In brief: Few turn-based tactical strategy franchises have been around as long as the XCOM series. The alien-slaying games have only gotten better over time, both in terms of graphics and gameplay, but they've always been restricted to more powerful platforms like consoles and PC. Today, that finally changed: XCOM 2 is now officially available on iOS devices.
The amount of work that must have gone into this port is difficult to grasp. Though a far cry from the likes of Red Dead Redemption 2 or (from what we've seen) Cyberpunk 2077, XCOM 2 is still a beautiful, complex, and not very well optimized game.
Condensing the graphics to the point that the game can be played on pocket-sized devices is an impressive feat, but one Feral Interactive has nonetheless achieved.
From what we can tell, no gameplay features seem to have been sacrificed here. I'm an avid XCOM fan and based on the announcement video above, it looks like all the skills, buttons, and actions you can use in the PC/console versions are present on iOS as well.
If you've never played XCOM 2 before, it's a not-so-distant-future sci-fi title set in an Earth where the aliens have already invaded and, despite your best efforts, won. You take charge of a newly-reborn XCOM: a resistance organization whose sole priority is to overthrow your alien oppressors.
To do so, you put together a crack team of soldiers hailing from resistance splinter groups around the world. Each soldier has their own customizable appearance, their own accent and nationality, as well as their own class, which you can further customize by selecting abilities from a branching skill tree. The more battles your men and women survive, the more skill points they can receive.
We're curious to see how well XCOM 2 works on mobile devices, so if you have an iPad or iPhone and feel like giving it a shot, feel free to report back to us with your results. The XCOM 2 Collection will run you $24.99, and it's recommended that you have at least 17GB of free space available (though 8.5GB is the minimum).
The Collection includes the "War of The Chosen" campaign and the game's other, smaller DLC packs. The XCOM 2 Collection is expected to arrive on Android devices sometime in 2021.
Update 11/17/2020: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the XCOM 2 Collection's iOS port included the base game as well as the DLC. This is incorrect, as the base XCOM 2 experience is not included in the package. We have updated the article to reflect this information.
https://www.techspot.com/news/87481-alien-slaying-tactical-strategy-game-xcom-2-now.html
