XCOM 2

In XCOM 2, the player-character is the commander of the XCOM military organization that is now reduced to a resistance force opposing the ongoing alien occupation of Earth. Played from a top-down perspective, the game uses turn-based tactics in which players issue commands to a squad of human soldiers to eliminate the aliens in a map and dependent on missions, complete secondary objectives. Many of the missions are timed, requiring players to complete it within several turns. Maps are procedurally generated to create a wide variety of levels.

Every map features different terrain and buildings in each playthrough. The game offers four difficulty settings: Rookie, Veteran, Commander and Legend.

XCOM 2 is set in 2035, 20 years after the events of XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM: Enemy Within, its expansion pack. XCOM proved incapable of resisting the alien threat and was betrayed by the council nations, who surrendered to the aliens shortly after the invasion began. Most of the XCOM members also submitted to alien rule but some, like Central Officer Bradford, refused the alien administration and went underground to operate as a resistance force. Earth is controlled by the aliens through the puppet ADVENT Administration. ADVENT has done much to improve public opinion of the aliens, especially by the propagation of the belief the aliens came in peace and that the forces of Earth retaliated aggressively and with prejudice.

The player assumes the role of the Commander, who had been placed in alien stasis so they could make use of their strategic thinking via a brain implant. After the Commander is rescued by Central Officer Bradford, XCOM launches an attack on an alien convoy and steals an elerium core used to power the Avenger, an alien supply barge that has been converted into XCOM's mobile base. On the Avenger, the Commander has the support of Dr. Richard Tygan, a rogue ADVENT scientist who replaces the missing Dr.

Firaxis Games, the developer of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and its creative director Jake Solomon returned to work on XCOM 2. The game's development time was shorter than that of Enemy Unknown. The developers inspected players' feedback from the 2012 reboot. As Enemy Unknown was considered to be a reboot for the series and was often compared to the original games in the 1990s, Solomon described XCOM 2's development as a more liberating experience than making the previous game because the team had amassed an audience already. Nonetheless, the developers drew on elements from the original games, including procedural generation and gameplay unpredictability, to XCOM 2.

According to Jake Solomon, the game's creative process is "gameplay driven". As a result, the setting was introduced after Firaxis changed the character classes and added stealth elements to the game. The team found the new setting is thematically suitable for the squad-based gameplay and that it enabled them to create new alien designs and reset the research options. Compared to Enemy Unknown, the writers spent more time writing the game's backstory.

XCOM 2 received "generally favorable" reviews, according to video game review aggregator platform Metacritic. Nic Rowen from Destructoid praised the game for building on the original and expanding the number of tactical options offered to players. He also liked the new enemies, which force players to rethink their tactics before they plan their attacks. Maxwell McGee from GamesRadar+ agreed, singling out the new soldier classes that enable players to use new strategies to defeat enemies.

The Guardian's Rich Stanton described the gameplay as "rewarding" because every turn may bring ramifications players need to consider. Writing for Polygon, Charlie Hall stated that he enjoyed the concealment system, which he felt that successfully adds new variations to the XCOM formula. Chris Bratt from Eurogamer agreed, calling the new system "satisfying". Ben Reeves from Game Informer called the gameplay "nerve-wracking" because of the game's intense difficulty; he lauded the balanced gameplay classes, which offer players gameplay options to outsmart the enemies.