I am not a hardcore gamer. I play a variety of games and own a variety but I have not played most of what I have. I typically buy the game now and play it later. Xcom was a new game type to try out. I thoroughly enjoy it. I don't play it on the hardcore settings because, while I enjoy it, I am not hardcore. I actually thought the first game was awesome, it had a story and had a variety of maps, though the map variety then didn't match the settings that the game took place, ie an American farm in china and such but the map layouts were fantastic. I must have replayed the single player mission countless times to try and see if I could beat the game and not lose any council members but that never worked, still didn't even in Enemy Within. Overall, I was thoroughly surprised by what I played in the newest expansion.
First and foremost, this is an expansion, so while consoles require a whole new physical purchase, the PC actually requires the original to play this. It is a beefy and massive expansion. Adding new maps, a new enemy faction, a new alien enemy, new missions and minor story elements. The new faction is called Exalt, and they are basically identical to you in terms of abilities and weapons, you can use dropped Exalt weapons when you finish missions and the exalt laser sniper rifle looks much cooler than the normal laser sniper you have. New missions involve fighting the Exalt faction, if you have the Slingshot expansion that is included, a minor story element involving a woman who has psionic abilities and a supremely difficult mission involving the chryssalids that will definitely require a Mech unit to complete.
Lets discuss the weapons first. You still have the original weapons and upgrades from Enemy Unknown ie ballistic, laser and plasma, only now you have a lot of new gadgets to offset. you get reaper rounds that are critical damage boosters for ballistic weapons with reduce range, there are a variety of grenades to use though you may just stick to the basic two. there are a boat load of Foundry additions to construct and the addition of genetic augments and mechanized units adds some major firepower to your team.
The new faction, Exalt, adds a new story element to the game. There are some minor story elements that involve Exalt but they are not played out perfectly or are they played out in order. I finished a recon mission involving a convoy that was ambushed and recovered an Exalt unit that was there early in the game but didn't play the follow up to it till almost the end of the game. By that time I had already defeated Exalt, killed the sectoid commander to gain the psionic abilities, killed the Ethereal and gained the gollop device to create the gollop chamber and was almost finished it when the second part to the convoy mission was announced. I rescued the girl and added her to my team, she is psionically gifted and I made her a psionic and then I went and saved her friends and that was it so far. Anyway back to Exalt, they are a terrorist faction that utilizes weapons and abilities similar to Xcom and they function in cells around the world. when a cell is located you send an operative into that cell to recon and several turns later you go and rescue them. Its minor missions that either involve you protecting them so they can hack exalt recon arrays or protecting a device that protects another device that houses the information on Exalt. Both are pretty straightforward. You progress into the map prevent them from completing their objective and kill them at the same time. The other major mission I want to add is an early, at least it was early for me, mission where you have to investigate a fishing village in Alaska. I recon team there went dark and you need to find out why. As you progress, there is a cool event where a tied up dead shark is undulating and after a turn a Chryssalid explodes out of it and then you find out that the whole place is overrun with them. Turns out a dead whale on a whaling vessel was housing a large nest and you have to activate a beacon on the bridge that is right over the nest and make it back for pickup at the start point. Its a practical suicide mission once it heats up and I was hoping to limit loss of life for my team but wound up losing 3/4 of them and they were some good officers too. The Chryssalids have a once per turn spawn in with the whale that increases every 2 turns and they move in one turn what takes you a full one to sprint so I had to sacrifice two of my teammates to allow one to make it back for pickup and the third died after activating the beacon because she also got overrun by 3 of them and the others were too. If I had waited any longer the two that turned into zombies would have again turned into a Chryssalid and the last guy who was left was about to be overrun.
The genetic augments affect 4 different areas, brain, eyes, body and legs and each has two different selection types, like body has a second heart option to prevent instant death when player is killed or there is an adrenal gland overload ability that when that unit kills an enemy it release pheromones that improve teammate abilities with the affect radius. After the unlock of the facilities to operate these functions you simply choose a soldier and place him in the lab and the selected augment is adapted to the soldier and grants ability buffs. You are not locked into equipping soldier with a single augment and the only limit to augmenting soldiers is how much meld you have.
Mech units are actually the more fun of the new options. After the research to unlock the Meld substance, you can now build the mech bay or the genetics lab which is where the changes are done. They have the same function and space as the psionics lab does and they take time to complete the augmentation process. Mechs have 3 tiers of abilities and there two per tier to select from, 1 has either the kinetic attack option or flamethrower, 2 has a grenade launcher or a health restore mist, and 3 has either mine launcher or a electrocution ability similar to the weapon used to capture aliens alive. Mechs can and do absorb a lot of damage and can dish out major damage also. The weapons available to a mech are also 3 tiered with a Gatling type weapon at the start, a rail gun at second and an impulse type weapon as the last unlock.
All told, the expansion is a true expansion. If you have to pay for new content, this gives you what you paid for. Another thing I didn't mention was the addition of unit medals. During the early portion of the game, you are gifted medals that you can assign to your units. they have, once you assign them, major tactical benefits in terms of accuracy and abilities. Be sure to assign these carefully and sparingly because unlike weapons and such that are refunded after a unit dies, the medal that you award your units do not get refunded, which makes sense since you don't see armies taking back the hard earned medals a man/woman received when they die do you? The game is slow to start but it picks up momentum fast. if you are a veteran XCOM Enemy Unknown player you will need to throw your old play styles out the window because a lot of the new game types and map elements benefit quick aggressive play styles over slow tactful progression, be warned slow and steady does not win this race.