Finished it. Ironman on Veteran difficulty. Lost 4 troops, 2 in the first two month and 2 on the first Black site. I put of the final mission until December because I ignored Psi the entire game and wanted to completely max out a Psi trooper.
The difficulty curve seems to still be much higher at the beginning of the game. You don't have as many tools to deal with enemies, and it's difficult to manage encounters without a concealed Ranger.
I really liked the timed missions. There were many, many missions where I thought I was screwed because of the timer, but took a risk and came out with a flawless mission. There were also times when I thought I was screwed and took wounds or deaths. I didn't think any of my deaths or critical wounds were unfair in any way, though - I know I should have hunkered instead of praying for that 56% shot, or I should have aid protocoled my exposed ranger. Compare that to the untimed missions. Without the time pressure, I inched my team up square by square. I didn't have to make any hard decisions: I just right clicked, then spammed shift and y until my turn ended.
Grenadiers are easily my favorite class in the game. One well-placed grenade can easily change the course of a battle, and grenadiers get three. I stopped taking casualties once I was able to field two grenadiers. Proximity mines on Grenadiers seem to be a little overpowered, honestly. Proxy mines don't activate pods until they move on their turn. You can lob a proxy mine from out of LOS, overwatch your troops, and end your turn to get free shots as they activate and then get another free action afterwards. Special grenades are fun and useful, too, but they're more specialized and don't let you do the Beaglerush maneuver.
I'm not really sure what the Ranger's sword is useful for. There are some skill that help it a little, like Blademaster and Reaper, but swords do equal or less damage than shotguns, can miss, and require you to be next to your enemy. I can see the utility of getting Reaper, but the path to Colonel just seems... painful. Bladestorm is pretty useless, too, except for in the odd Retaliation mission with Faceless. I loved Concealment Rangers, though. Being able to spot enemies and control encounters was invaluable. Run and Gun with Rapid Fire is also amazing. I tried to take two Concealment Rangers with me as much as possible.
(I sometimes get the feeling that I'm hitting way more 50-80% shots than I should be hitting. Is it just me, or are the RNG bonuses for Normal back in XCOM 2?)
I know I screwed up my strategic game a lot, especially the Avenger layout. Always leave the middle slots open for workshops. But by the end of the third month I was snowballing really hard and getting all the researches done. I didn't have too many Proving Grounds projects (because I like grenades), but I was doing pretty well in most areas. Intel was a lot more important than I gave it credit for at first.
I really liked XCOM 2. I'm going to bump the difficulty up to Commander next time I play and see how different it is.
