That's partly simply because more time is spent in combat than on the Geoscape or in the Avenger base. The improvements to the strategic side, which is where I thought The Long War 2 might make the most dramatic changes, don't all feel as meaningful.
For reasons that I'll go into shortly, the tactical side of the game is not just the best it's ever been, it's so much improved that I'll find it hard to back to vanilla. Every time I've sent a squad into combat, I've been tense and excited all over again, which is incredible considering the tens of hours I've already poured into XCOM 2. The Long War 2 doesn't discard or sidestep those narrative beats, apart from the first (the Commander figure that you play no longer has that grand introduction), but it fills the spaces in between the major steps forward with much more of the tactical pleasures and emergent narratives that are the series' key strength. The pacing of the vanilla game is very deliberate, dropping new enemies and technologies in your path at a steady rate and ensuring that though you have a level of control over events, there's always a guiding hand to lead you from one narrative beat to the next. Stretch an XCOM 2 campaign out for an extra thirty, forty or fifty hours (I haven't completed a Long War 2 campaign yet but I imagine length will vary quite a lot depending on chance and your own efficiency) and all of those extractions, retaliations and data hacks might become extremely repetitive.
After a while, every dungeon starts to look a lot like the last one. I'm currently playing Darkest Dungeon again, a game that is receiving a shorter mode in a coming update, and even though it's comfortably one of my favourite games of recent times, I'll be glad of a condensed mode.
The Long War is available now and we've been in the thick of the right for the past few days.Īs I played The Long War 2, one question never left my mind: no matter how much longer and harder this might be, is it also more interesting and enjoyable? Bigger isn't necessarily better. The fight for Earth isn't just longer, it's broader and more involved at every level. Mission one: eight soldiers, all with protective vests, frags and flashbangs. Two things are immediately clear: the insurgency aren't as bold as at the beginning of vanilla XCOM 2, but, as individuals and as squads, they're far more cunning. Your enlarged squad isn't doing anything as brash as blowing up an Advent statue instead, they've managed to track down an under-strength patrol and are determined to take it down. From the very first mission of The Long War 2, the stakes are different.
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