I guess Long War 2 came out a couple weeks back, maybe a month, I dunno. A friend has been playing it and going on about it, so I figured, what the hell, right?

Holy. Crap.

This... this is the game I wanted to play that I didn't know I could have. Okay, yes, it can be stupidly difficult if, like me, you assume it's just like XCOM 2 and dive right in, following the same-old same-old tactics as before. Nope. Don't do that.

And yes, it's got some rough edges peeking out here and there. Having tried my hand at modding the XCOM 2 engine myself, I can tell you that some of them are limitations of the system that can't be worked around -- like the relatively clunky UI for handling post-mission soldier reviews and promotions; the scene model files were never designed to allow for more than 8 actors at once and I at least never managed to find a way to get the engine to recognize when I'd inserted more.

But that aside? This feels a lot more ... intense. Yeah. That's the right word.

You can deploy multiple squads on missions at the same time. While they're deploying and getting into position (infiltrating, as it's called), you can move the mobile HQ around and do Other Stuff on the world map. Then, when ready, you jump into the mission with the squad and do the things. That alone makes it feel a lot more like you're in charge of a global resistance instead of just clicking on a screen waiting for the next scripted mission to pop up.

Enemies are smarter and tougher. Cover matters much more (for both sides). You start with ARMOR, which actually behaves like armor in that if you get shot and it only damages your armor, you don't wind up Gravely Wounded in sickbay for a month from a light scratch on your knee. There are new classes which I haven't got into yet but look fun.

I'm rambling.

Look, I just finished a mission where my mostly-rookie squad went in to hack a workstation and recover some intel. Which is straightforward enough! But things went a bit pear-shaped, as they do, and I ended up pinned down, trading fire with a batch of ADVENT troopers at the other end of an alley. They called in reinforcements. Through luck, a bit of tactical flanking on my part, and liberal use of explosives, I beat the second group as well.

More reinforcements. Things were looking bad. I was out of boom, everyone was down at least their armor, some more wounded than that. And the aliens just would not stop coming. When would this mission end? I'd finished the objectives! I hacked the workstation, I killed all the ADVENT scum, how many more waves were they gonna drop on me?!

Then I realized... I'm doing this wrong. My job was to get the intel and evac, not get the intel and kill everything in sight.

I had to suffer through a few more turns of intense firefight, because calling in the Skyranger for a pickup isn't instantaneous anymore, but in the end I was able to escape and sit back and...

... holy crap, I haven't been that absorbed in a game in a really, really long time.

Is anyone else in these parts playing this mod?

--sofaspud
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