I really do enjoy XCOM 2 but the bugs and technical glitches are just too much to overlook. I have a 980 Ti and I constantly see frame drops. Kill cams are constantly broken. Aliens are suspended in mid air or teleporting around. But the worst of it all is the game breaking bugs.

After playing Commander/Ironman for 15 hours and constantly getting my butt kicked because I just wasn't good enough I dropped down to Veteran/Ironman. 7 hours in and I'm doing great. No deaths, mag and gauss weapons, predator armor. I'm feeling pretty confident. And then I go on a dark VIP extraction mission and it all goes to hell. A bug treats the mission as failed after I destroyed the VIP's car even though I have him over my shoulder 30 squares away. Then the game calls in reinforcements right on the evac zone in back to back turns. Even though I could have killed them the game treats the zone as overrun and moves it to a place that I can't physically get to in the time left. So that's it. My squad is captured and there is nothing I can do. So my best run is now over and I'm questioning why do I even want to try again when next time something worse could happen 20 hours in.

I'm sure Firaxis is trying to fix these bugs but it is just really disappointing to see a game that was in development for so long and even delayed multiple times is still released in this state. Then again, I guess that is just the norm for video games nowadays.

** UPDATE on February 27th, 2016 **
So I have beaten XCOM 2 on Veteran/Ironman difficulty and it took about 28 hours. I went through the game being much more cautious then in my previous attempts. Sometimes I did not attempt a gorilla ops mission that would have given me the best reward because it had something to do with evac and I just didn't want to risk the game bugging out and me losing a squad again.

While there were a few bugs here and there (enemies suspended in mid air after I destroyed the floor beneath them, somehow triggering pods when I couldn't see the aliens but they could magically see me, kill zone not triggering on enemies that clearly moved, mutons seeing me through a door and throwing a grenade at me) the game was rather uneventful.

The problem I now have with the game is that its difficulty snowballed and didn't push me to experiment with my tactics. Once my soldiers levelled up it was hard not taking them on missions and levelling up replacements because the aliens simply did too much damage. Also my tactic of bring at least two grenadiers (and some soldiers in amor suits with rocket launchers) got boring pretty quick. The problem was whenever I tried to deviate from it by not using my grenadiers or holding them back to the end of the turn I found that I just didn't have the fire power. The game seems really balanced around AoE/shredding damage and killing the aliens before they get any shots on you especially because of the aggressive timers which force you into combat.

The missions also felt more repetitive than XCOM 1. The procedurally generated maps were great. I never really felt that I knew exactly was coming next but the missions were always the same. The guerrilla ops barely changed. The retaliation missions were always the same and you knew exactly when they were coming. The alien facilities were almost identical. The exact same tactics worked on every single one. I was bored my alien facilities by the third one and only did them to lower the avatar project to stall for more time to get supplies. In XCOM 1, looking back with my rose coloured glasses, the randomness of the alien attacks I feel like I enjoyed more. The different types of alien crafts, the landings versus shoot downs, the terror missions which you sometimes didn't see coming.

Also story missions felt better spaced out in XCOM 1. In XCOM 2 I probably went 12 hours between story missions because after the black site there was nothing pushing me on. I literally had taken out every single alien facility on the planet before I attempted a story mission. There was no tech or advancements behind those missions on then the next story mission to eventually get you the final mission.

All of this sounds really negative but I did enjoy a lot of the game.
- The geoscape was great. Tough choices all around. I felt it dragged the game on a little bit because it was hard to get the supplies needed to upgrade everything to tier 3 so I definitely killed time for a month just waiting for attacks because I didn't want to attempt any story missions.
- There definitely were some missions where even with what I feel are my OP tactics of never-ending explosives and mimic bacons I did feel like I was just walking over the aliens.
- The character customization really drew me in. There were so many storylines of all my soldiers and their amazing exploits that are all just inside my head. The ability to customize every character ahead of time and just have them randomly showed up really pulled me in.

On the whole as a die-hard XCOM fan I did enjoy it and I'll probably come back in 2-3 months when some DLC and patches have come out and make my Commander/Ironman attempt. But I am very afraid that I'm just going to have to resort to my same boring tactics again. I'll probably make a couple of attempts at different tactics, maybe rush psionics instead of mag weapons or something but I'm just a bit worried that the game at higher difficulties just isn't balanced for that.

I really do enjoy XCOM 2 but the bugs and technical glitches are just too much to overlook. I have a 980 Ti and I constantly see frame drops. Kill cams are constantly broken. Aliens are suspended in mid air or teleporting around. But the worst of it all is the game breaking bugs. After playing Commander/Ironman for 15 hours and constantly getting my butt kicked because I just wasn't good enough I dropped down to Veteran/Ironman. 7 hours in and I'm doing great. No deaths, mag and gauss weapons, predator armor. I'm feeling pretty confident. And then I go on a dark VIP extraction mission and it all goes to hell. A bug treats the mission as failed after I destroyed the VIP's car even though I have him over my shoulder 30 squares away. Then the game calls in reinforcements right on the evac zone in back to back turns. Even though I could have killed them the game treats the zone as overrun and moves it to a place that I can't physically get to in the time left. So that's it. My squad is captured and there is nothing I can do. So my best run is now over and I'm questioning why do I even want to try again when next time something worse could happen 20 hours in. I'm sure Firaxis is trying to fix these bugs but it is just really disappointing to see a game that was in development for so long and even delayed multiple times is still released in this state. Then again, I guess that is just the norm for video games nowadays. ** UPDATE on February 27th, 2016 ** So I have beaten XCOM 2 on Veteran/Ironman difficulty and it took about 28 hours. I went through the game being much more cautious then in my previous attempts. Sometimes I did not attempt a gorilla ops mission that would have given me the best reward because it had something to do with evac and I just didn't want to risk the game bugging out and me losing a squad again. While there were a few bugs here and there (enemies suspended in mid air after I destroyed the floor beneath them, somehow triggering pods when I couldn't see the aliens but they could magically see me, kill zone not triggering on enemies that clearly moved, mutons seeing me through a door and throwing a grenade at me) the game was rather uneventful. The problem I now have with the game is that its difficulty snowballed and didn't push me to experiment with my tactics. Once my soldiers levelled up it was hard not taking them on missions and levelling up replacements because the aliens simply did too much damage. Also my tactic of bring at least two grenadiers (and some soldiers in amor suits with rocket launchers) got boring pretty quick. The problem was whenever I tried to deviate from it by not using my grenadiers or holding them back to the end of the turn I found that I just didn't have the fire power. The game seems really balanced around AoE/shredding damage and killing the aliens before they get any shots on you especially because of the aggressive timers which force you into combat. The missions also felt more repetitive than XCOM 1. The procedurally generated maps were great. I never really felt that I knew exactly was coming next but the missions were always the same. The guerrilla ops barely changed. The retaliation missions were always the same and you knew exactly when they were coming. The alien facilities were almost identical. The exact same tactics worked on every single one. I was bored my alien facilities by the third one and only did them to lower the avatar project to stall for more time to get supplies. In XCOM 1, looking back with my rose coloured glasses, the randomness of the alien attacks I feel like I enjoyed more. The different types of alien crafts, the landings versus shoot downs, the terror missions which you sometimes didn't see coming. Also story missions felt better spaced out in XCOM 1. In XCOM 2 I probably went 12 hours between story missions because after the black site there was nothing pushing me on. I literally had taken out every single alien facility on the planet before I attempted a story mission. There was no tech or advancements behind those missions on then the next story mission to eventually get you the final mission. All of this sounds really negative but I did enjoy a lot of the game. - The geoscape was great. Tough choices all around. I felt it dragged the game on a little bit because it was hard to get the supplies needed to upgrade everything to tier 3 so I definitely killed time for a month just waiting for attacks because I didn't want to attempt any story missions. - There definitely were some missions where even with what I feel are my OP tactics of never-ending explosives and mimic bacons I did feel like I was just walking over the aliens. - The character customization really drew me in. There were so many storylines of all my soldiers and their amazing exploits that are all just inside my head. The ability to customize every character ahead of time and just have them randomly showed up really pulled me in. On the whole as a die-hard XCOM fan I did enjoy it and I'll probably come back in 2-3 months when some DLC and patches have come out and make my Commander/Ironman attempt. But I am very afraid that I'm just going to have to resort to my same boring tactics again. I'll probably make a couple of attempts at different tactics, maybe rush psionics instead of mag weapons or something but I'm just a bit worried that the game at higher difficulties just isn't balanced for that.