Long War 2 is extremely tough, but the deck’s not completely stacked against us in that XCOM gets quite a few upgrades. That’s created a lot of moments for me that make XCOM 2 feel a lot more like an insurgency against a vastly superior force – and I find I can’t complain about the change because it feels much more realistic than having a Skyranger constantly overhead, ready to extract me at any moment. If you need to haul your wounded soldiers back to the Avenger before they bleed out, or complete your objective by stealthing past patrols instead of killing everything in your path, getting out alive can become a harrowing last stand as a timer to extraction ticks down. Oh, and when you get into trouble like that, calling for extraction is no longer instant. I’ve lost several squads to being unexpectedly surrounded. You still have a heads up for when they’ll deploy, but you have no indication as to where – though it’s generally right behind you at the worst possible time, and with some pretty heavy units. Meanwhile, enemy reinforcements have gotten much, much meaner. That’s a problem with the main game, too, but it’s often more pronounced here. Rushing in to get a clean shot can just as easily bring another five or six enemies down on your head before you’re ready for them. In my experience this balance change has been a good one in individual firefights because it reduces the dependency on explosives as a one-size-fits-all solution, though the increased number and size of enemy pods on the map tends to make flanking extremely risky. And with some often-aggressive turn timers on many of the mission types (including several new ones, like jailbreaks), getting bogged down in a firefight can be the difference between success and failure. That makes it much more difficult to push through entrenched enemies because you have to either bring up some heavier weaponry (such as a Grenadier with an anti-cover upgrade) to blast them out or flank them. Most standard-issue grenades will only damage the enemy hiding behind the object, so they’re still good for bombarding a position, but nowhere near as effective at quickly ending a fight. You can no longer depend on grenades to destroy cover.The biggest shock to the system in moment-to-moment combat – on top of the much greater variety of Advent troop variants and their heavier weaponry – is no longer being able to depend on regular grenades to destroy enemy cover. In the full Long War 2 preview version, though, the changes to the fundamental game balance are far more extensive. New soldier classes, abilities, enemies, weapons, gear, and more made some drastic changes to the way battles played out.
Especially if you haven’t tried out any of the existing mods, the list of new features in Long War 2 is lengthy.
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