XCOM 2 Collection

XCOM 2 flips the premise of its predecessor: the aliens won, Earth is under their control, and you are running a guerrilla resistance from a stolen alien vessel. That framing change has real mechanical weight. You are no longer defending; you are racing against a global countdown called the Avatar Project while simultaneously managing resources, research, and a roster of soldiers you will absolutely grow attached to before losing them to a rookie's missed 90% shot. The core loop is tight turn-based tactics on the ground floor paired with a layer of strategic decisions in the Avenger base that would not look out of place on a Paradox grand-strategy map. The Collection bundles the base game with every major piece of DLC including War of the Chosen, which is effectively a second, significantly deeper game baked on top. War of the Chosen adds three named antagonists who hunt your squad across multiple missions, three new hero soldier classes (Templar, Skirmisher, Reaper), resistance factions, soldier bonds that unlock co-operative abilities, and a fatigue system that forces real roster depth. Playing the base game without War of the Chosen in 2025 is a bit like skipping a major expansion patch in a live-service title. The Collection is the version to own. For anyone coming in fresh: the tutorial is functional but lean. It teaches the basics without holding your hand through the strategic layer, which is where new players typically collapse around the mid-game Avatar Project pressure. The recommendation here is to start on Veteran difficulty, not Legendary, and to treat the first campaign as a learning run. The strategic layer decisions, specifically which continent bonuses to prioritize, when to build the Shadow Chamber, and how to sequence research against the Avatar timer, are not explained well in-game. Thankfully, the mod ecosystem on Steam Workshop is one of the healthiest in the genre: Long War of the Chosen overhauls the entire experience for veterans, while quality-of-life mods fix the camera, add better soldier management, and reduce some of the more punishing RNG visibility. The Workshop support alone extends the value of this package substantially. What does not work as well: the AI is competent at punishing mistakes but rarely does anything tactically surprising after the first few campaigns. Enemy behavior follows readable scripts, which means experienced players will start optimizing encounters into rote solutions. Multiplayer exists but is essentially a ghost town. Overwatch abuse remains a dominant strategy even after all the years and patches. And the infamous shot-percentage RNG will, at some point, make you question the laws of probability in a way no spreadsheet can fully soothe. The tactical depth, build variety across soldier classes (Ranger, Grenadier, Sharpshooter, Specialist, Psi Operative, and the War of the Chosen additions), the tension of permanent death, and the replayability of procedurally generated maps across a long campaign make this one of the most complete strategy packages available on PC. It is demanding, occasionally cruel, and fully comfortable with watching you lose a campaign you invested 40 hours into. That is not a flaw. That is the design.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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