Late to the party: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

I'll be straight here: I've been having a lot of mental health stresses and getting to play Magic has just not been a feasible thing for me. 

But going back to play XCOM 2: WotC, that's been right up my alley. 

I finished the original but never got far against the War of the Chosen expansion. Years later, I have finally gotten to the point where I both wanted to finish the game and really only had the brainpower to do that. I still wasn't doing well, though.

Enter, Youtuber Ronar, who has a guide to beating legendary difficulty. 

This guide was a huge boon to helping me get through the game. While I haven't beaten XCOM 2 yet, I've reached the point where things are inevitable: I have plenty of staff and crew, I'm so far ahead on my research that the game is just throwing penny-ante stuff at me; things like 50% off the cost of building a room that I've already built. 

It's also been a great deal of fun. There's an odd piece to XCOM where you have to learn to accept that some of your soldiers are going to die, and that it's even acceptable to fail a mission. Not all missions. Not many missions. But you won't lose the game from it.

That seems weird because XCOM goes out of its way to make players feel like every soldier lost is a massive problem. The balancing of resources to gain and train them, the hole in your teams left by the loss of a skilled character, these are not easy to overcome. 

On top of all that, there is a randomness baked into XCOM which can make it feel unfair. XCOM players are quickly oriented to the fact that having 90% on a shot does not mean you hit it. Which makes it feel all the worse when you don't. 

Since we're trained to play the percentages, and players just don't take the 10% shots, we only get the taste of defeat, never the HOLY CRAP THAT WORKED moment. 

Until you desperately have to take a shot that is bad. 

One thing about XCOM 2 is that if you don't add the War of the Chosen pack, then the game looses quite a bit of personality. The three mini-bosses of the War of the Chosen go a long way towards giving the player a sense that they are fighting someone and not just a faceless entity. Plus, they're exactly the kind of extra challenge that if you like XCOM, you're wanting to sign up for.

I know this is going up late, and I'm sorry about that. We're all doing the best we can, I hope. I'll get back on this in 2022, but in the meanwhile, have some happy holidays.