With the announcement and very imminent arrival of the more story driven XCOM: Chimera Squad as a interlude and precursor to XCOM3, I thought it was high time that I wrote up my review of the War of the Chosen expansion for the absoultely stunning XCOM2!
Note that I have kept using the word EXPANSION rather than the more familiar DLC... and this is quite deliberate. Most DLC these days are pretty meagre add-ons to the base game... however, War of the Chosen is a pretty hefty overhaul to the strategy metagame layer of XCOM2, whilst also adding quite a bit to the tactical layer as well in the form of new enemies and potential allies! This is an expansion in keeping of the good old days of REAL huge expansions, when a extra addition to a game meant that it was almost as big as a standalone game in itself!
Review
The biggest change to the game is the addition of 3 enemy hero units and 3 allied hero units. These enemy heroes are the Chosen that the expansion is named after. The bring some viciously nasty abilities and firepower to the table, and they can drop into any mission that you happen to be embarked upon... leading to a real "Oh, Crap" moment when they appear and start to rip your team to shreds!
To make matters even worse, they get more powerful the longer they are allowed to range free... as they gain more knowledge about XCOM, the gain more unique deadly abilities!
You will be able to eventually take them down (or cut losses and run screaming...), but they will teleport away to fight another day, until you can find their Citadels and take them out for good. However, finding them isn't easy... and taking them down... well, that is going to test the mettle of your tactical ability and squad members. To say that it is tricky... is quite the understatement! In fact, I would suggest that it is even harder than the actual end mission of the game!
If that wasn't bad enough... there are powerful escaped mutants from the Advent facilities raging around the Earth as well! Again, when you see one of these guys... you are in for a very bad day! These are variants on the standard Aliens with the lethality dialed up to 11/10... or maybe 99/10!
So, in the early to mid stages of the game... expect to see quite a few casualties! That was a successful mission... there is also a neutral Fallen faction as well, consisting of strange and mysterious Zombie-like creatures that will attack both ADVENT and XCOM troops in the field.
To try and balance things out, XCOM does get a few new perks... the first amongst these are the new Human factions which add a Covert Mission layer to the Strategy level. Each faction gives you some interesting passive perks if you choose to employ them and a unique hero to counter the enemy Chosen. Although, to be perfectly honest, I would prefer to have a Chosen on my team instead of these Human weaklings!
The Covert Missions play out as a timer, with a risk-reward mechanic that is dependent on the resources and units that you choose to send...
There is a more detailed, larger and flexible skill tree for the advancement and growth of your solders... which means that you can really level them up to be exactly the soldiers that you want them to be. Or to have a unit that has a trick or two outside its usual expected class abilities. A big change is the way that soldiers "learn" skill points to allocate instead of being a straight binary choice between two skills when the rank level goes up. This allows a hyper experienced soldier to choose ALL the skills... or if you want, you can choose the skills that are really appropriate to your tactical style.
There is an emphasis on bonded team-mates that work well together... the more that they experience battle together, the closer a bonded pair will get.... unlocking some pretty awesome skills if they are deployed together in the field.
However, with the positives come the balancing negatives... and you soldiers can get some nasty negative traits... especially when they have nearly been killed by a particular Alien type. You can heal them of their fears, but that takes quite an investment in the MedBay! Also, there is an added fatigue mechanic... which really heavily punishes repeated deployment without rest!
Still... if you manage to best the escaped super-mutants and the enemy Chosen, you are rewarded with some pretty powerful unique gear in the form of armour and guns. It is still an investment of research and resources to develop these one of a kind pieces, but it is more than worth it!
Conclusion
I have always said that XCOM2 was definitely THE (currently) best vanilla version of the XCOM series and franchise in existence (of course, that might all change with XCOM3!). When you add in the community developed Long War 2 mod... you have pretty much one the most perfect takes on the XCOM genre of tactics and strategy that exists!
It is clear that the developers at Firaxis have quite a high regard for the community developers at Long War (they have said so on record in the past!), and they have emulated much of what made the Long War mod such a great addition to the Vanilla game with the War of the Chosen expansion.
The vanilla XCOM2 suffered from a pretty ordinary strategy layer and the War of the Chosen has really put some interesting twists and options on the table in this respect. Difficulty wise, things are really quite more intense than the vanilla version, as you now have the ticking of the ADVENT countdown to juggle at the same time as the growth of the Chosen over time. It really gives you a solid feeling that doom is just breathing down your spine from the very beginning!
However, once you have defeated the Chosen... it is clear that there is no more challenge left. Your soldiers will be stupidly powerful in comparison to the vanilla endgame!
That said, it is a testament to the high bar that they have set with this release that I'm rating it even BETTER than XCOM2 with the Long War 2 mod!... although, I haven't yet played a version of the XCOM2 game with BOTH War of the Chosen AND Long War 2 installed... that is just going to be a alien hunter's dream game!
Review Hardware
Played at 1080p (144Hz) on:
Intel BX80662I76700 Core i7-6700 Prozessor (3,4GHz)
6GB EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC GAMING
GIGABYTE Z170N-WIFI
Ballistix Sport LT 16GB DDR4
Samsung 960 EVO M.2 512GB
S4 Mini Case (NFC Systems)
Splinterlands (aka the best blockchain game out there!)
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