XCOM® 2

5 out of 6 missions have forced mechanics (limited turns) to rush the game instead of enjoying your gameplay. It does NOT make game harder or more challenging or smarter- it just forces you to constantly save and reload. Poor design, lazy approach. If you hated these "rush" missions in the first XCom- don't buy this game, you will be disappointed. I know I am.

There is good, satisfying difficulty, in which a game rewards you for playing well and making good decisions, and punishes you for bad decisions in a way that is correlational to your in-game actions. And then there is bad, frustrating difficulty, in which a game punishes you with hidden random calculations that may or may not reflect anything about your in-game actions, and rewards you for playing well and making good decisions with hidden random calculations that punish you anyway. If you were playing a game of chess, and every time you captured a piece you had to roll a die to see if you actually captured it, or if instead you lose your own piece, would that make the game more difficult? absolutely. Would it make the game more fun or rewarding to play? Ehhhhh..... This game feels like that. When I do well, sure, I did some things "right", but I never felt like I was accomplishing things more than feeling like the game was allowing me to accomplish things. Consequently it didn't feel "challenging" to me, it just felt frustrating. Oh I missed that mind controlling alien that had no health left and a 95% hit chance? Twice? While flanking it and using strong cover? And then on its turn it takes over one of my guys who then instantly kills off a third of my remaining team with a completely unlikely hit? Well I guess I just need to be better. I have no problems with a game being overly punishing. I love me some stupidly difficult games from time to time. But punishments should have a sense of internal logic and consistency to them. If not, then I'm not actually playing a game, because I have no idea what the rules of the game are. And the developers are on record as saying that many of the numbers shown for chance of success and failure in the game are intentionally not accurate. They did it this way because they wanted to force players to experience specific feelings in certain situations. That's not playing a game. That's getting played by manipulation.

Do you enjoy deadlines and stress? Do you dream of becoming the protagonist of The Groundhog Day? Then you might like this game. There is some kind of a time limit in almost every aspect of the game. It is not apparent in which order you should do strategic things like research and facility building. Then the game proceeds to punish you with increasing difficulty in case you did not make something in time, setting you up for even more failure in the future. The only options seem to be starting over again or suffering through. The turn based missions are not any better. Re-loading a saved game does not change the outcome of dice rolls (not in your favour, at least) - only doing actions in a different order does. And then, when you have replayed your turn(s) so many times you eventually figured it out, an enemy one-shots you into full cover and you can start over. I get deadlines, stress and frustration at my job. But I can at least make steady progress for my invested time and I get paid. This game feels worse than my job and I even have to pay for it? I am sorry, I play games to relax and enjoy myself. What good is packing a game full of gigabytes of cut scenes, when you can't even beat the original Microprose UFO: The Enemy Unknown in entertainment value?

Buying Xcom 2 on GOG means accepting an inferior product with a higher price and things missing. Lets start with what is missing if you buy all the GOG Xcom 2 game & dlc versus steam. 1/ The official soundtrack (OGG & WAV) 2/ The manual 3/ The Xcom 2 & War of the chosen development kits 4/ The build it mod launcher 5/ No MAC & Linux support 6/ No daily challenges 7/ No 32 bit support This is in additional to ALL multiplayer support being removed INCLUDING Online multiplayer AND LAN Multiplayer even the daily challenge mode has been remove though there are some in the challenge archives available. To install mods it means making manual changes to files without the launcher being present as the GOG version is currently incompatible with the fan made alternatives. If you want to play the vanilla game, never touch mods, play challenges, or multiplayer, care about the soundtrack, don't care about linux or MAC support as that isn't present, don't care about the 32 bit version of the game and are happier with paying more just to own it on GOG, maybe think about GOG

I was a HIGE fan of the first game and couldn't wait for the sequel. The second game proved to be amazing for a few levels until I noticed one issue...every level has a set time limit that requires you to rush at full pace nearly the entire time. I spent more time worrying about how many turns I had left than I did enjoying the game. Sadly, I ditched my CD after that and it was lost while moving. If they included an option to simply turn this feature off, I wouldn't think twice about buying again. As it is, 94% off still isn't enough to make me pull the trigger and buy it again.