I get my copy of the game Friday, will be trying it out this weekend :)

Thanks for the heads-up, I had forgotten to check. Looks like that's a 24.7 gigabyte preload, according to Steam - handy not to have to try to pull it down on launch day.

After playing it for 72 hours.

Total Biscuit has endorsed this game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1dLGihV0No

I bought my keys somewhere else but I bought some backup keys on GMG just in case those don't arrive, since i really want that preorder bonus, and I'm getting anxious not having received my keys yet. Purchase on GMG worked fine for me.

It's decrypting! :D

We'll be knee-deep in alien bodies in moments.

Just kidding. Got to hit the character creator for at least 4 hours first.

Yeah, I think I'll be hanging out there for a while as well :D

My biggest struggle is going to be trying to stick to iron man mode (after tutorial play for a few missions), I'm lifetime save scummer

I'm so glad that the Long War mod got me into the habit of just color-coding my soldiers by class and not worrying about the finer details. You could easily sink ten hours just into soldier customization (and re-customization, once you unlock more features) in this one, and hardly have time to actually play the game >.>

[url= Now to find out if the tantalizing first-tier research option of Magnetic Weapons actually leads to railguns. Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease. ][/url]

EDIT: Already lost my first campaign :P Thought I'd try a Legend/Ironman first go and see how far I got. Answer: second real mission. ^_^ This game really enjoys the suffering of humans.

EDIT 2: OK, my UI complaints boil down to one thing: the tactical map camera needs some real work.

It would be great to hear some early opinions on the game. Especially: is it (again) a casual console-retarded and simplified game - especially comparing to original X-COM ?

Hard to say without knowing why you thought that of the first game. This game was made entirely for PC, no console version.

Well, if you thought the previous one was casual, console-retarded, and simplified, then you'll think the same thing of the new one. The mechanics are, in the broadest sense, still quite similar to the previous game. It's harder, difficulty to difficulty, than XCOM - but not harder than XCOM modded with Long War. It's a very good game. The previous one was, too. So if you think it was dumbed down or casual, you're wrong, and you won't like this one either.

The original X-Com is a great game, and a real classic. The new XCOM2 is improved over XCOM, which was a good game, and with the exception of my irritation with a few behaviours of the UI, feels to me like possibly a modern classic.

Probably for the best given that at 4k resolution and ultra everything it slows down on my gaming rig, which is beastly enough that if it can't hack it, no console would have a chance without extreme optimization and loss of detail.

[url= i7 3770k - which I hope is the bottleneck - with 32 gigs of RAM and a GTX TITAN X. And some parts of the game barely give me 5 fps with everything on max :P ][/url]

I loved the previous one, especially with the expansion, and I'm loving XCOM 2! As far as I'm concerned Firaxis nailed it. And with easy modding available I expect the game to become even better.

I took next week off from work :P

Playing now if anyone feels like watching me fail :)

I got home, finally I can continue to send my squad to death :)