When it was announced I was very happy, a new campaign, some additional
layers of challenge, some special units belonging to both you and the enemy,
seemingly freshly ironed of bugs, all wrapped up with some new mission types
and some new voice acting to boot. Consider me hyped up.
War of the Chosen (WoTC) came
out on the back end of august. After sinking several hours into both the
original XCOM and its expansion, as well as XCOM 2, I decided to buy it, cos if
it’s awful, steam will let me have a refund, a feature that to date has been
used once on a game I don’t care to remember. Thankfully, it remains unused as
this game is good.
Now I want to make one thing
painfully clear, it’s really unbelievably good. It takes all the good things
about XCOM 2 and improves on them. I never got round to doing a review of XCOM
2 before it became redundant, but holy hell WoTC does an exemplary job of
making me love the game more than I already did. The addition of the new
fatigue mechanic as well as the AP and XCOM AP for special soldiers makes the
game have a tonne more depth. Any of the Chosen actually present a threat and
can easily beat up your best team if you slip up for more than a second.
The new classes do lend
themselves to the occasionally overpowered moment, dropping whole ADVENT pods
in a single turn. The Reaper is quite nice to play as they have a unique
concealment mechanic called "shadow", that’s give them a chance to
not be detected whenever they attack an enemy. The Skirmishers are just out and
out lethal, in conjunction with a Grenadier I killed two high level enemies
without even breaking a sweat. Their unique attack twice in one turn as well as
their melee weapon essentially turns them into rangers on steroids. The final
and favourite class of mine is the Templar, a psionic glass cannon that can end
up being the single most powerful unit on the battlefield at any given time. I’m
not sure what to call these, but they rely on killing enemies with a with a
melee attack called "rend" to build focus, which in turn makes them
stronger, but they can spend this focus to carry out some insanely strong
psionic attacks, that in one of my missions killed all three members of a pod
instantly. These classes are extremely well balanced with the rest of the game,
and with the addition of the fatigue mechanic, it means that while they can be
super-soldiers, if you don’t give them some rest time, they will suffer from a
tonne of negative traits.
The Chosen are quite cookie
cutter, pulling from a pool of abilities, some present in the base game, some
added by WoTC. However the thing that makes them unique to every play through
is that they have different strengths and weaknesses, and can develop new ones
over time. They can be defeated, but respawn until you use one of the new rooms,
The Circle, to hunt them down to their base and finish them once and for all.
There didn’t seem to be a uniqueness to them. Sure they all look different, and
do different things, but how beating the Chosen works is the same every time.
Use their weakness against them until they die. Maybe if I had to discover their
weaknesses and strengths whilst fighting them that would be better, as I would
have to try literally every tactic to bring them down, instead of looking at
the obvious neon signs telling me how to beat them.
Also am not going into any
detail, as if you’re going to play this game, which I recommend you do, I want
you to experience this for yourself. FUCK THE LOST. FUCK THE LOST AND ALL OF
THE THIER FUCKING MISSIONS. The game added in the Lost, aka Zombies, which to
be fair, are fucking quality. They provide this pressure, this unbeatable
enemy, who forces you into situations where sometimes you have to decide which
soldiers are more valuable, or if you want to fight advent, or you'd prefer to
see your soldiers get ripped apart by some mouldy screaming motherfucker.
There’s several improvements to
the research system. Namely the inspiration system, and breakthroughs.
Inspiration makes research take a shorter amount of time, and breakthrough
provided bonus that have to be priorities to gain them, otherwise the chance to
get them goes. The Circle and its covert operations add use for soldiers who
otherwise would never see the heat of combat, as well as a way to gain PCS's,
weapon mods and supplies, and also give XP to your less used recruits. There is
also propaganda system now, where you can make posters involving your soldiers,
and their exploits.
Overall War of the Chosen is
brilliant. It’s a well thought out, well executed, fun and generally rewarding
gameplay experience. It’s made a game that was already quite enjoyable surpass
literally every expectation I had, as I was expecting DLC akin to something
like the previously released "Alien Hunters" or "Shen's Last
Gift", and I was soooooooooooo fucking wrong. Honestly, it’s worth the £35
price tag, buy it.
Dan
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