And you can get it from the workshop here.

In case you did not know, a small team of modders created Long War for Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within, which vastly overhauled the campaign. It made it less forgiving and harder, but also more interesting in some respects (less so in others). It was widely accepted as an 'unofficial expansion' for the game.

The guys who called themselves Long War Studios at the time have since started doing more projects and renamed to Pavonis Interactive, becoming an indie studio that is actually working on their own unique game at the moment. They were also announced to be modding XCOM 2 before the game was even out. They have since released several mods for the game:

• Alien Pack; which adds several new alien and ADVENT enemy types to the game. In traditional Long War sense, all very powerful (but ultimately fair).
• SMG Pack; which simply adds the SMG weapon type, sacrificing damage over increasing a soldiers movement range.
• Leader Pack; which allowed the Guerrilla Tactics School to be upgraded to train Leaders. One Leader could go on any given mission at a time and had their own unique perk tree along with the perks from their class proper.
• Laser and Coil Pack; which added Laser weapons into the game, which could be researched after Magnetic Weapons (and after Elerium was researched) and at the same time pushed Beam weapons a bit further down the tree.
• Perk Pack; which added 8 new classes and over 70% (I made that percentage up purely as an estimated guess based on my usage of it) new perks among them.
• Toolbox; which added a few Second Wave options and made the game support more than 6 soldiers natively, letting you alter it on the fly in the options as well as some minor quality of life tweaks with regards to weapon/soldier/item swapping and such.

Now, while these mods were cool (I use most of them), XCOM 2 is actually a lot easier to mod than Enemy Unknown was. As such, the marketplace is flooded with great mods already. I even made one myself. The community is still very active and while Pavonis' mod style certainly has a lick of quality that most others don't, they also have not been my favorite mods for XCOM 2 so far, which is not incredibly surprising as I find their sense of balancing a little off from my own interpretation of it. Nevertheless, the fact I play with most of their mods proves I like them.

Now, they have released the full on Long War 2 which is a total conversion overhaul of the game. It will be tricky to get it to work for people like me because it converts the game... totally. Meaning it can and will conflict with other mods. As to no one's surprise though, PC Gamer was able to play it early and calls it essential for long time XCOM players. From what I've seen of it so far it seems really neat and adds various layers of depth in almost all area's in a pretty cool way.

If you have any interest in XCOM 2 at all, you should probably check it out. Note that all the DLC they have made previously is already in Long War 2 so you should not have those mods active separately while playing Long War 2.

You should also play Shen's Last Gift and Alien Hunters if you consider yourself an XCOM player. Both are great DLC, though if you did not play them already, perhaps it's not for you anyway since they only add some things into the regular XCOM 2 campaign.

Holy shit, that was fast from announcement. Couldn't be happier to play Xcom 2 again with this.

Maybe it's time to get back into Xcom2. I bounced of it pretty hard despite really looking forward to it before launch it just felt like it cheated far too much. I know Long War is supposed to be hard but hopefully it feels more fair.

This reminds me that I have to play XCOM 2.

Hopefully the last mission has 500 aliens instead of 200.

Work could not be going slower today knowing this is waiting for me this evening.

@picky_bugger: From my experience with Long War so far (5 missions in) I would not recommend it. It is a lot harder (and in my opinion stupidly so in certain cases) than vanilla. I'm used to playing on Legend, I play this on Commander because I know Long War enough to not even try Legend immediately, and I have to fully admit I'm still not down with their way of balance.

For example, they increased defense on cover again like they did with the first mod, and made Not Created Equally (random starting stats for Rookies) mandatory. Which means I am having 15-25% chance to hit against an enemy in partial cover. They also gave grenades the same treatment as before, meaning whether or not they destroy cover is entirely random. Coupled with the fact that flanking is often not possible (and only yields 30-60% chance to hit if you manage to), it makes every fight pretty drawn out. You're basically taking pot-shots at enemies and cross your fingers RNG is in your favor.

To be fair, a lot of people really like their style of balance. But I don't think this is the best way to experience XCOM 2 for the first time. It's pretty inaccessible.

@zevvion: Hmm maybe I'll give it a miss then. It was never the hardness of the game per se more it just felt very unfair, like the game was cheating constantly. Is this the same with Long War then?

Didn't expect it to show up already. Nice to see.

That's rad. The first one was great and kept me playing long after i would have put the first game down. Thanks for the heads up!

@picky_bugger: No, but I also don't really feel like vanilla is cheating. Maybe if you tell me what you disliked about it so much, I would be able to tell you if that's the case in LW2.

Man i love xcom2, so many great mods

here is total biscuits video which might help you decide if this mod is for you

This is as good a place as any to mention that XCOM 2 is $12 with Humble Monthly (the cost of one month's subscription). You can cancel your subscription at any time and keep the games you received. The other games in this month's bundle haven't yet been revealed, but even without them, $12 is the lowest price for this game by at least $15. Incredible deal!

@zevvion: It's been so long since I played that I can't really remember specifically. I'll give it another go just normal and see how I go.

I never tried the mod for the first game. This mod looks good in some ways but I don't think I like others much. Thanks for the info and the TB video is interesting. I think I have to give it a shot myself and see what I think.

Game was hard enough for me to begin with, actually failed my first play through and never finished my second(just got fatigued after 100hrs through 2 campaigns)

I still need to load this up and mod out some of the mission timers to the point where I'd actually want to play it. Backlist is so long though!

Same, but this game is awesome. May have to jump back in now.

Considering Enemy Unknown was GB's GOTY, it's kinda baffling how much XCOM 2 was overlooked by the staff this year considering it's a better game in almost every way.

Best part about this is watching Northernlion play it incompetently.

I think it's super cool that the team behind this has been given official support to make the sequel to the mod that put them on the map, not to mention using this stuff as a springboard into making their own games. That said... I tried out The Long War mod for Enemy Within just long enough to know that it wasn't my cup of tea. I'm not opposed to some sadism in my tactics games; it's part of why I like XCOM in the first place. But for whatever reason, TLW was a little too "2 hardcore 4 u, stupid casual" with some of its mechanical changes, like how I had to steady my soldiers' aim to make their shots even remotely accurate. I'm sure there's an audience for that stuff, but I'm not part of it.

@zevvion: @picky_bugger: Vanilla XCOM 2 does cheat pervasively, but it cheats for the player, not against the player.

You should get True Concealment. It changes concealment so that the timer does not start until you break concealment. This makes narrative sense and effectively adds ~3 turns of time to each mission since that is when you usually break concealment. Additionally, I've actually done rescue missions where I stealthily moved around the map, secured the extraction zone, then went for the VIP and it only took 2 turns to extract after concealment was broken. It's fun. They also have a mod which reduces the number of turns available to compensate, but I'm guessing you don't want that.

Alternatively, you can use Configurable Mission Timers to set a specific turn timer you have in mind per mission type, randomise the timer or disable them completely.

@fredchuckdave I like watching Marbozir.

That is exactly how I feel about it. Not that it doesn't have flaws but I also think it's better in every way and the additions are pretty big too. Very underrated game.

@artisanbreads: That's because Dan reviewed it and sucked at it. No one else really plays tactical games.

Yeah I agree on the tactical game thing. None of them really like them except seemingly random ones every so often. Also Ryan Davis was the big XCOM 1 fan at GB.

@artisanbreads: Ya he was, god rest him :)

Yeah, this probably isn't my type of mod yet again. Everything takes sooooooo loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong to do. Even a single mission can take an hour or more of your time. I guess it's called Long War for a reason, but I'm not enjoying that part of it at all.

Don't get me started on that. I guess they are just not into these types of games though, even if you go back to listen to older podcasts about EU, you can tell they aren't into the core of the game as much. They said they had no interest in the DLC, had no interest to do a second run, had no interest to play Enemy Within and so on. Seemed like a lightning strike for them; once, never again.

These all sound like good options! I just get flustered when there's mission timers and never play well.

I might... be done with it. I really, really, really love XCOM 2 to the point where I can literally play it for 5 hours straight. The past 5 hours I've been booting up and shutting down LW2 several times. I just get too bored with it. Everything just takes so damn long and them doubling down on pressure in missions is not fun. When facing 'Extremely Light' opposition that is 'Vulnerable' on top of that, you still face 15 enemies that are all patrolling exactly around your objective. You have 8 turns to get it. Guess what? With how drawn out firefights are in this it's literally impossible to kill all 15 dudes before that timer runs out. Which means you have to try and get it while still in concealment. You know what's not particularly great to add to XCOM? A high emphasis on the stealth mechanic. The stealth mechanic is fantastic for taking some stress of the early turns and allowing you to set up your first attack. It's really not great for having to use it beyond that and trying to score an objective, then high tail it out of there.

I'm not having any fun trying to be stealthy in this game, but you have to. And that is the majority of the missions so far (8 hours in or so). I edited the thing to make the timers near infinite, but it seems they have accounted for that. They spawn in reinforcements progressively more numerous as turns go on. You get 4-5 guys every two-three turns passed a certain point, and then they straight up spawn enemies onto the map it seems like (without the reinforcement ship flying in) 8-10 at a time. I eventually got overrun to the point I just extracted without getting the objective. Clearly, I wasn't supposed to engage with the combat to that extend on that mission. Well, I have no desire to do this stealth crap every time.

For what it's worth, the mod is not hard at all beyond that. They just artificially handicap your chances to hit so it just draws the fight out tremendously. But I did find it a lot easier than vanilla, I just can't be bothered to engage with it in the way they want me to.

I really had an amazing time with EU, but something about the general structure of EW just made me iffy on it. I got fairly far into it, to the point where I started to mod up my soldiers with genetics and mech stuff, but it felt like that extra layer of complication over the core game just added a fair amount of cruft over the core game that was reductive more than it was additive.

I was looking forward to XCOM2, but the apparent emphasis on mission timers and the notorious state of the PC launch definitely put me off of it when it launched. Timers in either real-time or turn-based games just make me anxious, and not in the fun, tense way that they're intended. Maybe I'll get around to it at some point, though.

@rorie: I understand. I had a lot of fun with it myself, but I admit the fun I had grew when I installed True Concealment. I would recommend that one because it still makes timers a thing, but they are effectively to be exploited because they don't start until you break concealment. You can take your time to set up and/or get close to the objective. When I approached it as a normal mission without a timer I still have 4 turns or so left usually and when I try to sneak to the objective I can have as many as 10 turns left.

If that stuff really makes you anxious though, you may want consider just turning it off altogether. I mean, as I discovered with LW2 right now, there is no shame in tweaking something if you're not enjoying it. Firaxis also specifically made this easy to tweak for that reason.

@rorie: I like the strategy part of the game more than the first one for sure but it still is flawed. For me this game is challenging for a bit but became a push over with top level soldiers. I still really enjoy it though.

Personally, I really like this type of game and especially when it actually does get more complicated so I get why not everyone is on board. For me it is an improvement in a lot of ways that feel bigger than XCOM in a way I appreciated. The first game was simpler and in some ways even more simple because there were no brainer ways to set up your soldiers (pretty much one side of every soldier's skill tree was far superior).

The destruction is a great example of something that adds a lot for me in 2. That hadn't really been done like this since Silent Storm, an old game in this genre that's really great. Having rockets and grenades be really useful and cool is something that adds a lot and made me feel that there were a lot of interesting choices you could make in this game.

The timers I worked around fine but it made the game kind of puzzly and I don't really like the design decision either. I may try the mod @zevvion mentioned when I finally do my second play through soon. I may not go with Long War and instead just pick and choose different quality mods out there.

i think vanilla XCOM is plenty for me. not a game/series that needs to be made harder. but this is cool, and maybe when i get to the level that i appreciate it more i might try it out myself.

It really sucks that the long war 2 mod does not have controller support. XCOM 2 received controller support a few months on PC so this is really disappointing. The developer of this mod even stated that they have "no plan" to include controller support in the future. I find this very odd, especially considering the fact that I'm playing the XCOM Enemy Within Long War mod on my PC right now with a controller.

@demonsoul: Little bit different. EW had native controller support. XCOM 2 did not when they made this mod. Simply speaking, EW's Long War mod would have controller support whether they built it in or not and for XCOM 2 they would have to mod it in to work. At the end of the day, they are still just a mod team. Which means you more or less have to take what they give you. Can't really complain they didn't do enough work or anything.

@ripelivejam You know what? I'm the only person in the world that looks at LW2 with unbiased eyes. Everyone calls it 'far superior tactically' and 'way more challenging' but it's not. I find it easier so far. You just have to understand their mindset. You can't approach it the same way you do vanilla. But people mistake it being hard because they expect they can do every single mission. You can't. The mod expects you to recognize an overwhelming force and just either not bother to begin with, or extract and abort the mission in a timely fashion. Yes, fighting 25 enemies at once is indeed extremely hard. You're not supposed to do that though. If you see that, just get out.

Yes, you might fail the campaign. But it's a lot more RNG based than even vanilla is. In vanilla the RNG is there to never make you feel comfortable and completely safe. You can always get killed. In LW2, it's more that RNG even dictates if you can finish a mission or not. I find that part not as fun, but hey, to be fair this isn't my type of mod.

I decided I will finish it though. I love XCOM 2 too much to not play the most anticipated and hyped mod to the end.

Aw man, no controller support? That's a huge bummer since I loved the mod in EW. Now I'll probably never check it out. Oh well, I still haven't beat the regular XCOM 2 campaign but I plan on fixing that soon

@mems1224: The game is just as playable with KB/M though. It's not slower or more difficult to control.

@zevvion: yea, I just don't like playing on a kB/m. It's just personal preference and I actively avoid it when I can.

@mems1224: I'm in the same boat as you. I enjoy both XCOM 1 EU/EW/LW more with a controller.......just my personal preference. I didn't even play XCOM 2 until they patched in controller support, which I'm extremely grateful that Firaxis listened to their fans and implemented it. I tried the steam controller and hated it. I'm grateful they released this mod, I just wish they would include controller support. No big deal if they don't..........I'll just pass on it.

@demonsoul: @mems1224: I get both of you as I played EW with a controller all the way. But when XCOM 2 came out without support I had to play it without it and I have to tell you, after an hour or so I didn't miss it at all. Even when it has controller support now, I still play without it.

XCOM 2 has official controller support since November I think. You can use a XBox One controller, don't know about 360 controllers though.

@jay_ray: Think you didn't entirely read what he said, he knows. But Long War 2 does not have controller support.

@zevvion: Awe, gotcha. It was my missunderstanding

@rorie: There's a mod named "True Concealment" that means that the timer starts when you break stealth, but you have all of the time in the world to plan your attack. It seems like a nice middle ground that still lets the game put heat on the player, but not to the point of being overbearing. There's a version for Long War 2, too.