The amount of content in this “DLC” definitely amounts to an Xcom 2.5 level of expansion.
Pre-ordered it as well.
Note: there has been a significant number of performance improvements made to the expansion (in addition to the content), which apparently will NOT be added to the base game. I think that was a bad decision to make in terms of PR, but I’m guessing if it hadn’t been made it’s possible War of the Chose would have a few less features, so I’m ok with the compromise.
Yeah, the reviews suggest it’s a huge expansion in line with what expansions used to be in the good old days, not just DLC. I’m tempted. But I’ve been thinking about doing a vanilla long war replay so I may do that and wait till the expansion is 50% off. Tempting.
From watching let’s plays by the lucky few who got it early, it adds roughly as much content as EW did for X-Com 1 : a whole new set of enemies/missions (including some scripted ones), 3 new XCOM classes, redone maps, reworked strategic layer with more things to do/choose/focus on…
They also toned down the alien rulers from a previous dlc, who were stupidly annoying/dangerous. Now they’ll act more like Avatars, only getting free activations when attacked rather than on EVERY LAST player action.
It seems I made a mistake by not keeping Steam on overnight. The game is now updating. Only about 3 hours and 45 minutes to download.
My internet is horrible where I live now. I still need another 12 hours!!
I’ve watched some preview video of the DLC and it looks great with some welcome changes.
Anyone here gotten to play it yet? Opinions? I realize it is an expansive DLC but $40 is pretty close to the cost of a completely new game. Seems pricey.
It pretty much is a new game.
We’ve gotten to used to the idea of DLC in modern times being just a little add-in that’s overpriced even at $10-15.
In the long long ago, games had proper expansions, things that significantly changed and added to the gameplay enough that it made them almost a different game or at least a very expanded version of the same game. And they’d sell for $30-40 and be worth it. It seems like this is a callback to that tradition.
Sigh. Still 7 hours to go. 
I miss fiber op internet so much. I’d be blasting aliens by now!
Here I was thinking nothing on the horizon looked good enough for the Steam Christmas sale.
I haven’t had much time to play, but I completed the first faction mission, which was fantastic. Loved the various objectives, and liked the “Lost” mechanic. Reapers are the shit.
The performance of the game is infinitely better from the base one too. Solid 60 FPS for me at all times and the load times! They are near instantaneous for me on an SSD. Good job on that front!
I played about two hours of the new expansion DLC, and while the mission load/unload times are indeed much better, I still experience some choppiness in the SkyRanger cut scenes.
I’m not positive but I think trying to run the evac all mod caused a crash.
Game has been crashing quite a lot more for me, even without mods. I think there’s a mem leak somewhere.
Reapers are, indeed, the shit. I only wish they (the devs) would have acknowledged what is clearly a STALKER reference with a little quote or somesuch. Maybe give them all Russian accents, or have Dragunova introduce herself with a “I said come in, don’t stand there !”
I’m still waiting on the DLC, as it’s about twelve extra days on PS4. (My computer simply cannot handle the game. I tried on Steam when it first came out.) I think they managed to fix most of the issues (although the loading times were still trending towards annoyingly long) of the base game on PS4, so hopefully this won’t be too bad.
On the plus side, once it finally becomes available I can probably have it downloaded in a couple of hours tops.
I didn’t feel like creating a new thread, so I thought I’d resurrect this one.
I recently bought XCOM 2 + XCOM War of the Chosen for the Xbox One. I managed to stagger my way through War of the Chosen on Veteran with a few false starts, some save scumming, and a bit of Googling.
My question is: Is it worth playing a vanilla XCOM 2 campaign? I started one (as one of my false starts) and I understand that Shen’s Gift and Alien Hunters have full plotlines that are skipped in WotC (even though the weapons, enemies etc. are available).
You can enable the full storylines for Shen’s Last Gift and Alien Hunters in a WotC campaign. It’s one of the campaign setup options.
I tried doing it, but it didn’t seem to allow me to tick off the boxes. I’m not sure if there’s a trick I was missing, though.
EDIT: A quick Google shows that there’s another box I needed to untick first.
My question still remains: is it worth playing the vanilla version now that I have done War of the Chosen?
I’d say it’s worth playing the original game before the expansion pack, but not after. The experiences are different enough to enjoy both, but the expansion adds a bunch of stuff that would feel like they’re missing in the original game and it wouldn’t be as fun to play after you’ve become accustomed to them.
Thanks for the suggestion. Would you say War of the Chosen is easier (because of Reaper scouts, faction orders, covert ops, etc.) or harder (Chosen attacks, the Lost, fatigue, etc.)?