Developer: Firaxis
Publisher: 2K
Platform: Windows; Mac and Linux by Feral Interactive
Release Date: 5 February 2016
Official Website | Reveal Trailer | "Retaliation" Trailer
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Twenty years have passed since world leaders offered an unconditional surrender to alien forces and XCOM, the planet's last line of defense, was left decimated and scattered. Now the aliens rule Earth, building shining cities that promise a brilliant future for humanity on the surface, while concealing a sinister agenda below and eliminating all who dissent from their new order. Only those who live at the edges of the world have a margin of freedom. Here, a force gathers once again to stand up for humanity. Always on the run, the remnant XCOM forces must find a way to rise from the ashes, expose the insidious truth behind the occupation, and eliminate the alien threat once and for all.
- Take command of the Avenger, an alien supply craft converted to XCOM’s mobile headquarters. New open-ended gameplay lets you decide where to guide your strike team, how to grow popular support, and when to combat enemy counter-operations.
- Five soldier classes, each with its own skill tree, let you create specific soldiers for your tactical plan.
- New gameplay systems offer more tactical flexibility in combat. Use concealment to ambush enemy patrols. Loot enemies for precious gear and artifacts. Rescue VIPs and save fallen comrades by carrying them to the extraction point.
- A diverse cast of enemies from powerful new alien species to the ADVENT, enforcers of the alien regime, offer a distinct tactical challenge.
- Configure and build rooms on the Avenger to give XCOM new capabilities on the battlefield. Use your Scientists and Engineers to research, develop and upgrade weapons and armor to fit your preferred tactics.
- Go on missions around the world, from wildlands to the heart of the alien-controlled megacities, to the depths of alien installations. There are virtually infinite combinations of maps, missions and goals.
- Community-focused tools allow you to create your own campaign, tactical gameplay, aliens, classes, strategy game features, and share within the Steam Workshop.
- Mix-and-match squads of humans and aliens and battle head-to-head on randomly-generated maps in multiplayer.
Each class has two archetypes if you exclusively move down one side of the skills tree. However you can always mix and match skills from both sides of the tree. Each archetype dramatically changes how the class plays, effectively giving you 8 classes from the 4 base classes.
There are also many more abilities that allow for free actions and refunds on actions provided you meet the conditions of the skill (or just letting you target multiple enemies in a turn), effectively allowing you more than the 2 actions per turn limit you normally get.
There are also many more abilities that allow for free actions and refunds on actions provided you meet the conditions of the skill (or just letting you target multiple enemies in a turn), effectively allowing you more than the 2 actions per turn limit you normally get.
- When a soldier is trained as a RANGER, they receive the Slash ability, allowing them to attack in melee at adjacent tiles with a sword, even at the diagonals and over low cover. They are also equipped with a shotgun as their primary weapon.
- The SCOUT archetype allows the Ranger to take full advantage of concealment, even when the rest of your team breaks concealment, allowing your ranger to move ahead and reposition even in the middle of combat.
- The ASSAULT archetype augments the ability of your melee weapon to turn your Ranger into a melee expert, even allowing you to become so aggressive that you can easily dart out into the open and cut down entire pods. RULES OF NATURE!
- Ranger class skills overview (YouTube)
- The SPECIALIST receives a drone called the GREMLIN, that can be used in both defensive and offensive methods depending on how you specialize. Like other weapons and equipment, upgrading the GREMLIN also affects the abilities tied to the GREMLIN.
- The BATTLE MEDIC archetype both allows for and augments the healing abilities of the Specialist's GREMLIN, letting you heal and revive units from range. There also also perks that allow for enhanced overwatch abilities from the Specialist.
- The COMBAT HACKER archetype turns the Specialist's GREMLIN into an offensive tool, allowing you guaranteed damage and allowing you to hack robotic enemies. There also also perks that allow for enhanced overwatch abilities from the Specialist.
- Specialist class skill overview (YouTube)
- The GRENADIER is armed with a minigun that does dramatically more damage than other small arms, and receives a grenade launcher that allows the grenadier to fire grenades from their inventory with increased range and efficiency.
- The HEAVY GUNNER archetype allows the minigun to become a powerful utility item that debuffs enemies, strips armour and destroys cover, or to do guaranteed damage.
- The DEMOLITIONS EXPERT archetype takes advantage of the grenade launcher to augment the use of grenades from the Grenadier, including range, damage and effects of grenades carried.
- Grenadier class skill overview (YouTube)
- A SHARPSHOOTER is granted squadsight, effectively allowing you infinite range as long as you have line of sight to that target, with an aim penalty. Sharpshooters are equipped with a sniper rifle as well as a pistol that effectively has infinite ammo as a backup weapon.
- The SNIPER archetype turns your Sharpshooter into a powerful, long range expert, letting you wipe out enemies from essentially infinite range.
- The GUNSLINGER archetype turns your sharpshooter into a pistol expert, allowing you to fire your pistol at almost an unlimited number of times in a single round at just about as many enemies as you can wrangle together.
- Sharpshooter class skills overview (YouTube)
- The PSI OPERATIVE is equipped with a Psionic Amplifier, which is equipment that allows for the use of psionic abilities and any upgrades towards it will in turn improve the effects of the operative's psionic abilities.
- Level-ups are done through training in-base, not battlefield experience. When training completes, you are given a choice of three random abilities to pick from and can vary wildly from any rank of abilities. It is possible to learn all abilities but would take a considerable amount of time.
- The Psi Operative also gains the PSI stat, which is used for psionic attacks against an opponent's WILL score.
- Psi Operative class skills overview (YouTube)
Q: I heard there's time limits in this game?
A: There are no time limits but certain missions place turn limits to achieve certain objectives or there is more pressure to move forward rather than overwatch camping in a corner of a map.
Sometimes a turn limit is enforced the entire mission, or sometimes it is only pertinent to an objective and following that, you are free to take as many turns as you need to evac or eliminate the enemy.
A similar thing has changed in terror missions where you must rescue a considerable number of civilians (up from one (1) in EU2012/EW) to consider the mission a success. You are still free to disregard the turn limit or objective if you wish. But to what goal, I don't know.
Q: There's a season pass? What's in the season pass?
A: Details of the Reinforcement Pack can be found by checking the Steam store page. It gets you access to three DLC packs, all of them allow more customization features and the latter two packs will introduce some gameplay changes from what it sounds like.
Q: Wait, why is XCOM2 PC only? I thought EU2012 and EW released for Xbox 360 and PS3?
A: As discussed a thousand times, Firaxis wanted to put all their development time into a PC exclusive version (read more). That's not to say it might not also release later but they've decided to focus their efforts on the PC version to allow for things like procedurally generated maps and robust mod support.
Q: Tell me about mod support?
A: Firaxis has worked with mod creators to do their best to allow XCOM 2 to be as highly moddable as possible. Previously, in EU2012/Enemy Within, the most modding you could do was with hex editing, and you were still basically working on variations of whatever mechanics already existed or using strings that were cut out during development to let you use for additional 'stuff'.
Needless to say, modding XCOM 2 is going to be much more open. Steam Workshop support will be out on day one, as well as three mods from Long War Studios that will also be available at launch. (Read more here)
Q: Wait, what about controller support?
A: As of this moment, there will be an official Steam Controller profile for XCOM 2 at launch, but gamepad support will be patched in at a later time. Or, maybe even expect someone to write a mod for it!
Screenshots
***Special Thanks to Nete who is arranging all things GAF-COM (graphics and text) !
