My entire squad died on the first mission. It’s gonna be a great sequel. 

First impressions what they are, I just keep marveling at the speed of the game.  I’m on my desktop computer for the first time in over a year.  I played X-COM exclusively on my Surface Pro 3.  Enemy Unknown ran pretty well but the Enemy Within expansion made regular binges out of my processor.  I didn’t realize how annoying long the loading times were at the time.  The difference on my desktop system built for playing games is so stark I had to wonder if they stripped the engine.  No, nothing like that – just a graphics card.  I couldn’t go back at this point.  Fortunately, I don’t have to.

The game play tweaks are stellar so far.  It’s like they cut the frayed edge off the first game to make a clean line.  During battles, the player is rewarded for strategic intuition and punished proportionally for risks.  There’s a chart on the left of the firing screen mapping out basics aspects of the overall shot percentage, so you can determine if the strategies you use are working.  Use of concealment at the beginning of each mission allows for more strategic encounters than the stumble-upon-them method that could so royally screw you over in the first game.

Perhaps most importantly, the enemy is smarter and bolder.  As well they should be. The lovingly crafted plot is about the resistance of humanity against our alien overlords.  There’s no mistaking that our foe is better manned and better equipped than we are.  But the resistance grabs a key advantage at the beginning of the game – you.  In this world of hive-minded drones the most powerful weapon is critical thinking, something only the legendary Commander brings to the table.

Hints of sentiment peppered throughout the exposition such as the engineer, Shen, a spunky young lady who claims the first game’s head engineer as her father.  The biologist Tygan is the physical opposite of the last doctor and other than that he’s exactly the same.  The entire headquarters is built on an airship that takes me straight back to Final Fantasy III after the world is destroyed.  Part plot device, the limited range of the airship dictates the early part of the campaign, easing everyone in at the same pace.

Each time I load the game I get better at some aspect while discovering another completely new facet.  I’ll report back after the campaign is over but so far this game was worth every penny of the asking price.  I’m sure to get just as much (if not more) enjoyment from it as I did the first one.