Instead of just passively waiting while a globe spins until a new mission is spat out at you, you traverse the globe in a stolen alien spaceship, actually accomplishing tasks while waiting on those missions. XCOM 2 is a complicated game, which is what you want from the strategy genre. My fourth playthrough, armed with the knowledge that I both needed to quickly upgrade my weapons, my armor, AND be able to contact specific resistance groups to attack alien facilities, finally succeeded. ‘I’ll field two or three squads, keep them rotating, and I’ll be. ‘This is fine,’ I thought, confident I had figured out the trick. My weapons did a bit more damage, and my armor gave my soldiers enough of a boost that they were coming home Gravely Wounded as opposed to dead. Focusing my efforts there required making contact with as many resistance groups as I could very quickly, and the plan succeeded. My third playthrough had me focus on getting my weapons and armor at least to the upgrade, to give my soldiers more damage and let them survive just a little bit longer.

Weapons and armor,’ the thought continued. In true XCOM fashion, potential hits at the upper end of the percentage scale missed when I really needed them not to and my elite squad of badasses slowly began losing the war of attrition, until almost all of my people had been replaced by fresh face newbies, they themselves sent out to die and continue the horrible cycle. Rookie, I thought, was surely going to be far easier for somebody going into this game blind. It’s challenging enough that after my first failed attempt at a full playthrough on Normal, I bumped the difficulty down to Rookie for the next.

I was not expecting XCOM 2 to be as difficult as it is.

Xcom 2 aliens not attacking