Best Way to Play XCOM 2 [Must-do/QoL/Recommendation/Mods]

This guide is for any new player of XCOM 2 (with/without War of the Chosen), or a veteran player looking for some new fun. Regardless of your gaming preferences, or if you're completely new to any video games, you'll select your Best Way to Play XCOM 2 in this one-stop guide! Made by Stellar Aritificer. [Single-player only.]

Basic Information Sheet of XCOM 2

Before starting the game:

01. Easy to learn?
☐ Friendly to anyone
☐ Learn with smooth tutorials
☑ Learn tons of basic concepts with smooth but long tutorials
☐ Thanks for crying
☐ Totally mess

02. Hard to master?
☐ Born to be a master
☐ A bit tricky
☐ Challenge accepted
☑ Choose your own difficulty
☐ Thanks for crying

03. Length of basic game?
☐ 0-5 hours
☐ 5-10 hours
☐ 10-30 hours
☐ 30-50 hours
☑ 50-100 hours
☐ 100-200 hours
☐ Endless grinding

04. Storytelling experience?
☐ Story is a relatively small part of the game
☐ Moderate presentation of the plot
☑ The story is relatively important and well rendered
☐ Marvelous story
☐ I don't think I can forget this story for the rest of my life

05. Replayable?
☐ Only if you really like to
☐ New contents
☐ New builds
☐ Core gameplay is to replay
☑ With mods, everything is possible

06. Playable without DLCs?
☐ Sadly no
☑ Some DLCs are worthy - by which I mean War of the Chosen DLC
☐ Totally optional
☐ DLCs don't bring much new content to the game

07. Any other preparations before playing?
☐ Nope
☑ Theoretically no but I would recommend some quickly done Quality of Life adjustments/Mods
☐ Might need some works to improve the quality of game experience
☐ Major fixes needed

08. Cheats?
☐ Nope
☑ Console cheats in-game
☑ Mods rebalancing or ruin the balance of the game
☑ Trainer on WeMod
☑ Trainer on CheatHappens

09. Any discounts?
XCOM 2 has a very frequent discount pattern, with more than 80% off!
You can also buy the Steam code(key) for XCOM 2 through third-party playforms, as it has also been distributed, or into bundles.

Core Features:

- Challenges based on your head rather than eyes or hands
- Decent strategy
- Deep gameplay (and builds)
- Well polished
- Story rich
- Save/Load freely
- Clear explanations
- Skip/Shortcuts/Fast Portals
- Decent animation and CGs
- Nice Sounds and SFX
- Gallery/Replay
- Mods friendly
- Almost no bug

Mid Game:

How you getting stronger in this game:
☐ Mainly relies on the improvement of players themselves
☑ Character(s) have significant growth in values and resources
☐ Relying on unlocking more information/lore about the game
☐ Unlocking more gameplay systems to support characters growth
☑ Growth rate of main character(s) is incremental
☐ Growth rate of main character(s) is decreasing

Whether the resource can be gain repeatedly:
☐ Unlimited repetition of battles or operations
☑ Randomly repeated battles or operations
☐ Completely disposable combat or business gains

Time/turns limit for the task or not:
☑ Strict time/turns limits, where choices and benefits are clearly mutually exclusive
☐ Loose time/turns limits, mainly aimed to differentiate plot development
☐ No time/turns limit at all

Combat abilities/quest development is randomized or not:
☐ Completely fixed, no randomization
☐ Mainly depends on player's ability (numerical randomness is almost negligible)
☑ Strong numerical randomness
☐ Numerically weak randomness (but still significantly affects the player's ability to play)
☑ Randomness on levels/maps
☑ Randomness in combat/quest conditions
☑ A large number of weapons/skills/items/etc with randomized effects.

Quality of Life

Even though Firaxis has done a good job, there are still many experience of XCOM 2 that they couldn't take care of, such as:
- Some tedious, repetitive actions
- Excessive waiting times
- The absence of some key information for the player's strategies
etc.

There is a significant number of mods that optimize away the above issues without changing any game content, and together they make up the Quality of Life (QoL) Mods for XCOM 2.
However, since they are Mods, players need to spend some learning cost to install, manage and use them.

For new players, there is another issue to evaluate:
Is it more of a headache to make these QoL tweaks before starting the game, or is it more of a headache to just put up with the flaws during the game?

If you are new to any kind of Mods or XCOM series or both of them:
Please ignore this section and go straight to the original, pure XCOM 2.
Aside from the hassle of mods, it may also be beneficial for you to have those minor issues above with the game, as well as the relatively slower pace of the game. By this way, you might learn the tricks of XCOM 2 more thoroughly through repetition.

If you want to play XCOM 2 without any DLCs:
Please ignore this section and go straight to the original, pure XCOM 2.
Without the WOTC DLC installed, the game wasn't supposed to be that high stress or lengthy. And the vast majority of the Mod Collections on Steam Workshop have been updated for WOTC, in other words, in this case you'd have to manually install the QoL Mods one by one, which is far more of a hassle than a convenience. It's better to just play the game.
If you get bored in the later stages of the game, it's recommended to buy the WOTC DLC first, and then consider the mods. I'll talk more about DLCs and other Mods in a later section.

All players other than those mentioned above:
It is highly recommended that you install this amazing QoL Mod Collection:
[WOTC] Core Collection by Iridar
Although nexusmods is still a very important platform for mods, since XCOM 2 supports Steam Workshop, here has developed much richer and more complete collections of mods than nexusmods.
The QoL Mod Collection I'm recommending here is one that has been recommended by thousands of players and is still being updated and improved as of January 2024. All you have to do is click the "Subscribe to all" button above the mods list on that page to install it.
Note that XCOM 2 mods are managed through the Alternative Mod Launcher. You can find how to download and install it in almost any Mod Collections, and of course, the QoL Collection recommended above is no exception. Managing and running the game through the Alternative Mod Launcher will make all the mods run more clearly and stably.

Difficulty Choosing

TL;DR: Just tell me what difficulty to choose!

Rookie:
For new players who rarely play turn-based strategy games, or who have no interest in save/load at all.

Because as you know, XCOM 2 is famous for shots that miss at 90% success rate. It's only on this difficulty that the game's secretly altered internal stats grant your soldiers extra high hits and tons of resources at their fingertips.
Once you get used to the mechanics and start to find the game a bit boring as it becomes more repetitive, consider switching to Regular difficulty; after all, a good portion of the fun of the XCOM series comes from the challenge.

Regular:
For players familiar with turn-based strategy games, or veterans of the XCOM series, or very patient players who are willing to spend a lot of time and effort to enjoy the "relatively normal" flavor of the XCOM 2.

On this difficulty you can enjoy the choices and challenges, requiring some degree of SAVE/LOAD. Overall, you still grows faster than the enemies, and it's easier to feel a sense of accomplishment rather than frustration over the 50-80 hours of gameplay.

Commander:
For players who are familiar with XCOM 2 (and have fully understood its mechanics over 10-20 hours of playing), or players who have adapted to this "torture" in XCOM's Long War Mod.

On this difficulty, resources and time/turns become tight. It's very exciting and fun to play.
However, the frustration may be too much for new players.
Please choose this difficulty carefully according to your liking.

Legendary:
I only chose this difficulty after fully finished the game with the WOTC DLC.

In general, this difficulty can be a bit boring due to long period pressure. It's best to play with some content Mods.




Alright! Below is for who want to know more.
First of all:
Yes, some achievements are related to the difficulties.
However, thanks to Firaxis' overly clever little brain, XCOM 2 has an achievement requires you to "finish the game before July 1, 2018". The game is now impossible to unlock all the achievements.


Core differences between difficulties:
Rookie: your soldiers are stronger, you enemies are weaker, get more resources, all useful things consume less to build, all harmful things appear later, etc.

Regular: Lady Luck is now tilting a bit towards the enemies, but still favoring you to a considerable degree.

Commander: The gaming experience will be difficult and lengthy, as you'll need to spend long, long time weighing your strategies and perhaps more time to SAVE/LOAD.

Legendary: Everything has changed, and these quantitative changes have caused multiple terrible qualitative changes. I don't recommended any new player to choose this difficulty.


Ironman mode (optional):
You only have one save slot, and the game will auto save at each turn, as well as when you exit the game.
You will not be able to easily change your decisions or the results, outcomes of events and so on, as often or as quickly when you have a hundred save slots.
You can only choose whether or not to enable Ironman mode when you start a new game. It's impossible to enable or disable it during the game.


Switching Difficulties:
Unlike Ironman mode, you can switch difficulties during the game.
However, it is important to note that when you start a game on Commander or Legendary and then adjust the difficulty to a lower level, you will never be able to unlock the achievements about Commander or Legendary unless, you start a new game, choose Commander or Legendary, and never change the difficulty again.

DLCs Choosing

XCOM 2: Resistance Warrior Pack
Cosmetics only.
Go to Steam Workshop, you can get tons of Cosmetics Mods which are BETTER than this and FREE.


XCOM 2: Reinforcement Pack with following 3 DLCs:
Overall, nothing particularly glamorous but not too bad. Only recommended for purchase during a sale.
01. XCOM 2: Anarchy's Children
Cosmetics only.
02. XCOM 2: Alien Hunters
Elite enemies that would significantly raised difficulty. They could be annoying but I honestly think it's still fun and reduces the repetitiveness of the game in the mid to late game.
03. XCOM 2: Shen's Last Gift
New class (robots called SPARK), new story and new items. Pretty Nice.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen (WotC)
I would say this is a MUST-BUY DLC unless you are not sure if you would like like XCOM 2 or not. I mean then I will recommend you to try XCOM 2 for several hours and if you like it just go for WotC already, ha!
Massively improves and change the original game. Adding many exciting gameplays and contents into XCOM 2.
I'm not going to tell more details because the introduction of WotC is good enough, all I want to say is buy it and have fun with the REAL XCOM 2!
Note that with this DLC, you need to directly start with WotC while starting the game. Do not miss it because WotC would take effects through out the whole game.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen - Tactical Legacy Pack
New playing modes with many challenges, stories, maps and levels, with decent designed weapons and armor. Oh and a few new cosmetics function too.
Compared to WotC, it's not a must-buy DLC, but compared to its own pricing, it's extremely cost-effective and highly recommended.

Guides Recommended

Guide for new players to learn the basic mechanics of XCOM 2:
What I Wish I Knew When I First Played Xcom 2 By THETA🌭ZER0

A great collection of explanations of each mechanic:
Conan The Librarian's (Somewhat) Extensive Guide to XCOM 2 (Updated for WOTC) By Conan The Librarian

Here is a guide of cheats (but I would recommend using Mods instead) :
Xcom 2 CHEATS & TWEAKS By Z0mBi3

Achievements unlocking, please remember that it is now IMPOSSIBLE to unlock 100% achivement due to the timing:
100% Achievement Guide XCOM 2 + DLC By sirhawkeye

Here are some other nice guides might help you mid game:
Vel's Guide To XCom 2 (Formerly "Stuff that works for me") By cdhartpence

Mordor's Advanced Strategy Guide By Mordor

Random tips and explanations By Numares

Mods

work in progress