XCOM 2 (PS4)

Product as described online and delivered on time

For me the game is very average for a number of reasons but mainly because there are some great positives about the game but also some negatives and all in all I feel its an average outing.First off the game very much throws you into the deep end and never really explains or hints at how important your style of play during battles, the true effects of ignoring certain missions have or your order/layout of the avenger has on future repercussions further down the line. Its quite possible to invest 50 hours of gameplay into this game, before you release you are screwed and would have to start over. A lot of negative reviews have pointed out the game is 'too difficult' which in essence it is difficult but not because it takes a lot of skill, the mechanics have made the game difficult by design by the way in which it can become a very frustrating grind and potentially impossible to make it to the end of a campaign play through, unless you have made the right choices along the way.Negatives;The main points of contention are for me, the game punishes you unfairly for any solider deaths or even wounds inflicted during combat. For example if you keep loosing soldiers during battle, you have to replace them with rookies, which costs resources, the more you have to do that the more of a strain on your resources it becomes. In addition 'wounded' soldiers are laid out of action for a very long time and the game doesn't have a set criteria for deciding the severity of wounds; so a solider could take 2 shots in combat and be gravely wounded and another bleed out practically dead and the game decides that's only a minor wound, its a totally random chance. Baring that in mind, you therefore have to play the game on the basis that you cannot allow your soldiers to not only die in combat but very rarely if ever even get wounded, you have to ensure you take no damage from the enemy ever (which no matter how skillful you are, its still very difficult to achieve, unless you use the AI gets no turn glitch).There are also issue with the unfair amount of experience it is required to level up your soldiers to ranks above sergeant, your soldiers have to kill an awful lot of aliens to go above sergeant and as stated before, deaths and wounds can make them very difficult. In addition if your solider dies all experience, perks, rank etc is lost forever that solider is perma dead you've lost all progress invested in that solider (you also loose all equipment unless you can carry their body to the end of the mission). This point means it is also highly unlikely you will make it to the later stages of the game (which are more challenging) with any higher ranking soldiers in your squad.Positives;There are some nice graphics and a solid story backdrop, good range of customisation and its a game that if you can navigate past the difficulty spikes you do want to see the ending of. Also you dont really have to had played XCOM 1 to understand what is going on either. Some people have critisied the percentage chance of hitting enemies being infuriating or unrealistic (for example you are standing right in front of an enemy alien with a gun in their face at point blank range but only a 70% chance of hitting then and then your solider blazes the shot in the ground) however, I think this is due to lack of understand at how the algorithm works in XCOM. In XCOM everything is a dice roll, if it says 90% chance of hitting a target, it means you will miss 1 in every 10 times, it doesn't matter the distance you are from the enemy (in some cases distance and position improves the percentage but unless it says 100% its never 100%).All in all, I feel if the points on wounding and experience were balanced more favorably to the player this would be a 5 star. I think the experience would be improved dramatically if wounded was no longer randomly decided but decided by specific criteria i.e. bleed out- gravely wounded, take a few shots of damage minor wound etc. and on experience making it easier to obtain higher ranks for your soldiers.As it stands its a game where you'll likely find your first playthrough very frustrating and may even give up and let the disc gather dust, unless you read a guide beforehand.

I played the original back in 98 on the PC. I loved it. However the remake leaves a lot to be desired. Yes better graphics etc but theres too many annoyances that ruin this game in short1. Too much story. You spend your whole time reading and little time playing a game2. The load from a save takes an eternity. Why does it take so long?3. The rookie easy mode is incredibly hard to complete.4. You invest alot of time in customising your army and then you lose the whole game because its not clear what yoyre supposed to build or doI am quite disappointed as it could be a great game but let down severely.

Fan of the series, but not a fan of this sloppy game. Despite having a bunch of conceptually interesting additions to the 2015 Xcom game, it's really just the same game underneath. That would be ok, but this game is so slow (not sure why even the smallest maps take ~3 minutes to load) and incredibly glitchy. Don't waste your time and money...

Bought this as I enjoyed the first issue. Games is not as active as more modern styles but I enjoyed it and finished it in a reasonable time. It is a turn based game but still enjoyable unless you are fixated on running round madly shooting everything.

Really enjoying the new story arc for this game, the game play mechanics are not much different, but then again you can't do much more than polish perfection.