I’m by no means an elite XCOM 2 player, but I’m no slouch: my proudest achievement is completing a Commander-level Iron Man run. But Long War 2, an upcoming mod from Pavonis Interactive (formerly known as Long War Studios, developers of XCOM: Enemy Unknown’s Long War mod) makes me feel like a rookie again. After a few dozen hours of playing on Veteran difficulty and learning its ins and outs, I’m barely scratching the surface of what is, as the name suggests, a greatly extended campaign – and it’s scratching my surface right back.
A mod for everybody who thought XCOM 2 was too simple and easy.
By Dan Stapleton
This huge, game-changing mod ties together the Pavonis team’s previous mods (Perk Pack, Laser Pack, Toolbox, Leader Pack, Alien Pack, and SMG Pack) adds some additional new content, and completely rebalances everything to create a new semi-official version of XCOM 2 that requires entirely new and deep tactics on both the combat and strategy levels, and makes it feel fresh and brutally challenging.
Especially if you haven’t tried out any of the existing mods, the list of new features in Long War 2 is lengthy. New soldier classes, abilities, enemies, weapons, gear, and more made some drastic changes to the way battles played out. In the full Long War 2 preview version, though, the changes to the fundamental game balance are far more extensive.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. That’s a problem with the main game, too, but it’s often more pronounced here.
Meanwhile, enemy reinforcements have gotten much, much meaner. 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. I’ve lost several squads to being unexpectedly surrounded.
Oh, and when you get into trouble like that, calling for extraction is no longer instant. 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. 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.
Long War 2 is extremely tough, but the deck’s not completely stacked against us in that XCOM gets quite a few upgrades. Right off the bat, you can take up to 12 soldiers on most missions, which represents a doubling of your potential available firepower per turn. Each soldier also gets an armor vest by default that absorbs the first few points of damage without counting as a wound, and they’re much less likely to be killed outright, so you’ll often have a chance to save them without having to buy the “Stay With Me” upgrade in the Guerilla Tactics School. Likewise, you start with the benefits of the Lock and Load and Quid Pro Quo continental bonuses, so every gun gets three mod slots and mods can be swapped out without destroying them. To fill all those slots, you can expect to find much more loot – I’ve seen as many as six drops in a single mission.
Technical troops have a combo rocket launcher and flamethrower.
On top of the seven redesigned soldier classes from the Perk Pack, Long War 2 also introduces the Technical class, which incorporates some of the heavy weapons from XCOM 2’s EXO Suits into your starting lineup. Namely, they get a wrist-mounted combo rocket launcher and flamethrower, making them uniquely suited for dealing with the large groups of enemies who foolishly stand too close together. (The rocket launcher is single-use and has a habit of flying off course, and the flamethrower’s range and cover penetration is limited, though, so they’re not exactly godlike.)
It goes deeper: when you train a team leader in the GTS you’ll gain access to a whole new tree of abilities that layer on top of any existing class. Those abilities include spending Intel to delay a mission turn-timer from the battlefield, delaying enemy reinforcements, giving another teammate an extra action, and many more. And when a soldier has served under a leader before, they’ll earn bonuses in future missions when they’re in the presence of that same leader. That adds a whole additional layer to consider when composing your team, especially since only one leader can go on any given mission.
The catch is that a new Infiltration system gives you a very strong reason not to max out your squad size and equipment loadout on every mission. When you’re deploying a squad to a mission site you’ll see a number indicating how long a mission will be around before it expires; next to that, a number indicating how many days and hours it will take for your currently slotted squad to infiltrate without drawing extra attention. So if you go in fully loaded, your team will likely take longer to fully infiltrate than the mission has, which means you’ll have to either go in before you’re ready and thus face greatly increased enemy numbers, spend Intel to boost your infiltration percentage, or abort the mission. You can unlock several technologies to reduce your troops infiltration times as you go, so your squad size should increase over time.
It’s a clever system that creates some interesting choices about which missions to take on and when. That’s important, because you’re going to be presented with a lot more opportunities than you can reasonably pursue, even though you can send out multiple squads on infiltration missions at once. Some missions just aren’t worth the risk for the reward they offer, and Long War 2 doesn’t punish you for skipping them like the unmodded XCOM 2 does.
Back on the Avenger, the strategic map is also almost completely different. You’re still building a communications network with rebel territories in the same way as before, but territory control changes hands in different ways. More importantly, the economy has been revamped – you now assign individual, named rebel personnel at each of your bases to tasks like intel or supply gathering. You can increase their numbers by running the aforementioned jailbreak missions… but to my surprise, I found that some of those people can be Faceless spies in disguise and will siphon off your resources until they’re discovered meeting with their Advent handlers, at which point you have to lead a squad of base personnel to hunt them down. This mod goes deep down this and several other intriguing rabbit holes.
There are many, many more changes, including tweaks to research (and the ability to break down enemy corpses for resources), new Advanced Warfare Center skills that work similarly to Psionics training, and I’m sure quite a few more things in the late game I’m nowhere near discovering. This is, after all, a very long war.
You have to make use of various tools to keep your allies alive while also stopping the enemies. The highlights for me are the large scale battles with many enemies spawning from portals which you have to stop. Dragon quest heroes ps4 review.
Dan Stapleton is IGN's Reviews Editor. You can follow himon Twitterto hear gaming rants and lots of random Simpsons references.
If you would like to play test Long War 2 [WOTC], first: thank you! It's much appreciated.
The game needs a lot of play testing to discover issues that appear later in a campaign than just within the first month. We also need to find out how it interacts with the new WOTC features, like the Chosen. We're particularly interested in game-breaking bugs or major balance issues.
To get up and running, just follow these instructions:
Some behaviour, like overwatch, is the same as vanilla WOTC rather than Long War 2. That will probably change in the future, but don't be surprised at seeing vanilla-like behaviour in some scenarios.
Finally, have fun!
Note You can find previous versions of the mod here.
Reporting issues
You will encounter problems in the game. There are known ones already. If you would like to report an issue, please follow these steps:
Beginner strategy for Long War 2! This free mod for XCOM 2 increases the time, complexity, and difficulty of the XCOM 2 campaign. While it is an amazing mod, one of its downsides is that the new geoscape and other mechanics are not explained well enough. This article will be a quick primer of the information that every player should know before starting a Long War 2 campaign.
Before Starting Long War 2: Setup, Installation, Mods, Workshop
This article does assume that you have played the original X-COM 2 campaign and are fairly familiar with how X-COM 2 works in general. If you haven’t I would recommend playing through the original vanilla XCOM 2 campaign first.
Installing Long War 2 is thankfully much easier than the original Long War was. Simply go to the Steam Workshop, find the XCOM 2 section, then find the Long War 2 mod. Note that you do NOT want to download the mod pieces like the Long War 2 Alien Pack etc. Just click subscribe on the Long War 2 mod and then check your downloads tab to ensure it is also downloaded.
At this time you may also want to install some other mods that are compatible with Long War 2. I have written a separate article that sums up what mods you should really use and I have fully tested them with Long War 2 over dozens of hours. Read my recommended DayDull Recommended X-COM 2 Long War 2 Compatible Mod List Here.
More LW2 Articles with Specific Topics:Gathering Supplies at Resistance Havens
In Long War 2 you now gather supplies by recruiting members at resistance havens, then setting them to the “supply” task. Each day, the supplies gathered are added to your supply drop which occurs every 20 days.
When you look at a Haven in the world map you will see $X ($Y) next to the haven name. The first number ($X) is the amount of supplies you have banked so far in this supply drop period. The second number ($Y) is how much you should generate in that region by the end of this supply drop period.
You can also get a small and unreliable amount of supplies from mission rewards or by selling corpses and loot in the Black Market like in the original vanilla game. Remember that corpses and loot drops are needed for some research and engineering projects though so don’t sell them all.
“Unknown Source” Stealing Supplies – Spies, Infiltrators
This is probably the most confusing aspect of the game, but is pretty important to understand. Some people consider revealing information about this to be a spoiler to the game, but in my opinion it is so vital to your campaign’s success that you should know about it before starting. At random when you recruit a new member at any Haven, it may be an infiltrator. Each day when your supplies are calculated, the game looks to see if you have any hidden infiltrators present. If so, a percentage of the supplies you earned will be siphoned away. You won’t know how many supplies you’ve lost to this mechanic until the Supply Drop happens and there’s no way to know which members are infiltrators on the Geoscape world map.
How to Stop Losing Supplies and How to Reveal Faceless Infiltrators in Long War 2 (Resistance Spies)
Once you see that you’ve lost supplies to an “Unknown Source” in the supply drop, you know you have a Faceless Infiltrator in one or more of your havens. Unfortunately there is no real way to know which haven(s) this is happening in. In order to reveal and eliminate this infiltrator you have to station a soldier as an Advisor in your haven(s). Generally you will want a soldier advisor there most of the time in the early game anyway, since they also speed up the “Recruit” task and help fight on certain missions. Higher ranking soldiers are better at revealing infiltrators. Higher ranking Officers are even better, and Psionic soldiers are the best at revealing infiltrators.
When a soldier advisor is stationed, there is a small chance they will generate a mission over time where you interrupt a spy rendevous with the Advent. It may take 1 week or 2 months etc. depending on random chance and the soldier rank. The popup will be red and the description will clearly state that you are interrupting a spy meeting. If you accept that mission, you go in with your Soldier Advisor and a few of the resistance members. Note you don’t get to change loadouts before launching the mission. The enemies in this mission usually consist of 2 groups of enemies. Each “pod” will have 3-4 advent troopers, officers, or faceless, plus there will be 1-2 enemies that turn from civilians into faceless. Those are the infiltrators that you are there to kill.
During the Early Game You NEED to Focus on Liberating a Region!
After two long Long War 2 ironman campaigns, the one biggest thing I can recommend is that you focus immediately on Liberating a region. Not only does this advance the story and reveal the end-of-game timer, but more importantly you really need that reliable source of supplies. The Advent Strength slowly increases as the game time progresses which will make it harder and harder to liberate regions.
Ideally you want to be well on your way, possibly done liberating a region in May or June according to the in-game calendar. If you get to September or October without liberating a region it might just be too late!
Assign Resistance Members to Intel and Recruit in the Early game, NOT Supply!
This is kind of a trap. Early in the game you think that you need supply to recruit soldiers and start upgrades and facility construction. However what you really want to do is focus on intel gathering until you liberate a region. Recruiting will help you recruit some additional resistance members so that they can also be assigned to intel. You will still be generating some supplies by selling corpses and other loot. Also until you get higher ranked soldiers, you will be unlikely to be able to reveal faceless infiltrators so your resistance members on supply will be generating less anyway.
How to Liberate a Region in Long War 2
This is another problem with the current state of Long War 2. The process to liberate a region is super unclear, but is vital to a successful campaign. Not only that, but you need to do it early on, but might not even know that you should be prioritizing it or even that its a possibility.
In order to liberate a region (for example South Africa or East Asia) you need to first set resistance members to the “intel” task. Flying the Avenger to the region then scanning adds extra intel gathering and assigning a scientist as the Haven Advisor also increases the effectiveness of resistance members on the intel task. With more intel gathering you will see increased amounts of available missions popping up in that region and the mission expiration timers will often be longer. The result from changes in intel assignments seems to generally be delayed by a couple of days. Once your first haven has about 6 or 7 members I would set them all to intel, set a Scientist advisor, and scan with the Avenger at that location until you start the liberation mission chain.
On the Geoscape / world map, at the start of the game, you will probably see “Find a Lead” as your objective listed in the upper left. This isn’t really explained and is really pretty confusing–I really think they should add some explanation somewhere to clarify how this works to new players. Regardless, when you have your resistance members searching for intel, eventually you will see a mission pop up with only Intel (not an intel package) listed as the reward and in the description of the mission it will mention a lead. If you complete the objective of that mission successfully, you should be able to start the Liberation mission chain. Again this is not clear and is not explained in game much, but that’s what this article is for! Finding and completing this mission should be your number one priority in any new Long War 2 campaign!
The Liberation Mission Chain – How to Recognize each Mission
Update: I’ve written a separate, full article specifically focused on revealing, recognizing, and completing liberation missions: How to Identify Liberation Missions in Long War 2 XCOM 2
How to Recruit New Resistance Members at Havens in Long War 2
To recruit new members, set one or more members at the haven to the “recruit” task. Assigning a soldier as an advisor increases the speed or chance that you will recruit new members. Doing this also gives you a small chance to have a new soldier available for recruit in the Armory. Higher ranking soldiers recruit new members faster.
If you happen to be unlucky and all of the resistance at a haven are wiped out during a mission, you can still recruit new members by stationing a soldier as an advisor. However this will probably take a while to get your first new resistance member, like 2-4 weeks.
How Infiltrating and Intel Gathering Works In Long War 2
When you set resistance members to gather intel, they contribute to finding missions, and finding them with more time left on the mission expiration timer. Generally you will only want to accept missions that you can reach at least 100% infiltration on with 4-6 soldiers. This means the mission timer needs to be about 5-6 days at least. The more intel gathering you are doing, the more likely it is you will reveal a mission when it still has a high timer.
Baseline enemy activity tells you how many enemies you will encounter if you infiltrate to 100% (your infiltration time must be lower than the mission expiration timer). You can always boost infiltration by 75% whenever you want at the cost of 25 intel. This can let you do vital missions that otherwise would be extremely risky or impossible.
Only accept missions with Baseline Enemy Activity of Extremely Light or Very Light (In General)
This is a general concept, but generally only accept missions that you can infiltrate with 5-6 soldiers, reach 100% infiltration, and have a baseline enemy activity of Extremely Light or Very Light. To reach 100% infiltration with a decent squad, the mission will need to have around 6 days or more left on its expiration timer. However there will occasionally will be times where you break this rule.
If you are able to reach 125% infiltration, enemy activity will decrease by one level from the list above (e.g. “Light” to “Very Light.”) At 150% infiltration, it decreases by two levels, and at 200% it maxes out at 3 levels decreased. In actual practice it was generally good if I could reach 100 or 125% infiltration, with Extremely Light or Very Light enemy activity, and 5 or 6 fully equipped soldiers. If it met those criteria I would consider doing the mission if the rewards were good.
Bookmark and Get Familiar with the Infiltration Calculator
This is another big issue I have with Long War 2. There’s no reason that it should be necessary to use a separate calculator in order to properly play and use strategy in the game, but as of right now this tool is vital. The infiltration calculator, made by xwynns allows you to plan during squad select so that you can hit the desired infiltration percentage. Without this there is no real way to plan what soldiers and equipment to bring if you plan to use intel to boost infiltration speed. Hopefully the LW2 devs will update the mod so this is not necessary.
Here’s the link to the Google Doc version of the infiltration calculator. As mentioned there, once loaded, you need to go to File > Make a copy then save it to your account so that you can edit it.
Covert Missions – Avoiding Combat Altogether
Update: Long War 2 was updated to now have more numerous, but smaller patrols. Previous versions often had 4-5 enemies per “pod” but now you will more often see 2-3 enemies per pod. Full-stealth missions are now harder to pull off because there are more pods on (mostly) random patrol.
It is possible to stealth through some missions by remaining concealed until you reach your objective. Then, complete the objective (for example hack a workstation) and call the skyranger on the same turn. Play defensively using hunker down, smoke grenades, etc, until you can evac.
Depending on the timer and enemy activity, you may only realistically be able to infiltrate with 2-3 squad members in the time allowed before a mission expires. Normally would simply ignore those missions, but it is an option to try completing it with stealth. One strategy is to use your new squaddies for these high risk missions and bring mostly to Shinobi and Specialist classes.
Covert / Stealth Mission Tips in Long War 2
You can equip soldiers with SMGs so they can move farther. Bring a specialist so you can remotely hack or access the objective and be careful and avoid patrols.
Using this strategy its possible to successfully complete way more missions than you otherwise would be able to. Normally you have to commit a full squad of 5-8 soldiers for about one week in order to do a single mission. If you’re able to scrape through a mission with stealth you can complete a mission with only 3-4 members within 2-4 days.
Also important to know: in Long War 2, soldiers gain experience mostly by completing missions, NOT by getting kills. Kills do still grant some experience, but its much less than in the vanilla game. You also get an experience boost if you complete all objectives without any wounded soldiers. This allows you to get a huge experience boost in stealth missions without needing to kill any enemies.
You need to skip some (many) missions (often)!
Again this is not really explained in game. In previous XCOM games you generally took every mission that popped up unless things were going very badly for you. In Long War 2, you need to carefully consider if doing a mission is worth it to you.
In the early game your number one priority needs to be finding and completing the liberation missions for at least one region. You should be able to safely de-prioritize and avoid missions with only soldier recruits as a reward. During the early game they will be low level recruits and you should be able to just recruit enough new soldiers from the Armory.
Take only the highest priority missions with the best rewards. Early on you may really need an Engineer, Scientist, or Enemy Materiel (supplies, alloys etc). Around the middle of the campaign, intel as a reward becomes very important. Generally I find Soldier and Resistance Personnel rewards to be the least important and usually don’t take those missions.
Rethink Playing on Ironman for your First LW2 Campaign
I love Ironman in the XCOM games. I played both of my main Long War 2 campaigns in Ironman on Veteran difficulty (no reloading and the game saves automatically). I definitely feel like in XCOM 2 Ironman mode helps you get really attached to your soldiers and makes missions very tense.
However Long War 2 is very long. Too long to waste time on a doomed campaign, and the way the game works you may not know you are in a doomed campaign until 50+ hours in.
As a sidenote, most people will probably end up restarting LW2 at least once before completing a campaign. It just takes a few months of in game time to really understand the mechanics.
How Long Does a Long War 2 Campaign Last?
A full LW2 campaign will take about 100 hours to complete.
Based on my experience I would say you have until about late October or November in game before the game ends unless you complete some story objectives, raid facilities, or counter Dark Events that set back the Avatar project timer.
How To Play Long War 2 FreeConclusion
Any corrections or comments are very welcome! I’ve spent a lot of time with X-COM 2, Long War 2, and the other X-COM games and I’ve also done a lot of research. However I’m sure I have more to learn and there are other players out there with differing or better strategies so I’d love to hear them! Post in the comments below and I’ll answer any questions you might have.
In this subforum I will sticky some posts with some explanations of certain mods you can make to modify Long War to your ideal game. If you'd like to request how to change a feature, fire away here; if you don't get a response, you asked for something that's just too hard to do. And this forum isn't intended to be a modding tutorial; it's an explanation of new values and their effects.
![]() Also, in the miscellaneous files section of Long War is a text file with all the hex and localization changes for the mod, so go there if you are looking to incorporate certain Long War features into your own mod. Also, please don't make a bunch of changes to your mod and then complain to us that it's unbalanced. If you, say, lower your the required rest time for soldiers, your troops will level up faster and be more successful in combat. If that's fun for you, Great! But the values we are using we feel are balanced.
Edited by johnnylump, 09 October 2013 - 10:59 PM.
From the very first mission of The Long War 2, the stakes are different. 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. 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.
How To Play Long War 2 Movie
Mission one: eight soldiers, all with protective vests, frags and flashbangs. Tougher recruits for a tougher war. The fight for Earth isn’t just longer, it’s broader and more involved at every level. The Long War is available now and we’ve been in the thick of the right for the past few days.
As 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. 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. After a while, every dungeon starts to look a lot like the last one.
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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
That’s partly simply because more time is spent in combat than on the Geoscape or in the Avenger base. It might have a strategic five o’clock shadow, but XCOM 2 is a game primarily about tactical combat. That hasn’t changed here, and I didn’t expect a mod to rewrite the game’s structure entirely, but what has been added does enhance the sense of fighting a war rather than progressing through a series of missions.
Most meaningful among the changes is the ability to field several squads simultaneously. It’s a change that makes itself known throughout the entire game. Primarily, it’s a way to deal with several threats or opportunities at the same time, tearing up the binary approach that XCOM 2 originally took. If Advent are attacking civilians in West Africa and New Australia, you can send one squad to each location rather than choosing who should live and who should die.
Complications arise in that you don’t get a fleet of Skyrangers to zip your people around the map and you’ll need to take the Avenger to each location, dropping off the squad and then moving on to your next stop. That makes the actual base feel much more like a mobile thing that exists on a map rather than a cursor that you move to a place simply to activate the mission in that place.
When you drop a squad at a mission location, in most cases they no longer jump straight into combat. There’s an infiltration period, which is a smart thematic fit and one of The Long War’s biggest game-changing additions. The infiltration period is the time it takes for your soldiers to locate their target, while remaining hidden among the general population or out in the sticks. They’re doing all the cool secret agent stuff and preparing for the final objective and the escape that follows.
All of those timed missions feel much more fitting now that they’re explicitly the final moments of a week-long effort, involving subterfuge, espionage and commando take-downs. That you don’t get to see any of the former is understandable, and I would have liked some flavour text or occasional choices to make along the way, but when you have two squads out in the world, infiltrating Advent cities, there’s a splendid sense of urgency.
Infiltration isn’t just window-dressing though. Missions have an expiry date and when you arrive at the location, every change you make to your squad, from adding new members to changing their equipment, affects the time you’ll need to complete infiltration. If you can hit 100% before the expiry date, which forces you to either launch the mission or abort, then you’ll face weaker Advent forces. Anything less than 100% and they’ll be reinforced. You can spend Intel to boost the rate of infiltration but it mostly depends on the makeup of your squad.
Remember how the first mission gives you eight soldiers? You can send ten on the next if you reckon that’s the best way to get the job done. My favourite thing about The Long War 2 is that it makes me think about squad-building far more seriously than XCOM ever has before. Do I want to risk sending a rookie, in the hopes she’ll get those first kills and start her climb through the ranks? Should I risk all of my best soldiers on a single target or split them between all of my active squads? Would it be smart to send a Shinobi-only squad, just three, to attempt the kind of fast, sneaky surgical strike that a larger mob couldn’t manage?
Every soldier you add to a squad increases infiltration time, though some have abilities that lessen the impact. Giving them certain equipment also modifies the timing – suppressors are an early assist – so you’ll need to balance taking the best possible squad and ensuring you face the weakest enemy forces.
The multi-squad management and infiltration are the most significant changes to the Geoscape, or at least the most visible ones. You can also give basic instructions to civilians in the areas you’ve contacted and have some control over, using a simple menu that allocates them to gather intel, supplies or new recruits. It’s a little like a simplified version of the system in Jagged Alliance 2, right down to those folks appearing in missions that take place in the area. While the personnel management does allow for some level of control it really comes down to boosting the flow of resources when needed. There’s usually a correct way to adjust the settings, depending on your expenditure or discoveries that month, so it felt like one more plate to spin rather than the meaningful choices everywhere else in the mod.
And, thankfully, meaningful choices are Long War’s bread and butter. All of those decisions made during the infiltration phase pay off when you take control. All soldiers now have three slots for utility items but leaving one or all empty makes them more mobile. Immediately there is more to consider when building a squad and between turns in every mission. Flashbangs, frags and specialist equipment come into play far more often, not just through optional equipment but in the expanded skillset of every class (as well as the addition of a new class, Technical, which is halfway toward being a MEC trooper, with flames and rockets built into a single back-up weapon).
Each of the nine classes has a secondary weapon that is available at all times. If you’re wondering how we got to nine classes, there’s the brand new Technical class plus the three introduced in a previous mod from the Long War team. All of their mods are included in The Long War 2. The back-up weapons range from sawed-off shotguns for Rangers, which are devastating at close quarters but only have one shot per barrel, and a stun abililty for Assault troops. They all provide more options, informing how you engage with the enemy, how you improvise when things go wrong (more than ever, things will go wrong) and how you snatch victory from the jaws, claws and splash damage of defeat.
All of that along with new mission types and maps that, unless I’ve just been lucky with layouts, immediately feel larger and more varied completely refresh the tactical game. The opening mission ended with a shootout that levelled an entire church on my first attempt, and a sneaky, slick and effective suburban assault on the next. We didn’t take a scratch. My first attempt to break a group of civilians out of Advent cells in a city centre left me with a post-mission debrief that spoke of victory – every civilian saved! – and disaster – three soldiers left behind and captured. New Advent retaliation missions sometimes require evacuation rather than the simpler rescue missions seen previously, and there are chains of missions that have a lasting impact on the world map. Those, I will not spoil.
Everything is tied together by a more active Advent AI. On the Geoscape, Advent forces move to reinforce vulnerable areas in response to your actions, which adds another wrinkle to strategic decision-making. Sometimes attacking a weak spot isn’t worthwhile, particularly later in the game, because it might lead to heightened security in that region. On the flipside, Advent can be distracted, moving their pieces around the board to counter your actions and leaving themselves vulnerable where a blow against the Avatar Project can be effective in the long-term.
Stopping that project is still the goal and even in this extended campaign, the clock is ticking. The existence of new short-term targets keeps things interesting even when you don’t have end-game solutions in sight, and keeping XCOM running efficiently takes more time and energy than previously. The Long War matches its length with density, of choice and of action, and the increased difficulty challenges your skill and knowledge rather than your endurance.
The mod makes XCOM 2 feel new again. Tougher and smarter on every front. Even if the civilian management isn’t as interesting as I’d hoped, the greater tactical and strategic depth makes itself known immediately, and everything has been implemented intelligently within XCOM 2’s narrative and framework. New missions and tactical abilities fit with the resistance setting, and the ability to send in the kind of superheroic warriors that are typical of Firaxis’ take on the series while also occasionally relying on a mass of rookies makes every mission feel that little bit more unique.
A more reactive war on the Geoscape is a delight, but the soldiers are the heart of XCOM and they’re better and more varied than ever. From the very first mission, you’ll have rookies more capable than any you’ve seen before, and greater threats to counter them. By the mid-game you might have two Rangers with skillsets so different that they might as well be custom classes. In this Long War, the people are your most precious resource. Oh, and the robots too. If a new class and skills weren’t enough to make your squad stand out from the crowd, you can permanently steal Advent MECs now.
The Long War 2 mod is available now, from the Steam Workshop.
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |