I first wrote this article a while back and posted it in XCOM subreddit, but figured it would be a good idea to post it here, including the updates I made. Enjoy!

This is a long article, and one I thought about a lot. There surely are pieces which are debatable, do not consider this as a strictly objective piece. It also is a first for me, so it is also a bit amateurish I would say.

TL:DR from u/Judgment_Reversed/ -

"Good analysis! The key is that Xcom2 streamlined everything about previous and similar games, making it a very fulfilling player-centered experience. Instead of making it about "I can't wait for my current boredom/frustration to pay off with something fun later!" Xcom2 streamlined base planning and missions to make everything result in, and come from, combat. Everything is a fast, fun feedback loop, rather than a delayed payoff loop.

Want to mod it? Go ahead. Save scum? Absolutely! You can play it the way you want to, rather than being forced through artificial bottlenecks like competitive play, leaderboards, monetization, etc.

It's a great example of how removing features can actually make a game better, which is a breath of fresh air in an industry often focused on bloating its games with unnecessary content."

Preface

I’ll come right out and say that XCOM 2, in my eyes, is the best strategy game ever made. But that does not mean that it actually is. I only speak from my perspective. And while this article is my own experience and thoughts, it is highly subjective, therefore you shouldn’t judge it objectively. This, also does not imply that I am speaking out of my ass here, just because I focus on the experience of playing more than the objective things XCOM 2 does.

How do I even start this article when I make such a great claim in the title? Do I start from the game length, which varies from 20 hours to 150 for a single campaign? Or from the 4 difficulties which are carefully designed for beginners, old time players, veterans to the game series and masochists? And I don’t mean just stat changing, but complete game overhauls to accommodate to the player skill. Or the extensive moddability? Endless replay-ability? No, I’ll start from the way the game makes you feel when you progress, and the premise of endless progression and growth.

About Civ5

Have you ever played a Civilization game? Or Total War? How about some classic RTS games like Age of Empires or StarCraft? Most likely you have, if you are an XCOM player, I believe. I think a pattern emerges from all the games I mentioned above, the one that you cannot grow and attack at the same time. In Civ, your main challenge isn’t the strategies the enemy employs against you, it’s just managing the sliders until you have reached a point where you can grow an army that walks over other civs. Assuming that you want to achieve a Domination victory, you only have to survive long enough to get to the end game and then spam units. Any other victory is simply a matter of protecting your cities and rushing wonders and trying not to get in any wars. Civ is a game that expects you to exploit it (especially on the hardest difficulty). It’s a game that expects you to manage sliders first and foremost, and then spam exploitative mechanics to win. The AI does not play fair, it gets bonuses that you do not. So expects you to use every means possible to overcome this artificial difficulty. But the game makes it clear – you cannot have wars going on and maintain an amazing growth economy. Or have positive happiness. Or complete important wonders or rush important buildings. You can only focus on one (or max 2) at a time. You either attack, or grow. You can also send missionaries and prophets while you are doing either, but it works best during the grow part (it always feels like I am winning when I convert cities to atheism), because they are less likely to be captured. The point is, you have to plan your moves way before, and take into consideration that you can’t wage war all the time, and have to follow some certain strategies, regardless of map type, civs you are up against, and resources you have available. Because while there is infinite replay-ability, most games follow the same old pattern, which becomes evident around the 4th or 5th game you play.

It doesn’t help that the game detects when you’re doing good and throws you something to screw your progress up. Be it your dearest ally declaring war against you for no good reason (especially when you can crush them) simply to plunder your trade routes, or piss poor civs finishing wonders before you do. Or world congress banning exactly the resources you have, especially when your score is much higher than other civ’s. The thing with this is that it just tests your ability to manage sliders, and just that. The whole game is a slider management simulator, while masking itself as a grand strategy game. Most games are won by surviving up until the atomic era, and then sending unit after unit and rolling every civilization who dares stand in your way. Play as Catherine of Russia, and you have twice the iron and uranium, two resources which guarantee that during the iron and nuclear age you will wreak havoc. The whole point is to survive and capture strategic points up until these two eras. Other civs have their own traits, and bonuses, but they always boil down to either other ages where they dominate, or borderline useless civs.

To conclude with Civ 5, it feels like a survival mission until you build the army of death that steamrolls everyone. And difficulties like deity leave you no other choice but this. This isn’t to say that Civ (5) is a bad game, not at all, but it does have mechanics which cause what I consider issues, or repetitive gameplay traits that I think become an issue the more you play the game, the ones I have mentioned above.

About Total War

But what about Total War? It is after all a vastly different game, being split into two parts, the real time battles and the turn based grand campaign. Here, the sliders that you manage are much simpler, and unlike Civ, are there simply to not turn the game into an unbalanced mess, but rather add to the aspect of maintaining order and steady growth. See, Total War is a game that expects you to wage war a lot, and if you don’t, others will. Unlike Civ, it knows what the main point of it is, and it pushes you to war. It isn’t like Civ in the sense that you can win without going to war. In Civ there are 5 victory types, and around 2-3 playstyles to get there. Total War has 1 victory condition, and the playstyle changes according to what faction (nation) you play as. Because in TW, the challenge and variety come in the form of the starting location and strength. Since TW has a more predefined and structured start of the game than most other strategy games, the devs can handcraft the start of the game, which is the hardest, but also the most enjoyable part of the game. You know that when you get to conquer around 30-40% of the map that the game at that point is won. Even the victory conditions, the “official” winning objectives require something a bit more than that, because the game understands that the meta game is overcoming the handcrafted starting difficulty of the factions (which are different and interesting and offer nice, diverse challenges) and not painting the whole map in one color. Of course, you can go on and do that, but that’s just a chore at that point. So, every game mechanic is thought out carefully, because it is vital in overcoming the early and mid-game, the whole point of TW. Not like Civ, whose meta game is picking one strategy and sticking with it, and making sure that whatever events occur, you don’t swerve from the initial strategy, which you know before you even start the game. The main difference is, I would say, that Civ is much more of a sandbox game than a handcrafted one, and TW is a handcrafted game with some sandbox elements sprinkled on top of it (campaigns only, this excludes custom battles).

So what about TW? Why is it important in this analysis? I think it is because it is a very clear example of:

1.Get a grip on the game

2.Plan your strategy

3.Build the elements required to fulfil the strategy

4.Excecute it with battles

5.Reorganize and fix your conquered cities, and repeat the following steps to conquer more.

What stands out is the fact that it has very clear steps in how you do things. You can’t change that order. Everything you do on the side (family tree, diplomacy, religion) is to speed up the steps so that you can get to the battle part faster. So here comes the big TW decision:

1. Do I get to the battle part NOW, and risk failure, which resets my progress so far or…
2. Do I build more army strength and make sure I conquer, but risk spending lots of time building with a few cities and let enemy factions capture key positions and allow them to strengthen more than I am comfortable with?

That’s the TW meta decision, which rewards taking smart risks, but also rewards patient play. Because while 90% of the time you are on the strategy map, the 10% on the battle is the best part and the one you want to make sure is won. It’s a game which rewards a lot of buildup and gives you a satisfying ending/closure to all that build up.

Let’s talk XCOM

You get to see so much about XCOM’s combat, the RNG, the difficulty, that you think that that’s all there is. The beauty of XCOM, and especially XCOM 2, is that you never stop progressing, either unlocking more gear through scientific research, getting new engineering prototypes, opening more rooms, PSI operations, more XP through missions therefore getting ranked up, money from the end of month rewards, and maybe a few more that I’m forgetting. And all these happen incrementally, not at the cost of combat. This means that you set up your research, your engineering projects, excavation, and go on to that important mission, finish it, get ranked up AND that sweet loot, and then you distribute the resources to other squad members, whilst waiting for nothing. The only thing to look forward to is better soldiers and a more cohesive squad. So everything you do whilst outside of combat, is only to make the squad better.

What differs from, say, Civ or TW? I would say the fact that the rewards you get are tangible. It isn’t just a +10 to production, or just a multiplier. XCOM gives you new weapons that you can use in combat, that you can see and feel and drastically change the combat. You got magnetic weapons now? GET THIS! 7 damage instead of 3. It is visible, it’s a big change. You just finished some experimental engineering? Let’s try this crossbow which deals 12 damage and has an unprecedented accuracy rating! It is something which you can touch, and feel. It is not a small bonus, it’s something that has a drastic impact. It’s so good because it gets you so invested into the game loop, that you can’t stop. You successfully (because XCOM expects that you do good in missions, that’s its implication), go to the base, upgrade and assign more powerful stuff, rank up, and then you’re rearing to go to the next mission, which will undoubtedly have you eager to test your new gear.

This is not to say that the passive multipliers don’t exist, it’s just that they are implemented amazingly well. With more scientists and engineers, you research and develop faster, but you do not build a laboratory or engineering lab unless you’re in a very tight spot. This is because if your game is going well, you are acquiring them during rescue missions or buying them on the black market. You do not research something which makes you research faster. You research items that you use. That’s the brilliance of XCOM 2’s design, it makes you wait for tangible things, while the passive bonuses are rewarded at doing successful mission, which you were going to aim for excellence anyway, but here you go, get this as well.

Unlike Total War, where you can never enter a battle screen yet still win the game through auto-resolve, XCOM does not allow you to do this. Because it isn’t 2 different games in one, it’s a tactical combat game with the planning stage on the background. It is more correct to picture the base as a big planning stage for the combat, rather than “the second mode”. It is highly polished, it takes plenty of playtime, but ultimately is still a background thing. The game designers know this, and imply it in every step. Look at the tedium removed from XCOM 1 to 2. No more managing panic levels. You don’t have to sacrifice a lucrative bonus in order to reduce the terror level on a country. You could compare the Avatar Project to this, but it is much simpler to deal with that the terror level in XCOM 1. I would say the only reason it exists is to stop you from just farming XP on easy missions in order to cheese through the game. XCOM 2 with all its DLC has a very forgiving Avatar Project timer, because it understood what it did wrong with the base game, where it was very urgent to reduce it, at the sacrifice of some soldiers and good loot.

War of the Chosen (WOTC from now on) is an expansion that understands XCOM and what makes it tick. It does what XCOM does best – remove difficulty (which could be called tedium) in the base part of the game, you know, scanning, choosing battles, research and everything, and puts the difficulty in the combat, where it should be. It gives more generous timers both at the base (Avatar Project) and in combat (things that needed to be done in 8 turns are either 12 or easier to reach). It does this because those were the restrictions one had to fight to get to the good parts of the game, allowing yourself to experiment in combat with all the different cool toys you have. It makes the combat more tactical, more experimental, more “on the fly tactics” instead of overwatch crawl by introducing harder pods and the Chosen, when require you to be on your toes all the time. And this is the best design decision I have witnessed in my life.

XCOM (2) is loved not because it allows you to manage a base with soldiers, no. It is loved because these soldiers are put in combat situations which are unfamiliar, they are outnumbered, outgunned and still survive those conditions through extreme coordination, amazing tactics, luck and quick thinking. This is XCOM. WOTC amplifies this to the extreme by making the combat feel as if only possibly through genius thinking, and gives a vibe that you can’t cheese through ANY mission, no matter how easy it may look like. It allows you to build some extremely powerful units which can literally take down 3 enemies on 1 turn, and stun 2 others, while the other units clean up after this one. I had a soldier who was literally death reincarnate, called Lara Croft (ehh, I am not original) which could turn a very unfortunate situation into a game of chess that could be solved, but only if I was smart enough. I am not smart, so by the 5th reload I would get it right, but the possibility was there. This is what WOTC allows. In other games, you take your losses with your wins, because they are acceptable losses. You will just get more units. Earlier XCOM games (the classics) or Xenonauts imply that you WILL lose soldiers, and while it sucks, get used to it. That’s because it’s very easy to get new soldiers. And the soldiers you lose, they aren’t much different from the new ones, just different names and sometimes *some* better statistics. That’s why almost every mission in these games feels like sieging a city in Total War; you will win, but some will die, but it doesn’t matter because you can replenish them.

Not in XCOM. Here, the upgrade tree, and the gear, PSY training and other stats make someone very, very unique. Even classes with the same tree, can serve vastly different functions based on the weapons they equip or their PSY training, or their gear. In short, there never are 2 of the same soldiers. And this is the point, because by having all these different soldiers, you can bounce the “RNG” and “the unfortunate” and “the unexpected” off, you can miss that 95% shot and still get that viper because of bladestorm, you can be in a bad spot but still survive because of Gremlin Shield + Smoke + Flashbang. XCOM is unpredictable, but it gives you the tools to smartly work your way out of it. To find certainty within the unpredictable. And it rewards you in two ways: with loot and with something that only competitive games like Counter Strike, Rainbow 6 Siege, Dota 2 and LoL have done for me, that sense of pride and achievement when pulling of a clutch or a hard win because of your smart thinking, skill, luck and a combination of all of the above. This is the “high” that defines XCOM. This is why there is no other game like XCOM, even though it’s combat systems have been replicated a lot. Because XCOM is not just a game, but it is an experience that uses your brain to it’s fullest, and gives a lot of reward back.

Article Updates based on feedback from Reddit:

XCOM isn’t a grand strategy game, it’s a tactical one

I think the comparison that I made to games like Civ (5) and Total War isn’t based on the type of game, but on the premise, but absolutely XCOM isn’t a strategy one. And it could be said that the comparison to the other games is unfair, however I tend to disagree, solely on the premise.

You see, all 3 of these games (I would add Age of Empires 2 with custom battles/skirmishes as well) usher you in a world, give you some tools, and expect you to do something with them. Differences are in the way that the games expect you to use the tools, and when. This is nothing like, say, Into the Breach, which is a strictly puzzle game disguised as a strategy one. In Into the Breach, the levels are very tightly designed to give you that “aHA” moment when you figure out the right moves, and over time, you notice patters which give more powerful combos. But that’s because the game intended this from the start. Not even games like CK2 are in the same ballpark, because these are games where there virtually is no winning condition, you just play and hope for the best.

Take Civ (5). It virtually asks you whether you can build a civilization that can stand the test of time. The premise isn’t an easy one, it’s a daunting one, competitive, challenging. It expects you to use all your cunning, warfare, tactics to achieve a (most likely domination or culture) victory. So what? Well, it is an important point. It is the reason why so many Civ games are started but not finished. Because the game understands that it has tight systems that you need to really know, which you can only learn after beating the game at least once. I would say that almost everyone remembers their first Civ victory, and that was also their last, despite having started almost immediately another game. Civ is fun in the early and mid game, where you are disadvantaged and have to plan ahead and stay alive. In harder difficulties, you are a tiny player in the global scale, everyone dwarfs your petty civilization. So you keep your head down, and prepare your masterplan. By the time you execute it, you know you have won the game. You know that you have won the game the moment that your Civ’s ranking is the highest. Because by then it’s just a matter of conquering the remaining cities, and the tedium of moving units and brushing up ruined cities. This is why people quit it, not because they start losing (that could be one reason as well, if your masterplan fails, you basically have to start over or wait until you’re wealthy/happy/resourceful enough to grow another army), but people leave because you have to do more maintenance work in supplying the army, waiting for the army to heal, constructing new units, to conquer those cities that stand in your way, that definitely aren’t hard, but are far from your army.

People get bored with it, that’s why they quit. And in my eyes, Civ fails to live up to its promise, to lead a civilization to a glorious victory, because you get bored with its bureaucracy.

Total War is a masterclass in game design in its own way, and I have nothing but good things to say about it. It understands it’s premise well, one where your empire is strong enough to crush whatever rebel scum comes its way, one where you build a Rome that is Mother to us All. And it does just that. It has complex systems, unlike Civ, which you can manipulate to AID in battle, not to avoid it or replace it. That’s a big win in my eyes, because however strong your culture/religion, and despite being such strong allies with a faction, nothing stops either to send destructive armies to you and raze you. In Civ, if you do that, you cannot trade, forget City States, forget buying anything with Gold because you will have none, and that happiness you have before war, you better cherish it.

Total War knows that it’s about war, but unlike XCOM, the campaign map isn’t just a stat booster for the battles. It is much more of a control station that XCOM’s control station, despite the name. There you plan your moves, fend off attackers, dispatch rebels, grow armies, manage your family tree, manage rebellion, manage finances, control squalor, control unrest. This is why TW needs auto-resolve, because both types of gameplay - the campaign and the real time battles – have equal importance. In TW, you battle when you want to capture a city or destroy a large army, because you have total control over the tactics and you expect to come out victorious AND with much fewer losses than with auto-resolve.

TW understands its premise, but it doesn’t understand its players. Keep in mind, nobody would like to see half of Europe painted in red and say read the victory screen. No. They want to see it all in red. And that’s the one issue that Total War has, that it is based on a real world map. One which has seen actual wars like the ones you wage. So while the game can tell you that you won, you know that it’s not about winning it, its about conquering everything. It’s about dominating all of Europe. It’s about bringing glory to Rome. That which Civ could never comply just imply, Total War does. The problem is, by the time you have 2/4 of the map the game is pretty much a joke in difficulty. Later TW address this with some success, by throwing random events or spikes in difficulty, like the Huns which invade, or people wanting a republic instead of a dictatorship therefore splitting all of Europe into two colors.

But XCOM? No….. In XCOM, you much cause as much damage as possible. Every win has no drawbacks, the more damage you cause, the more you loot, the riskier the mission or blacksite, the more you disrupt the Advent network, the more you delay the Avatar Project, the more the Chosen will step back. Failure to do so, makes the game harder. The game wants the best of you, wants you not to stop or hold back, does not want you to wait and build gigantic armies to make difficult city captures easier. It wants you alert at any time, ready to cause mayhem, as much as possible. And it is there to allow you to do just that. XCOM is a masterclass in implying and complying its premise, and while game design is extremely important, premise is what makes a game unforgettable. Premise is why you play a game, good design is why you come back to it. I think XCOM is a 10/10 in premise, and 9/10 in design.

TW is 9/10 in premise and 8/10 in design, and Civ is a 3/10 in premise, and 9.5/10 in design, maybe even a 10/10.

After one campaign I don’t go back to TW. I play the next game, or take a break altogether. Civ, I pick it up, play for like 30 hours, and quit only to go back exactly to where I was, like I did that just yesterday. That’s how good it is at conveying information, and how tight its systems are.

But XCOM? XCOM is a game meant to be played at least 4 times. Vanilla, DLC, Mods, Ironman. And any combination of those. It’s like different factions in TW, it feels like a new game. Playing as Rome in Attila: Total War is keeping a falling empire together. Playing as the Huns, it’s about how much damage can you get away with doing in the early game, while you set up to fend off people later.

They key is that all three of those games promise very similar things, but only one embodies its premise.

The Pod system

I have to say: is this really an issue? Because by framing it as such, you place it in a position where you need to defend it or attack it. From what I could gather from the reddit comments, people were more against it than for it. They pitched it as an issue of game design, allowing enemies a free move to position themselves. Or a reason to overwatch crawl and have the last soldier trigger the pod.

In my opinion, the pod system is ok, but could be improved. I do not think that it should be removed altogether, because it really adds to the gameplay, however it also does enforce a slow and overly cautious playstyle. But I think that the XCOM team understood that, and took steps to make the pod system fun. I think they mostly succeeded. Here’s how:

Re-entering scout mode. This was in vanilla XCOM 2, and WOTC added more to it due to how useful it is. Map knowledge is easily the most important resource, therefore having a class designated to scouting as much as possible is how you flawlessly finish missions. XCOM 2 makes the start of the mission, if you are in hiding, one of the most enjoyable parts of the game. Because you know where the enemy is, and you can plan one step ahead at all times. You set everyone up in such a way that when you trigger the string of overwatches you see a showdown. That, we can all agree is a masterclass in game feel much more so than in game design. XCOM 2 (as far as I know) purposefully places a lot of enemies just at the start, and after you clear those (which is no easy task, even knowing where they are and having the advantage of being in hiding) it slowly introduces new pods. Small pods of easy enemies, maybe one harder enemy. This is just to keep you on your toes. Most likely this pod activates itself by moving into YOUR line of sight, rather you triggering it by advancing forward a lot. I think that (especially in vanilla XCOM 2) the bulk of the enemies are at the start and end of a combat scenario, where you have the most time to prepare. Everything in between is there to give you breathing space and allow you to set up for the last push. This is where a ranger who goes into the shadows shines: it allows you to see the last big pods, provided you’ve cleared the pods before. And since information is key, you know what to expect.

However, this is the intended design. What happens most of the time, especially with players who are impatient or not that experienced, or who simply haven’t figured this thing out, they rush stuff, trigger more pods than needed, go to the enemy instead of expecting them to come at you. And these are the players who also complain about the pod system. Should it be clearer on how it expects you to play? NO! Playstyle is a choice, and understanding optimal playstyles shouldn’t be fed to you by the game. Is the system perfect? No, because if it was it would be praised. So, what now? What should we do?

Enter WOTC. Dragunova is by far, the most useful, well designed, and fun mechanic that makes the Pod System click. It allows you to basically have the most advanced scout, tag and see where all the enemies are, and plan well in advance for it. Does it break the game? No. Why not? Because Dragunova is a scout, not a damage dealer. You trade a damage dealer for an info gatherer. You can’t rely on her to bring down enemies on her own. She is much more of a support or armor breaker than a designated damage dealer. But she was never meant to be a damage dealer. Check her skills – they are all designed either for scouting, or armor breaking. Dragunova tells me that XCOM devs, all the wo/men who are responsible for the game design, understand the frustrations. And they take steps to eliminate it.

Does Dragunova trivialize the game? My ass. Play or the hardest difficulty, and see how much of a difference not having a sixth heavy hitter hurts you. When you take Dragunova, you must forget about bringing a healer with you. You need all the firepower you can get. It is a choice, information or a soft pillow to undo mistakes (healer). Because if you really dig into the game patterns, you understand that with Dragunova on your team, you have to make every shot count to eliminate all the risky pods. Anything else could bite you back hard. Swap her for a normal sniper – someone has to go trigger the pods, which is risky, but your sniper just sits back and takes out whatever you bring to its LOS.

So is Dragunova the solution to the Pod System? Hmmm, yes and no. It could be how you play every mission, letting her rest of the easy ones. But after all, it is a choice. It is more of a tool in your arsenal rather than a strategy.

To conclude with the Pod System, I’d say that it is a polarizing solution. I call it solution because there is no other way to phrase it. It is a way of doing things. Xenonauts does not have it, and without it you basically have to risk taking hits to discover where the enemies are. Is that a fun mechanic? Hell no, that’s borderline bad design. You can’t get penalized for something that you can’t control. Should a Pod not be triggered until it is being shot at, or a turn after you have LOS? Again, I fear it would break balance. It would be worse than overwatch crawl, because you would focus much more on getting to the perfect positions and executing overwatch chains rather than doing what makes XCOM fun: getting out of sticky situations by using your wit and short-term strategies.

I think that the equipments that the game allows you to bring into a firefight counter the randomness of triggering pods, and skills later on in the game are designed to help you with that. I think it isn’t perfected, but it should stay as a system.

Network Tower in one Turn

I seem to be on the minority, but the fact that it can exist makes the game very interesting IMO. For that to happen, you have to purposefully build at least 2 characters around that, AND have Mox give a free move to someone, AND have Overdrive Serum, AND enough progression in the campaign to make all of this available. So, by the time you are able to do this, you can also very easily take down the network tower by playing the “default” way. The reason you can do this, is because you have progressed so much in the game, almost if not all the characters have maxed-out AND expanded skill trees, with great gear, all the equipment they could need, and the team bonds that are required for that certain exploit. You literally have no use for such a thing in any other game mode. On normal missions you lose the soldier if you do that, because the mission does not end at disabling the objective. Only the Network Tower allows you this. So, is it really an exploit? I would say no, more like a nice easter egg.

As always, this is after all, my subjective opinion. But I do back it up as much as I can with a thorough analysis.

Cheers, Endi