowing what I should pursue next. The game also has a downside in relations to this quality. The timer or endgame sequence that kicks off when you reach a certain part of the story is very shortening and demands players meet certain goals by a certain time or be doomed. And it doesn't offer much time at all and certainly brings a potential unending journey to a screeching halt. This takes away from the games overall life and appeal.
XCOM 2 is a great but crazy-hard game that will certainly require players to have more strategy and less run and gun blind tactics. It will require players to think before acting and to cherish their most beloved and strong characters, and it will show sides of a new kind of Hard difficulty suited only for the most hardcore and tactically sound players. Overall, an excellent journey and rewarding RPG/Strategy-shooter!!