The free weekend on Xbox has come to a close. After about four days I'm still not entirely sold. Oh, I enjoyed it for the most part, but there was a lot to be desired.

Not only does it seem more difficult (substantially so), it may be a little too dense, at least from my limited play time. There seems like a lot more to do, a lot more to keep an eye on, spinning more plates.

It also seems like you miss a lot more and the enemies are more accurate.

Sectoids are the worst. Not only do they seriously fuck your shit up with psi powers and reanimating corpses, but you seem to have a lower percentage to hit than with most other enemies.

Advent Stun Lancers can and do move across seemingly the entire map and miss rarely. I know it's analogous to the Ranger, but they're still bastards.

I was able to get the mag weapon upgrades, which helped. Once I further upgrade my gear, that will help more, so will mods on the PC.

Does it get easier? More manageable?

This game gets easier as you progress, some would say too easy. In my first playthrough of the vanilla campaign way back when XCOM 2 first came out, I was steamrolling everything with ease by the end of the game. You'll get better at it as you figure out how things work, too. A Legend Ironman playthrough with no deaths is definitely possible if that puts things in perspective.

@mike: Good to know Mike, thanks. Also, with The Avatar Project, are you able to keep pushing that back (almost) indefinitely? Or does that also become a fairly non-issue?

Psi-capable enemies are easily dealt with using flashbangs. If there is a Sectoid who is mind controlling or reanimating someone, just flashbang it and all the effects will be canceled and it will be pretty much helpless for a couple of turns. Flashbangs are just great in general, especially in early game.

Dunno about indefinitely, but the Avatar Project is absolutely manageable. Just need to prioritize the expansion of radio coverage of the planet and contacting resistance cells so that when a sabotage mission pops up you can directly execute it, instead of having to wait.

Also build your workshops in the center column, middle 2 rows so you get optimal gremlin coverage.

There's definitely a huge difficulty curve in the beginning but as you gain access to better soldiers and equipment the game gets much more manageable. I was pretty stressed about the Avatar Project timer for quite a while but once you know what you're doing it's actually very easy to delay the timer. If you're having trouble with the difficulty you can always bump it down to Rookie, no judging here because I did too.

With regards to the Avatar Project, War of the Chosen has an option you can select that substantially slows down the timer if you want to take your time in the campaign.

I am really loving the aesthetics though. Weapons and armor and outfits, animations, character customization, increased number of locales, weather, time of day, and on and on. Not to mention it feels like they increased the number of times you go into "cinematic mode", for better or worse.

Definitely going to see if the whole shebang is on a Winter special somewhere. If I can get it for a song, why not. Maybe a Humble Bundle.

The way to think about sectoids reanimating corpses is that it is not just a completely useless unscary ability it is actually detrimental to the enemy, essentially for all intents and purposes that sectoid might as well be passing it's turn, whenever the enemy does that my first thought is "nice they aren't shooting me" and next turn you can just kill the sectoid and the corpse will die.

It's definitely harder than the first game by far, but also much more rewarding when you figure it out. You do end up being over powered by the end, but same thing happened in the first game.

It's definitely hard at first, but that is because you're dealing with that fact that you're in a uphill battle with the aliens. As you get better soldiers and tech, the game gets a bit more manageable. Keep in mind that the aliens get more advanced units as much as you do as the game advances.

the base game in xcom 2 was .. ok.. (which in my book was a downer because the first game was great.)

That said, with the xpac, the game is amazing!!! (ie, don't write the game off till you play it with the addon)

As you research and equip better gear and weapons on your soldiers, the game gets progressively easier. Watch for recruits with high will and aim too. Train them into Rangers, Specialists, and Heavies, all of which are essential on every mission.

The avatar countdown was slowed down in WotC. Of course you have to deal with the Chosen, and they are tough(you get Templars! :-), but I found it a relief to not have to worry about the timer so much like in vanilla.

I like XCOM 2 a lot more than the first game. The game looks so much better and all the customizations are a blast...plus photo mode is a sweet addition. Yeah, it's hard and intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it and how to manage all those spinning plates, it gets very fun and oh so addictive. Sure has been for me. And I highly recommend the WotC add on. The base game is cheap now as well.

I actually found it to be easier than Enemy Unknown. That could partially be due to me getting older since I was 18 when Enemy Unkown came out. Also, I switched to PC which allowed me to access a lot more strategy games than I had previously played on consoles so maybe that extra playtime helped as well.

@gunflame88 said:

This bears repeating. Flashbangs also prevent Stun Lancers from melee attacking the turn after they've been flashed.