On the August 29th episode of the Bombcast there was some pretty harsh criticism of Xcom 2 from Jeff and Brad.

I haven't play the game since I beat it around launch (hoping to get the expansion soon), but I thought it was a great follow up to the first game. It had some weird performance issues (I remember long load times), and they still didn't fix some of the camera issues from the first game, but I don't remember much else that I would consider really bad.

Am I already looking at this game with rose tinted glasses?

It's buggy as hell, and the difficulty can feel unfair, well beyond any other xcom, and I played the original pc game.

I just picked it up again after giving up on it. Based off what I've read of the expansion is that the game is dramatically better after the dlc.

I think it's the type of game they went really hot and heavy on with Enemy Unknown and it seem to me like they had their fill. They couldn't really muster any enthusiasm for Enemy Within and XC2 and given the limited PC exclusivity, they also ran into bugs they didn't have the time to sit and wait for to get fixed. But with Mario + Rabbids, they back on that train.

I think that the biggest reason that folks didn't like it, beyond the obvious technical issues, is that it doesn't distinguish itself significantly from XCOM 1 unless you have played A LOT of that game, enough to see flaws in the basic design like the overwatch creep issue and that sort of thing. If you come to it after just one playthrough or so, it seems like just a harder version of the base game with a few cosmetic improvements and a bunch of bugs. The expansion helps enormously with creating a sense of change.

Also, AndyC80, have you played Terror from the Deep? Cuz talk about unfair...

I didn't play it when it was first released. It is still a bit buggy but so far it seems fine with me. Beyond that, and with the xpac [which I only bought it since the xpac came out recently] I really really like it :)

I may have to start over on easy though XD I am making progress but the game is too stressful for me on the standard difficulty XD!!! Even though I think I would eventually win

Yeah XCOM 2's bug situation was (and sorta still is) not great, but I definitely enjoyed my time with it more than a lot of the crew here.

@reasonableman: I have! Also brutal, I had about the same level of success that I had with xcom 2. I'm honestly considering buying the 40$ expansion even though I have overall rejected xcom 2

They got some of the worst of the bugs. And Dan who reviewed it was notably bad at the first game as was mentioned by his previous coworkers, also played Xcom2 on easy while still struggling, wasn't all that enthusiastic about the new stuff. As the only other person who played it was Jeff at the same time and place as Dan, the staffs opinions tend to converge. (at least these days with two offices we get more diverse viewpoints).

This is also the situation where the the staff is just not themselves into this genre of game generally speaking. A lot of the impetus for enthusiasm of 2012 game came from sources that are no longer there.

When the main source of opinion is a person inept at the game it should perhaps be taken with a healthy dose of salt. Or at least taken into the account if it is applicable to your own gaming preferences. (no offense to Dan he is plenty adept at other genres I dislike or am not good at either)

Finally visually and most importantly mechanically speaking Xcom2 is a very clear improvement over the 2012 release in just about every way. Both games had some technical issues at launch.

Base game XCOM 2 runs like crap and the early game has a lot of cheap bullshit in it unless you already know what to do and probably still had to get lucky to survive. The expansion really fleshed it out into a complete game so you're not just being slowly worn down by all the unfun aspects of it.

I can see the bugs at launch souring peoples opinion especially given the increased difficulty, but they never bothered me that much. I think xcom 2 is all around a better game but it definitely had issues, seems most are fixed now and the expansion seems to run even better.

I just bought Xcom 2 for xbox one and it runs great, no bugs so far, 20 or so hrs. in, and I like it much more than Xcom EU, which I played to completion. Looking forward to the WotC DLC if they ever get it sorted for console(preloads caused the vanilla game to crash at title screen apparently). There's definitely a learning curve, but it's been a very pleasant surprise for me. Can barely pull it out of the box to install Destiny 2.

I largely agree with them. Though I wouldn't remotely consider it a bad game it doesn't capitalize on all the things that made the original reboot so great. My experience was really inconsistent on top of all the tech issues I had. It was disappointing to me when it came out.

I'm playing it again with the new DLC and loving it so far. This might be an unpopular opinion but I think this is what the game should have been when it launched. WoTC recaptures my love for the series in a way the base game did not.

I personally didn't enjoy XCOM 2 when i played and finished it at launch. Performance was poor and it was buggy as hell, and i really hated the Avatar project's constant nagging and countdown mechanic.

That said i bought War of the Chosen maybe 4 days ago or so and i have already played 25 hours and i'm having a hard time putting it down once i start it. I like the new aspects of it, and outside of a stupid progression bug i got during the tutorial it's been smooth sailing for me.

That said the game is still hard on you sometimes, and there will be some missions where you feel like throwing the nearest person you can find through a wall. But over all i think the experience is much better now and worth playing even if you have played or finished the vanilla version.

One of the first few missions for me was a rescue mission. In order to clear it in the time limit, I had to constantly rush as much as possible. Doing that meant that I managed to clear the mission with no turns left. This in turn means that major deciding factor for successful mission was the out come of all those 53% shots. You basically had to do everything right AND get lucky. I don't know how Xcom 2 fudges the % numbers but that seems like bit of a bullshit for beginning missions. Few easy missions after that, I get a mission with a snake dude(tte?), bunch of those kind-of-sectoids and 2 walking tanks - all with that strict turn time limit. This was before I had a chance to develop any weapon or armor tech. Oh and the skulljack thing...

I think Xcom 2 front-loaded the difficulty bit too much for the most people. This is common problem with most Xcom games as almost all of them start hard but get way easier (and offer way more tactical options) towards the end game. Also at the beginning the game does really good job of confusing you about the geoscape gameplay. These things combined with various technical issues - it is no wonder why people got bummed out by this game.

I have not encountered any bugs or hitches yet in War of the Chosen and the loading is almost instant on my SSD. It seems they smoothed out a lot with the expansion.

I'll take their word on the game being a technical mess at launch. I played it months after release and it was still pretty janky sometimes (mostly harmless, with a couple of crashes and weird bugs here and there.) However, from a gameplay perspective I think even vanilla XCOM 2 is a step above Enemy Unknown on most levels and I think War of the Chosen improves upon that even more.

That said, it's worth mentioning that none of the Giant Bomb staff are all that into turn-based tactics stuff, and to some extent I think their enjoyment of Enemy Unknown had a lot to do with the context of its release, namely the part where 2012 was one of the weakest years for video games in recent memory. Then you throw in that XCOM 2 very much doubles down on some of the more challenging aspects with stuff like mission timers to force the player out of "overwatch and creep" strategies and throwing some pretty nasty enemies at the player out of the starting gate. I'm kinda into how ridiculous and borderline unfair that stuff can sometimes be, but I also fully acknowledge that I'm a lunatic who plays these sorts of games on a regular basis.

It's less surprising they don't like XCOM 2 than it was that they did like Enemy Unknown. This isn't a genre I'd consider to typically be in their wheelhouse, and some of the biggest fans of the 2012 game are no longer at Giant Bomb.

I think @chaser324 put it very well.

For me, I appreciate the simpler approach of EU/EW. In fact, because of my comp situation, I am playing both XCOM and XCOM2 simultaneously. My personal experience with both was that they were technically ROUGH at launch. I can't say I had a better or worse experience with either personally. Both games suffered far more in the late game than early game as well, simply due to the number of enemies and allies running around I assume.

Originally, I felt like XCOM had a better campaign flow than XCOM2. I think WotC equalizes things by reducing the Avatar Countdown Nag. But, still a world of difference. There just is not anywhere near as much going on in the first one. I think for a lot of people who loved XCOM as a "not usually my genre, but" will then be put off by the additions of the sequel. The original is just a simpler, cleaner experience.

However.

In WotC you can make posters and that is some next level shit. GOTY.

My only complaints with XCOM 2 were the bugs, which were pretty severe at launch. I literally got a migraine in the last mission because the graphics rendering freaked out and strobed random colors for more than 10 minutes.

That said, I think XCOM 2 is a huge improvement over Enemy Unknown in both the strategic and tactical layers. They really did a great job identifying and addressing the weaknesses in the previous game's design. WOTC further improves the game, though it can be overwhelming enough that I wouldn't recommend it to a new player.

@arbitrarywater: @reasonableman: I never understood why players felt pushed toward the "overwatch creep" playstyle. The games tell you overwatch has a flat aim penalty (though they do hide the -30% figure from you), and that it's only intended as a last-ditch option for when you're out of position with no good shots.

I would guess it`s because how groups of enemies are triggered (which, while I like them a lot, might be the thing I hate the most about these new games) which can make you paranoid of being caught in a bad position, so they slowly turtle across the map instead, so that it`s impossible for the enemies to really ambush you.

It did come across as harsh. The biggest gripe I had were the load times were incredibly long.

But it sounds like they had a completely rotten time with it, particularly from a technical standpoint.. Shame, because it's basically more/different EU. The differences are mostly welcome, and the ones that aren't (time limits) aren't as bad as I felt they'd be going in.

Well... Have you ever tried the Overwatch Creep style?

It's extremely successful. Doing an EW Ironman mode run right now. Very heavy on creeping :D

The truth is you can easily kite or aggro enemies into an overwatch killroom of doom and that's why Overwatch can ultimately feel OP, not the creeping aspect, but the retreating aspect. Send your first soldier out far. He triggers the enemies. Bring him back with the second movement. Overwatch everyone. Enemies die. Getting stuck in a firefight? Just back up out of the enemies view. Again, overwatch everyone. They will have to come after you. Obviously, once you are surrounded this no longer works the same way. But, yeah. The "creeping wave of overwatch" is not a bad way to play, tactically, based on the games rules, especially at the beginning of missions.

This reminds me of the biggest improvement from XCOM 1 to 2, which is that in the original the Overwatch shortcut was just assigned to a damned random ass number, basically, for each soldier. Sniper? OW is 2. Assault? OW is 3. Support? OW is 5. They standardized it to 2 for all soldiers in the sequel. A genius addition.

Oh and I forgot to say I did think their tone was a bit harsh. Not wrong, just a little too saucy to speak to me.

I thought it was much better that XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The ever-increasing load times were the only negative in my mind. I didn't find the game any more buggy than it's predecessor.

I think another great thing about xcom 2 is the mod support. There were some good mods for unknown but 2 was kinda built for them. Voice packs, ui, armor, and gameplay balance mods all make the vanilla game even better. Its like strategy skyrim lol.

I've been playing the Vita version a lot recently, and it totally has gameplay tips on the loading screens saying you should overwatch a lot. I'm not sure how different that version is from regular PC + Enemy Within (the camera certainly behaves a bit differently from what I played of the original PC release), but there's a tip basically saying that "if you get low hit percentages, just overwatch and hope that the enemies move closer in the next turn", which kinda comes across as the opposite of saying there's a major aim penalty. I can totally see why they've been wary of taking 45% shots in the Exquisite Corps series if they've gotten those tool tips.

yeah- every time i hear the gang mention xcom 2 i'm routinely at odds with their take. the bugs are indisputable- but there were so many clever gameplay refinements that FAR outweighed any annoyances caused by bugs or glitches. i think @chaser324 has it generally right, though. maybe it's more of a right place/right time thing that got the gang into the first xcom anyway.

The GB forums have been a great place to talk XCOM 2 over its lifespan, at launch and now with WotC. It's too bad GB has just said "it's broken" and then not talked about it. I really know there were big issues for some people but it got better and the game besides that is so great. I have seen and heard from plenty of people who manage to run the game just fine. It's annoying how they talk about it like it's BF 4 levels of broken.

but

This.

I am a big strategy and RPG fan. I don't expect that coverage on GB (the Austin period aside). Mostly they say stuff I disagree with when they happen to dip into the genres. It's fine, but Chaser is right that XCOM 1 was a blip on this site. It wont GOTY because they got into it, and it was strange that they did. The sad thing to say as well as that the game's biggest champion for sure was Ryan.

I think they can get into XCOM 2 but if they don't it isn't surprising. 2's not perfect in the strategy layer, but way better than 1, which was so shallow and limited in much of any interesting decisions. 2 got more complex and deep in combat (with missions that force you to make more hard decisions and be more aggressive) and for some people they actively don't want that to be something that happens. If it's up to me, I want it to be deep as possible. I like to play an XCOM campaign that takes like 60+ hours. On GB, the guys are basically shocked when anyone plays any game for more than 60 hours. So it's just a different mindset and tastes and I think you shouldn't reasonably expect it.

Like @oursin_360 says, the modding is also great for 2. I have loved it. Deserves mention and credit to the devs.

@geraltitude That's weird because it's totally wrong though. Half cover is only good for +20 defence, whereas overwatch is -30 aim. You're statistically better off taking the shot on your turn than you are shooting at the alien under overwatch as he darts into the open. 10% better off, all things being equal. It's also why I get really annoyed if I have to overwatch a shotgun user, because they don't wait for an enemy to close in for a better hit chance, they shoot as soon as the enemy are in the open, several tiles further away than necessary.

Edit: I kinda get what they're trying to say with the tooltip, though. If you have bad percentages then you are out of position, and if they move closer it'll hopefully be easier to flank next turn. That's the real key to better hit rates, though. Flanking. The closer you are to flanking the higher your chances.

I think that I could see where they are coming from. XCOM is known for its unforgiving nature and when the player realizes that he is being punished for mistakes he didn't make it could ruin the whole experience.

Ryan was the big Xcom reboot fan on the site, and he's no longer with us. I think that has a lot to do with it. The game also had insane bugs, still does, and ran like hot trash, which is kinda still does. The game itself is much better than Enemy Unknown, that much is certain. It was just hard to get past the myriad technical issues.

I played a LOT of EU and EW and I couldn't get into XCOM 2 when it came out. There's something about about it that isn't as appealing, be it the the more drab color pallete, the enemy designs, the overuse of missions with timers, or the significantly tougher difficulty curve (as far as I can tell normal on 2 feels harder than EU/EW on hard). Add in the fact that it was in a very rough state at launch and was pc only (after making a big deal that accessibility and got significant traction in the console space), well I can't say I'm surprised it got a cooler reception. While it is true that the Giant Bomb crew don't play many strategy games, that was the case of pretty much every video game video outlet I follow. For whatever reason it didn't hook as many people as the first one did.

Incidentally I picked up XCOM 2 again and I'm enjoying it more this time around, but boy is it tossing me around. I've only played with Ironman on EW for a long time now, but save scumming is the only way I think I'm going to get past the story missions at this point. Does the new expansion make the early game difficulty curve less severe? I was going to keep playing vanilla for awhile before getting any dlc, but might get wotc sooner if it makes the difficulty curve more gradual on the front end.

BOTH games were rough on the technical side at launch. XCOM2, for me, was not as buggy and the worst I had were some long load times. The staff's opinion on XCOM 1+2 is pretty much meaningless to me. Watch Dan play XCOM 2 on easy for a quicklook. I think they even try to give reviews to people familiar with games, so they picked Dan. XCOM 2 (especially the new expansion) are AWESOME if you played XCOM 1 for as long as I did. Like people said, if you went through the campaign once on easy or normal then XCOM 2 may seem overwhelming or too difficult, but those changes were 100% necessary. XCOM 1 was stale and after a while, a solved problem. One build order, one path through the tech tree, etc. This is simply not possible in XCOM 2, less so now with the expansion.

It's simply not a genre with universal appeal. I get that. XCOM 1 winning GOTY was as much a consequence of that being a weak year for games in general as it was being a game of that genre with exquisite presentation. Remember, most tactical games use portraits, sprites and other unanimated elements so seeing a game like XCOM present as it did was really cool. It definitely got my roommate at the time (100% a Madden / Call of Duty type of gamer) to dig in and enjoy. XCOM 2 may have had some technical issues (like I said, I had minor or no issues and I bought it at launch), but is so much a better game it's insane.

@thewildcard: If anything I'd say that the early game in War of the Chosen is even more demanding then vanilla Xcom2. There are way more factors that can screw you up. On the tactical layer there are a few new nasty enemies, more diverse set of objectives and of course the titular Chosen that can really mess you up if you're not careful if they appear at an inopportune time.

But the biggest demand on the player is definitely on the strategic layer. Your soldiers get fatigued so require a much deeper roster, they level slower, can get negative traits; rewards from regular missions in terms of scientists/engineers have been toned down to be quite rare; you need to build at least one new extra room (that is super important) early on that is one less base space you can use, that costs power and upkeep and staff; not only does the Avatar clock rise but now the Chosen also start growing in power as soon as you encounter them and can sabotage your shit; most importantly where in vanilla Xcom2 you were not punished super hard for taking your time expanding, now you very much are because the Chosen can start decreasing income from zones, if you procrastinate and try to do too much other stuff you can even notice your income start going down not up. Intel is a real boy currency now that is frequently more in demand then supply, because it has even more uses. Research is not quite a straight thing anymore either, you need to decide whether to take advantage of opportunities or loose them and if you just take them all then get ready for a much slower research pace.

You are given new tools to handle these new situations (the aforementioned new structure) via the resistance ops that are pretty much the heart and soul of the new strategic layer. And yes you can do a lot of them, but you always have more to do then you have the time to do those things in, so the game requires you to make more strategic judgement calls then before, so more opportunity for fucking up. With 400+ hours in Xcom2 the new WotC playthrough was the first time I have ever personally seen the Avatar timer actually start the final doom clock in my game.

The early game even if someone personally thinks not as hard is unarguably more demanding of the players attention. There are more ways it can punish you and more ways it can reward you and there are more actual decisions to make.

As you progress and get a handle on things there is definite power creep and your gear and your dudes become even more powerful then in the base game over time, in some cases ridiculously so. But that is later down the road.

I was pretty dissapointed to XCOM 2 after playing through it on launch. Never touched it again before the expansion. It has been compeletely amazing with the expansion. On a gameplay and technical level. I was a bit worried that it would be too much for me since I'm not as hardcore but I think it just stikes the perfect balance on every way.

I liked XCOM 2 a lot, but the expansion is awesome.

@tennmuerti: Aw bummer, guess I'll just have to git gud. I did get past the first black site mission on veteran difficulty for the first time last night so that progress I guess.

XCOM 2 is a buggy mess, and it's maybe the simplest format of game to not make buggy; the first game had problems too. What's the odds of Disgaea or whatever having significant game shaping bugs in them? Like who gives a fuck about XCOM graphics, just make them worse or re-do the engine until the game isn't fucking buggy anymore. I want to play XCOM 2 but I just know that it'll piss me off too much just purely on the technical level; as someone who doesn't care about graphics or framerate much at all. That's just bad all around.

@fredchuckdave: i think its pretty unfair to say an ai driven strategy game with loads of in game physics is the easiest type of game to program.

And they have patched the game since launch and the expansion runs very well. I dont even think the gsme was all that buggy, it just wasn't well optimized at launch and had performance issues on weaker hardware.

Firaxis games have been launching with serious bugs for some time now. That does not do them any favors. XCOM 2 had some seriously frustrating bugs at release and the mission timers were at times way too harsh even for experienced players. I don't like turtling in XCOM, but this felt like an extreme too much in another direction, often forcing you to recklessly rush without having an inkling of an idea if you'll make it in time to the objective. But like other said, WotC is great and they've made a lot of improvements. They don't rely on mission timers nearly as much, there's more depth and variety, and plenty of bugs have been ironed out (still encountered some, but nothing game breaking). It also runs way better and the load times are like night and day compared with vanilla. I think they should give it a second chance for sure.

Appreciate everyone's comments. It seems like I might have lucked out because I didn't experience many bugs or performance issues. It also helps that I would constantly have camera bugs in Enemy Unknown/Within and didn't get many in Xcom2.

@andyc80: "More [difficult] than any other XCOM"? Well, shit. I don't feel nearly as bad save scumming my way through this game, as I am doing currently.

Still real fun, although I'm somewhat frightened while waiting for the other foot to drop and the game to announce "yeah, I know you got like, nearly ten hours in this save right now and you just got magnetic weapons and medium armor and you're super happy about that, but... not enough comm towers. Sorry. Start from scratch, good luck." Still unsure if that happens, whether it will ruin my attempts to finish it or spur me on harder, because it IS really fun.

That said, I will never begrudge anyone for disliking a game due to bugs and terrible first impression, which it seems like XCOM 2 did deliver, at least to Dan and most of the crew. I didn't whine when they criticized Fallout 4 for this - but then that was a game I also was kind of lukewarm on. So, I'd be a pretty huge hypocrite if I decided the "bug complaint" was inconsequential in this case just because I really like the game. Besides, I have the benefit of playing the console version WELL after launch, presumably after the bigger bugs were weeded out. I can barely stand the idea of getting a corrupt save file or a reload necessary bug and having to do A FIGHT over again. Never mind the poor souls who did Ironmans and lost their one save, tens of hours in. As much as I love it so far, I have to say that at least in the technical department, XCOM 2 got the criticism it deserved.

Yeah, I was supremely disappointed by what I played of XCOM2. It ran like shit on my PC, I found a lot of the challenge to be unfair and really frustrating, especially the new tactical world map stuff, and it didn't seem like a big enough step up from XCOM Enemy Unknown, which I loved. I keep thinking about giving XCOM2 another go, because of how much I adored the first one, and because I only played 8 hours of it, a lot of which was restarting campaigns after 2-3 hours because of one really bad mission. It's possible that I'm in a different place in my life than I was when EU came out, and I'm less willing to sink my teeth into such a brutally difficult game - I also wan't that keen on Massive Chalice, but I played a bit more of that than I did of XCOM2.

I also really hated the little bit of Civ 6 that I played, so Firaxis and I aren't on good terms right now. Civ 5 is probably top ten all-time for me, and EU was my second favourite game of 2012, but Beyond Earth was a bummer, and both '16 releases were really disappointing. I don't buy a lot of games at launch now, usually only games from developers I have a good track record with, and I wish I hadn't bought XCOM2 or Civ 6 at launch, that's for sure.

I feel like Dan didn't start off as too harsh outside of the technical issues but over time his opinion became more in line with what Jeff expressed...

I don't buy this at all but I see how more seasoned strategy players share this opinion. EU was a success because of how accessible it was. EU isn't an anomaly and Giant Bomb definitely wasn't the only site that praised the game. It showed up on many a GOTY year lists; PC Gamer, GameSpot, IGN, Kotaku, etc. Speaking to how welcoming it was to newcomers of the genre.

To not acknowledge that is to not realize what that game did so well and what the second game failed to capitalize on. The easy to pick hard master tried and true formula is what the original reboot was able to balance so well. Xcom 2 leans more towards the veterans of the genre which isn't a bad thing but it leaves the more "casual" players banging their head against things that they were not primed for given the original reboot's slow and thoughtful introduction to its elements.

I don't see it as a time and place thing at all. It could have come out at any time (made with that certain times context in mind) and it would have done just as well.

haha, that is exactly the experience of "Shotgun On Overwatch" - damn it! just wait until he is closer! The scenario that I am thinking of though, is how reveal triggers work. Enemies will act twice. Once when triggered (they move into first position), then again as they take their turn (may move/attack). If you are overwatched you can kill them after the trigger and before they take their first turn. So for sure I agree, when the aliens are all revealed, there are many options much better than overwatch. But, when we talk about "Creeping Overwatch" style, that usually is applied only until the reveal trigger.

This was how the turn timers were used as counter balance. They didn't want you slowly creeping up the map just killing everything once it was triggered, not even giving the aliens a chance. Definitely there is a lot to say about your squad and level of enemies etc so on for this to work, but, yeah.

It's interesting to consider the original X-com approach to this, which was allowing the enemies to shoot you before they are revealed, rather than having the "trigger" movement give them potentially significant position advantage.

I think XCOM (remake) is very much a time and place thing, but I do agree with much of this post still. A huge majority of those publications you listed were excited about this game due to its console-facing PR. Turn-based tactical combat on console has history, but not much at the mainstream level, and not much from western devs. X-com had also come off a bit of a scare (people had seen the shitty cancelled 3rd person shooter) and were beyond relieved when the Firaxis version was announced. So I think XCOM was poised to surprise people and my feeling was very much that it drew in a lot of people who traditionally didn't play this genre. I had *at least* 4-5 friends where this was exactly the case. I think EU is maybe more of an anomaly than you want to give it credit for! That said, I can definitely agree with you that XCOM2 didn't do enough to capitalize on the success of its predecessor. In fact, it seemed to me that it willfully didn't want to.

It was very telling that from the start of the XCOM2 project they wanted to face PC. I have no data to prove this but my feeling is that retention on consoles was extremely low compared to what they expected. On top of that, Firaxis has been an Expansion House for years. EW, I assume, did very bad on console compared to EU. I always thought that with XCOM2 they had to sort of "admit" their base was on PC. Why else plan for that so loudly? Clearly they wanted to avoid the console-facing PR and image association. Interesting questions that Jake Solomon will probably never answer.

I'm just not seeing the time and place argument. Xcom (reboot) was successful because it was accessible and welcoming to new players. Yes, console focus was a part of that but the game itself, ethos and all struck a chord with people that wouldn't look twice at the game if it looked something like, I don't know, Halo Wars. I don't think 2012 was a year where people had a sudden thirst for a good turn based strategy game and Xcom filled that void. I see it more as A well-made game came out and was particularly good at fostering players unfamiliar with the genre. People got something they were surprised by like you mentioned and enjoyed it more because of that. I don't think it would be any less surprising if it came out any other year.

@geraltitude: I never understood why aliens get a free move when you trigger them. If the devs were worried about wiping the aliens out before they ever get to move, why did they add the ambush-concealment mechanic in Xcom 2? Personally, I also wondered why the the aliens didn't just "hunker down" or slide into the very closest piece of cover. Giving them a full free move makes it very easy to trigger a pod that then gets to sprint into flanking positions and still shoot. Making the move non-free would work, too. (As in, the aliens only have 1 AP on their next turn after triggering).

@fatalbanana: Comparing Enemy Unknown to PUBG isn't a very good fit because I think most of PUBG's initial breakout has to do with Twitch and Let's Play personalities. Certainly PUBG sustains itself on network effect and addicting gameplay, but it's discovery was very much a right place, right time thing. There have been tons of battle royale modes and mods before PUBG. EU didn't need any of that to break out, and was basically an unknown genre from Western devs at that time.

GBWest's interests have narrowed over the years and they weren't that wide at the best of times. I second that their reaction to XCOM 1 was more suprising than XCOM 2.