War of the Chosen has to be one of my real palpable "how have you not played this" moments in my adult life.

It harkens back to expansion packs of old. In which the fundamental gameplay changes are revisited and polished. I post this only to encourage anyone on the fence about purchasing said expansion to delve into it's radical changes. In todays blah-blah-climate-something-or-other DLC seems to have been pigeon holed into what is acceptable standards. Creating a more consumer focused "I just want more of what you've got" product. After playing War of the Chosen for several hours now, I couldn't help but feel empowered as to how the developer acknowledges XCOM 2's faults and proposes a more intimate soldier to soldier relationship, as well as providing more "general" control as to how your soldiers develop. It's a fantastic splash of paint on what was already an efficient means to an end. There is something particularly awesome in it's catering to specific hang ups I had on the original product. It takes even the most minor grievances with vanilla XCOM 2 and pressure cooks them to a more "approachable" home.

As much as this must read as a "gush" or whatever, my intent is to explain from one XCOM player to another, War of the Chosen is an expansion that feels out of time/and yet substantial and appropriate in every way.

And to make this not just a "Hey Listen" blog post or something, I'd most certainly appreciate someone else's perspective given the fact that I'm, in fact, in my own "bubble" of experience. It's really nice to write every now and then as well as read others opinions on something that makes enough of substantial impact to do so.

As corny or weird or whatever the fuck the internet could take this video as - it helped me write and express myself.

I fully agree. XCOM 2 was a mixed bag. It did make major improvements over XCOM, but also made some serious missteps. War of the Chosen removed the flaws and cranked everything else up to 11.

My only gripe is that I feel its poorly integrated into the story of XCOM2.

I advised my buddy to play vanilla XCOM 2 first for the story and then later War of the Chosen for the better gameplay.

XCOM 2 has been very significantly improved by War of the Chosen. So much so that I'd say the combined experience has become the THE definitive modern XCOM game, surpassing both Enemy Unkown and Within.

Absolutely agree. Gotta give a shoutout to the propaganda photos, really didn't think I'd end up spending so much time fucking around with it. Really, really dig how the collection of photos turn into a kind of scrapbook that documents all the highs and lows your crew goes through, effectively providing a visual narrative of your specific campaign. So good.

I was a massive fan of the xcom reboot but xcom 2 was so damn disappointing at launch. It had no controller support and it ran like garbage. War of the Chosen corrects most of the base game's sins and adds a bunch of personality and challenge. I never beat it but it's always on the back of my mind as something I need to go back to

I love XCOM 2 and WotC even more with all the improvements and challenge it adds. I beat both on the normal diff, and recently tried Commander mode on WotC and boy was it hard early on, so many loses. Your dudes get one-shotted routinely, and the infamous "rng fuckery" seems even more insane. Got demoralizing real quick. Still so good and so fun; if you haven't played it and are curious, certainly give it a go GB duders.

I've tried the WotC a while back but you get so many systems thrown at you at once with an hour of instruction videos and popup tips I got overwhelmed and burned out right away, plus those special War of The Chosen enemies that popup and wreck you first thing isn't really good for easing you into it.

I enjoyed vanilla a whole lot and think wotc improves it in every way. The only issue I have is it makes the previous dlcs damn near worthless, at least if you enjoy the story and mission aspect. I made the mistake of waiting to play it all at once to find out that you cant play the other dlc missions because of the gameplay tweaks. If you only want the weapons and mech unit its fine though.

Did you see this topic?

https://www.giantbomb.com/xcom-2/3030-49817/forums/war-of-the-chosen-is-out-impressions-1813701/#234

@mike: No I did not, but I have now! I'm extremely bad at perusing the specific board I'm posting on to check if someone else has created a similar thread. I actually don't know if that's common practice or not either. It's hard enough for me to get a thought out and feel comfortable posting it, so going through the previous threads to see if I'm being redundant or something is really outlandish for me. That thread is from 7 months ago too? Would it be the best use of my thoughts to "hide" them in someone else's thread from 7 months ago?

I don't know....I didn't see that topic. And now I have. Let me know if I should be doing that or not or something.

And thanks to everyone sharing their thoughts on War of the Chosen. I'm still getting the hang of the new mechanics, but it's really brought me back into XCOM in a fun way. I made some of my family members, trying to make some gruff soldiers out of them, and uploaded a video with "Upload Studio" on Xbox One. It's kind of a limited toolset and I'm still getting the hang of how I want to use it, but check it out!

@oursin_360: You can still play the missions, you just have to un-check the "integrate dlc" toggle when starting a new game. Then the actual story missions will appear in War of the Chosen just as they did in the base game.

In this case this topic would have been better suited as simply a reply to the existing discussion since there is really nothing new here, and now there are two essentially identical threads about the same thing. That thread is just as relevant today as it was six months ago, so in the interests of not splitting future discussion between two different topics I'm just going to close this one. This is why it's important to give the forum you're posting in a quick once-over to see if the thread you're about to create has been done before.

You can go ahead and post your thoughts on War of The Chosen there.

https://www.giantbomb.com/xcom-2/3030-49817/forums/war-of-the-chosen-is-out-impressions-1813701/#234