XCOM 2 - Finished! Took around 210 game days, actual time... unknown since neither the game nor the PS4 has a game clock, WTF? I'd guess 40-50 hours.
In most ways it's an improvement over the first game:
-Much greater variety in mission objectives. Fewer missions are just "there are aliens somewhere on this map, kill them". There was enough variety that even later in the game I was still seeing some for the first time (didn't see "capture an enemy VIP" until over 2/3 in). The lategame FE-style defence mission is pretty great.
-Time limits are cool. One of the worst things about original XCOM is that the optimal strategy is to be super-slow and turtly so you trigger enemies only rarely and that when you do, you're ready to pounce on them either with an overwatch barrage or just the 4-6 remaining turns of your soldiers. Timed missions force you not to play this way, which is liberating. To be honest when the game had no time limits it often felt worse. To some extent this is arguably a band-aid to some bigger problems the game has, but still a welcome one.
-Classes feel more balanced, mostly that Heavy/Grenadier feels more useful. Grenades in general felt much more useful, partly because they don't destroy your spoils, partly because there's a better interface for using them, and partly because there are more upgrades for them. Support/Specialist's non-healer options were also more interesting, though they still ultimately feel like a healer first (but that's fine).
-Enemy variety feels better too? It's not a huge thing, but a few cases like Thin Man being replaced by Viper are a clear step up in terms of having interesting enemy types. Archons are neat and don't really have a XC1 equivalent, same with Shieldbearers. More melee enemies (with the distinct ways of defending against them) is fun. There are also more status effects, though that could be frustrating sometimes (especially Unconscious, which I could do without).
-The way the game handles reinforcements is great. You get a warning and then they appear at the end of your turn and can't act. More reinforcements at a bad time is tense, but very fair. More reinforcements at a good time is satisfying as you can set up an ambush.
-While the plot is still a thoroughly mediocre affair about some aliens whose motivations alternate between needlessly cryptic and moustache-twirling supervillainy, the concept of starting you off in a world where you lost the first war is probably the only interesting plot idea the writers have had across the two games, so props for that (of course I've seen gamers whine about this because "it undermines your achievements in the first game"; fuck gamer culture).
Anyway all that adds up to quite a lot. The game was certainly enjoyable, and even having finished it I immediately want to replay it, though it won't happen that soon as life doesn't leave me as much time for gaming as I'd like and I have plenty of other things I want to get to. That said, I do certainly have some problems with the game that are still holding it back from true greatness:
-Holy crap, the load times are just awful. If I was saved right before a battle (my norm), it would take nearly 5 minutes from powering up the console to getting into the battle, because loading the initial game, any save file, and a battle all take forever. Given my preference for playing games in smaller chunks (around an hour), this is a huge pain. XCOM 1 had bad load times too, but this is a step further. Are they this terrible on PC?
-Incredibly tiny text in some cases. In particular, the text that shows up to indicate what the reward for searching a site is (e.g. "Intel", "Alien Alloys", etc.) is freaking microscopic, but plenty of the rest is fairly bad too. This is just a pain in the ass to read; don't do it. Maybe it's okay if you have a 60" TV or a 20" monitor and I'm just too much of a casual for this shit. (I've had this problem with other western games too, as well as a few Japanese ones like Mana Khemia 2, but this is worse than normal.)
-RNG is still a bit too large of an element, since enemy damage is high and you kinda just have to count on cover working properly some times. On one memorable occasion one of my soldiers was just 2HKOed from long distance in high cover; basically nothing I can do about that! To be clear, good strategy is still far more important, and of course crucial to what makes XCOM so fun (important moment-to-moment decisions). But sometimes you can play perfectly and still get punished, and while that's kinda by design in XCOM, it's not much fun.
-"Avoid triggering more than one group of enemies at once" is still way, way, way too important. Nothing is worse than accidentally moving someone mid-combat to a place where they can (somehow) see new enemies, who immediately wake up and can take turns that enemy phase. These enemies would otherwise have just ignored the neighbouring firefight they can obviously hear, I guess. This is inane. It's somewhat a product of procedural map design, but at this point I think the biggest thing XCOM needs is more thoughtfully-crafted rates of enemy engagement.
-The game badly needed an "evacuate all" option when you have defeated all enemies and are in range of the evac point on certain maps; manually moving and evacuating 6-7 units (sometimes over multiple turns) is super-time-consuming for no reason.
-Actual good plot/character work would be nice, but hopes aren't high here.
XCOM 2 improved on enough things that I definitely have hopes for this series going forward. I've read enough people who share my complaints about the way enemies spawn to hope that maybe we'll get that one fixed too in the next game? A fun time regardless, I criticise because I love. Probably an 8/10.
Next up is Nier Automata. Proof to Snowfire that we actually own a PS4 will come after that.
