XCOM 2 War of the Chosen: X-COM Escalation

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen Title written in the center. On the cover on the left is the image of the Chosen Assassin with a open tooth sneer and on the right behind her the Chosen Warlock with a lower lip grumpy look on his face

XCOM 2 War of the Chosen, the expansion to XCOM 2 by Firaxis, takes the base game experience and adds numerous additions to the formula to create an experience that is better for the additions.

In writing this I will also be considering the additional DLC in the write up and provide the changes brought with this content.

The most immediate changes to the expansion is the addition of three additional factions, these faction are

Skirmishers - A group of Advent Deserters, that somehow find themselves disconnected from the alien's control. They are specialists in hit and run combat, who mix maneuverability, turn manipulation and close quarter combat into a great unit who can support your men in the field with ease.

Reapers - A survivalist group that focused in covert operations, stealth and long range combat. Their stealth ability makes them great scouts and they have great potential for burst damage in their kit.

A Reaper with their telltale full survivalist mask with the vektor rifle in a relaxed position with a expended canister that was dropped from the first war in the left corner

Templars - A remnant of the failed XCOM project, these units specialise in close-combat psionic warfare, the have great survivability and threat mitigation abilities. Psionic warrior monks who wield powerful abilities

A Templar who has formed their trademark psionic katar ready to strike

If one follows the tutorial one will be introduced to the first two faction character types and also be introduced to other major additions.These are the Lost and having to deal with one of the Chosen.

A group of Lost that have found a live target to attack

The Lost are the mutated remnants of humanity that were transformed from the initial biological onslaught that was unleashed upon earth during the first contact war. Individually they are not too much of a challenge, however they spawn in high numbers and will continue to spawn throughout a mission maintaining their presence. Excessively loud noises like those from a grenade or vehicle exploding agitate the swarm and causing these "zombies" to spawn in quicker and threatens to overwhelm a player through sheer numbers. Thankfully to this, if a soldier is able to kill a lost with a range based weapon it acts as a free action which one can use to your advantage to thin out their numbers before being swarmed by them.

The Chosen consists of three boss-type enemies that cannot be conveniently killed in combat and over time develop more strengths as they collect information on the location of the Avenger. Unless otherwise stated they usually have a specific and faction weakness a player can exploit to handle them easier and over the course of the game they visually change with additional "tiers" of equipment which show how they get stronger with new abilities and skills received gradually over time or with their successes.

The Chosen are the

Assassin - First chosen if doing the tutorial, is a mobile sneaky melee warrior

Their strengths is in remaining stealthy while they doing hit and run attacks with her melee weapon. She alternates between trying to go for a quick disable via her ranged melee attack if she can target multiple units or for her to melee rush and then running to hide attack. Of the three, she is most likely to take advantage of dazed soldiers for intelligence extraction just by means of her in-your-face combat style.

The Chosen Assassin with one hand on her Katana

Warlock - Psionic specialist akin to a High Priest

He prefers to hang back and summon explosive ghosts to harry the player until they close ranks and engage him in combat. His psionic potential is high as he can mind control multiple soldiers and can cause chaos in your ranks without psionic protection. His weapon of choice is an assault rifle which he will sometimes mix in with the barrage of psionic skill use.

The Chosen Warlock taking an arrogant stance and produces a ball of psionic energy in his one hand

Hunter - A witty long range combatant

Fighting the Hunter one needs to be constantly moving as he will constantly take potshots with his sniper rifle at your soldiers until you close the distance. When you do get within contact range, he will make liberal use of a grapple hook to position himself on to more a advantageous positions to take, preferably, flanking shots at your soldiers. He is not above using his pistol or a stun grenade to take advantage of it to interrogate your soldiers.

They each have a zone of control and when attempting missions in their territory, the player risks an engagement with which mixes up flow of the battle. When a Chosen is in the field mission timers pause once the player engages with them and on successfully defeating one the responsible soldier receives XCOM ability points. Another way to get rid of them is allowing a staggered soldier to be approached and risk either information being extracted or being kidnapped.

In regards to being kidnapped, soldiers who are downed but not killed have a chance to be imprisioned and either via spec ops or a random mission can one get a chance to rescue them from ADVENT incarceration.

Each Chosen has a segmented bar that represents their "knowledge" of XCOM. When they reach milestones they upgrade with additional skills and immunities with each level increasing the potential for them to interfere and cause harm to your XCOM operations. Once they reach their max knowledge ranking they have enough information to plan an attack to down and assault the Avenger. On a successful defence, their knowledge will drop a bar and it proceeds to climb again until they can repeat the attempt against the Avenger. Fortunately once they reach the last bar of knowledge they do not directly increase in power so the repeatable mission is more means of the Chosen trying to repeatedly capture the Commander and a way to push the player towards putting effort in removing the Chosen threat.

Other additions include 3 new ADVENT units, additional mission types, covert operations, faction reputation, system where soldiers can bond through combat, a propaganda poster creation, an addition of negative traits and a fatigue system and a research chance that randomly provides a major time reduction to a research topic.

A Skirmisher at the ready with his bullpup and tactical light on. To his left there is a poster of one of XCOM Resistance Members standing proudly with their hands at their sides with a alternating light blue and white pattern behind them on the poster

From these additions the soldier bonds and posters really add a ton of personality to the already colourful cast of characters the player throws into missions.

Soldier bonding opens up a lot of tactical flexibility with skills that allow a character to donate their turn to their bond mate, perform coordinated strikes, provide aim assistance and bonuses when sent on covert operations. One can even view bondmates spending time together on the Avenger when one decides to take a closer look at the various rooms between missions. There is a risk with bonding though and when one of the paired is downed, the surviving member can go into a mental state like berserk with mixed results, but it really adds to the personal narrative and is a great feature that enhances roleplay.

The new ADVENT units help shore up the enemy roster somewhat by shaking up the gameplay a bit with difficult to ignore enemies. Their abilities can be mitigated with the right approach but without that can be effective at "slowing" down XCOM.

Training Facility in picture with xcom personal engaging in combat simulations. The holographic display emulating a combat scenarios with resistance members taking cover and perparing to attack

Another addition is soldier combat intelligence which plays into the new Training Center added which deals with improving bonds and spending accumulated field mission points on unlocking more skills for a specific soldier. Completing mission, special Spec Op operations and performing exceptional manuevers awards points to a general XCOM pool with combat intelligence dictating how many additional personal points a soldier can earn from leveling up. One can create truly powerful soldiers through this, but is best reserved for those that you place special importance on as it can be expensive and time-consuming to customise more than a single elite team during a standard playthrough.

The poster system is great at providing the player to ability to make a living story with after mission posters that can capture the essence of the mission, an event and is big positive to enhance roleplay by providing a means to celebrate characters, a team or create generalised propaganda to make the world know XCOM is back. It adds value by increasing the means to let the player lose themselves in the game and helps let with making a personal narrative in one's campaign.

Other things introduced in the expansion include a fatigue system that forces the player to diversify their team options which plays into the introduction of traumas which add negative effects akin to PTSD when a soldier receives wounds, experiences battlefield mental breaks, being downed and rescued or surviving especially harrowing missions. A trauma can be treated once a medical facility is constructed and concerns for fatigue is controlled by utilizing a deep roster to allow soldiers time to rest, with the medical facility providing a one-time per soldier fatigue removal procedure for emergency situations.

The Covert Ops system play in tandem with the Chosen and Factions and offer a lot more freedom and power to pursue your goals. By fully utilizing the opportunities on offer, a player has far more room to complete the game and provides the means to send soldiers on missions to shore up areas that need attention and with each faction tier completed adds a new random faction-specific order that one can decide to activate at the beginning of a new month to use in your war against the aliens.

Faction bonus can be really powerful and can address a lot of negatives with the game with the most notable abilities having mission timers only start once discovered, additional 2 turns on mission timers, the ability to one-hit kill Lost, monthly reduction to the Avatar Project, covert op missions cannot be ambushed to orders increase the ability points one receives on level up. These orders are random and can overlap with region liberation bonuses, but do lot to remedy the game's shortfalls and provides incentive to try unlock it for a more controlled experience.

Each Faction, in conjuction with XCOM support, is also responsible with identifying and finding a way into their associated Chosen Stronghold with the highest tier of faction reputation allowing one to take on a one time assault to remove a Chosen permanently from the game. Failure in these assaults locks the Chosen in for the remainder of the campaign so one needs to consider their assault plans carefully.

Dark Events are also expanded on and can add permanent bonuses to the Chosen while some of the new events can really be a pain to deal with if they are not stopped in time. Covert ops can help mitigate some of these events activating but with the inclusion of the Chosen also playing a role in event roll-out has made it more likely to fire off and has made it something to be more vigilant towards.

There is more incentive to permanently remove a Chosen from play, besides removing their constant looming annoyances, and that is by being rewarded with their highly customised weapons. With the Chosen removed, it provides a lot of "win more" momentum but shouldn't be taken too lightly as the weapons cannot not be replicated and not being able to recover the corpse of a fallen comrade armed with it can lead to permanently losing it.

The Chosen Assassin, Jax- Il Khomain Nightmaiden, closing in on attempting an attack on the avenger. She performs a "Chosen Retribution, Western U.S." it says that they "INCOME DECREASED, Monthly income in this region has decreased by 18" the knowledge increased is at one quarter way full on the last bar. The message below the assassin says "A Chosen has clamped down on Resistance activities in this region, reducing the area's Supply income."

In regards to the DLCs, the most important for me is the Tactical Legacy Pack, followed by XCOM Reinforcement pack and finally the cosmetic Resistance Warrior pack - which is inconsequential and meshes best with the starting tier look of the soldiers. If one buys the complete edition it has some fun things to play with but one could probably find better cosmetic packs in mods.

Tactical Legacy Pack (I bought the XCOM 2 Collection when it was released for free so there is some bias in my enjoyment in this specific content)

I found that the music included alone is a great addition and complements the general gameplay extremely well.

The tongue and cheek extra missions do help pad out an XCOM 2 prequel of events before the game starts with a unreliable narrative provided by Bradford.

The 4 mini-campaign series, when not taken too seriously, provides a rough idea what XCOM was doing after it went to ground, it is in no way lore friendly and when taken with that sense of broken narrative does an good job of getting a basic idea of might have happened.

The other extra content is unlocked by complete the associated campaign with a specific score. The scoring is based off a bronze-man system where soldier loses and restarting deduct points from your total and completing objectives fast, killing enemies and rescuing targets increase your score. It isn't too bad once one figures out a strategy to complete the missions but I can understand how it can frustrate players but the rewards are thankfully not locked behind the high score milestones.

The rewards are of a cosmetic nature with player able to earn a single slightly better base version of weapons and armour variation based off the first games technology tier, a better base machete for rangers and a collection of "attitudes" and poster related improvements.

It unlocks the challenge archive for offline play with a large selection of missions to test one's skills and allows players to create their own missions via the Skirmish Mode

The XCOM Reinforcement pack consists of Shen's Last Gift, Alien Rulers and Anarchy's Children. It provides lore into what happened to the previous game's engineering (Shen) and research (Dr Valen) leads.

Shen's Last Gift, is a nice story pack, that if the player chooses to play, that tells of Shen's, from XCOM 1, research into robotics and by the end of it unlocks the means to produce SPARKs. These mechanical allies are powerful robotic soldiers with some powerful abilities and work in conjunction with a specialised BIT unit - which is like a giant gremlin. They serve a similar purpose to MEC suits from Enemy Within but do not feel as powerful as its predecessor.

Alien Rulers, I for one enjoyed what they brought to the game but, I understand if it is not for everyone. It introduces new boss types monsters and some unique equipment geared towards fighting them that came to light from the genetic meddling of XCOM 1's resident scientist lead Dr. Valen. The story mission helps delve into Valen's obsessions and shows the value of oversight as her extreme experiments produce 3 super variants of the standard aliens the player fights, these "monarchs" have the ability to react to the actions the player takes and has an enhanced set of abilities from their derived species. They also boast a high pool of hit points but are quick to retreat once one gets them to about one third of their hit points. Killing an Alien Ruler and performing an autopsy on its corpse rewards the player with a set of its skin as an armor piece. These sets have the passive effect to instill panic in its related species and usually comes with a bonus ability to use, personally I find the Archon King set aesthetically and ability wise as probably the best with its reposition ability.

The weapons introduced have novelty to it and are considered one of a kind, but do add a bit of spice to your character roster with each having unique abilities and do stand out on their own and at the very least can be used as fashion statement to deferenciate your favourite characters with their designs.

Anarchy's Children, is included, but besides a very specific look one wants to go for is not of anything of real value to the the pack

If one waits and buys the XCOM 2 Collection on a discount one can enjoy all the content without having to be too upset at the negative aspects of the DLC pricing to content value proposition.

In regards to the music, The War of the Chosen track is solid as it carries a lower more deliberate tone and serves the escalation well, however in my bias opinion, the Tactical Legacy music hits differently and suits the game incredibly well as it mixes the original X-COM UFO Defense music with a modern twist. It feels like a natural extention to the game while still paying homage to the original series and contrasts the epic serious like tone of the XCOM 2 and expansion soundtrack with a score whose variance and beat just feels better to listen and play to

The voice work is exceptional with all the new additions being performed by high quality actors and it is a joy to listen to, especially if one recognises who the voice actors are, especially with the new factions introduced although the voices do have the potential to wear on oneself, especially in the case of the Chosen, as their lines have a tendency to repeat themselves over a long enough period of play.

The Chosen are on display. From left to right, The Hunter looking somber, the warlock with their head raised with his standard look of superiority and the assassin with a dour look on her face

Overall, XCOM 2 War of the Chosen is a well made expansion that adds a lot of quality of life improvements into the game and allows more leeway to allow a player to address the content at their own pace while adding a lot of extras to play around with and enjoy. The Chosen are a mixed blessing as they do bring a nice dynamic into missions where some planning is required, but overstay their welcome if not dealt with eventually. The factions add powerful allies with equally powerful order abilities and when played with in the new systems can create absolute havoc against the aliens, whose new units shake up combat tactics a bit.

All the other systems and additional content add to the experience and makes the soldiers more personable and relatable. It makes the job of "bonding" with characters to role play easier than ever and allows one to create a personal XCOM 2 War of the Chosen experience and the introduction of the propaganda posters is a nice gesture to be able to look back and recount one's campaign through the storied history of the collective record of a creative media.