You know that feeling. You've spent forty minutes meticulously positioning your specialist, checking line-of-sight three times, and praying to the RNG gods. You have a 98% chance to hit. You click. Missed. In most games, that’s a bug or a reason to throw your controller across the room. In XCOM 2 with War of the Chosen, it’s just Tuesday. It is the definitive way to play one of the most stressful, rewarding, and occasionally heartbreaking strategy games ever made.
Honestly, playing the base game without the expansion now feels like eating a sandwich with just the bread.
Firaxis didn't just add a few maps or some new guns when they dropped this expansion in 2017. They basically performed open-heart surgery on the game's core loop. If you’re coming back to it in 2026, or maybe picking it up for the first time on a Steam sale, you aren't just fighting aliens anymore. You’re managing a geopolitical crisis, a psychological thriller, and a superhero rivalry all at once. It’s messy. It’s loud. It’s brilliant.
The Chosen are basically petty coworkers with superpowers
The big draw here is the "Chosen." They are three unique boss enemies—the Assassin, the Hunter, and the Warlock—who hunt you across the world map. They don't just show up to kill you; they show up to talk trash.
The Assassin is a nightmare. She cloaks, runs across half the map, stuns your best ranger, and then vanishes before you can even rotate your camera. It feels personal. Because it is. These bosses have "traits" that are randomized every campaign. You might get a Hunter who is immune to explosions (goodbye, grenades) or a Warlock who takes extra damage from templars.
What makes XCOM 2 with War of the Chosen so different from the vanilla experience is that these enemies grow with you. If you fail to kill them in a mission, they gain knowledge. They level up. They can kidnap your soldiers. Think about that for a second. Your favorite sniper, the one you customized to look like your brother, gets knocked out and hauled off into the fog of war. You don't see them again for months. Then, suddenly, a rescue mission pops up. It’s high drama in a genre that usually focuses on spreadsheets and hex grids.
The Bond System and the "Tired" Mechanic
You can't just run the same "A-Team" every mission anymore. In the base game, you could basically ride your top six soldiers until the final credits. War of the Chosen says "no."
Soldiers now get tired. Their "Will" stat drops. If you push them too hard, they develop phobias. I once had a grenadier who developed a fear of Mutons. Every time a Muton appeared on screen, he panicked and shot the ceiling. It’s hilarious until it happens during a VIP extraction.
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To balance this, Firaxis added Soldier Bonds. When two units go on enough missions together, they become "BFFs." They can give each other extra action points or stand back-to-back to clear mental debuffs. It adds a layer of emergent storytelling that very few games—maybe RimWorld or Crusader Kings—can match. You start caring about the specific pairings. "I can't send Jane out without Mike; they're level 3 bonded."
The Resistance Factions: Choosing your flavor of apocalypse
Then you have the three new factions: The Reapers, the Skirmishers, and the Templars.
The Reapers are the stealth gods. They use a "Shadow" mechanic that is vastly superior to the standard concealment. You can literally stand two tiles away from an Advent trooper and they won't see you. They also carry claymores. If you haven't used a Reaper to blow up a gas tank next to a pod of unsuspecting enemies without ever breaking stealth, you haven't lived.
Skirmishers are former Advent soldiers who decided they liked freedom and grappling hooks. They are all about action economy. They can shoot twice. They can pull enemies out of cover. They are the "chaos" pick.
Templars are the weird ones. They use psionic blades and build "Focus" with every kill. By the end of a mission, a high-level Templar is basically a god, bouncing lightning off walls and reflecting bullets with their mind.
The interplay between these factions is where the strategy happens on the Avenger. You have to send soldiers on "Covert Actions." These are non-playable missions where your troops go off-screen to find the Chosen's stronghold or gather supplies. Sometimes they come back with a promotion. Sometimes they come back wounded. It fills the "dead air" of the campaign beautifully.
The Lost change the math of every fight
We have to talk about the Lost. They’re zombies. Well, technically they’re the mutated husks of people left in the "abandoned cities" from the first invasion.
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They change the tactical layer because they move in swarms and are attracted to explosions. In a normal XCOM mission, grenades are your best friend. They destroy cover. They're guaranteed damage. In XCOM 2 with War of the Chosen, throwing a grenade in a city map is like ringing a dinner bell. You’ll clear out that Advent officer, sure, but you’ll also summon 15 zombies who want to eat your face.
The "Headshot" mechanic makes this manageable. If you kill a Lost with a standard shot, you get that action point back. This leads to these incredible moments where your sharpshooter clears an entire street in a single turn. It’s satisfying. It’s also a trap. You run out of ammo, you forget to reload, and suddenly you’re surrounded.
Performance and the "Photobooth"
One thing people forget is how much better this expansion runs. The original XCOM 2 was notorious for long load times. Like, "go make a cup of coffee and read a chapter of a book" long. War of the Chosen optimized the engine significantly.
And then there's the Photobooth. It sounds like a gimmick, but after a hard-fought mission, the game lets you create propaganda posters of your squad. You can add filters, poses, and text. These posters then show up on the walls in future missions. Seeing a "Missing" poster of the soldier you lost three weeks ago while you're sneaking through a slum is a gut punch. It’s these small, human touches that make the game feel alive.
Common misconceptions about the difficulty curve
A lot of people say War of the Chosen is harder. It’s actually... not. Or at least, it gives you way more tools to deal with the difficulty.
Yes, the Chosen are terrifying early on. Yes, the Fatigue system forces you to manage a larger roster. But the power creep for the player is insane. By the late game, once you have your Resistance orders active (basically permanent buffs you slot in every month), you are an absolute wrecking crew.
There's a Resistance order that makes it so the mission timer doesn't start until you're revealed. That is a total game-changer. It turns high-pressure missions into methodical puzzles.
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What most people get wrong is trying to rush the Chosen strongholds. You don't have to kill them immediately. In fact, if you wait until you have Tier 2 weapons and armor, the missions are much more manageable. The real threat isn't the Chosen themselves; it's the "Avatar Project" timer. The expansion gives you so many ways to reduce that timer via Covert Actions that you can practically play the campaign forever if you want to.
Modding: The lifeblood of the 2026 experience
If you’re playing this on PC, you are doing yourself a disservice if you don't look at the Steam Workshop. The modding community for this game is legendary.
There are "Quality of Life" mods like Gotcha Again that show you exactly where you'll have line-of-sight before you move. There are cosmetic mods that let you turn your soldiers into Star Wars Stormtroopers or Halo Spartans.
But the big one? Long War of the Chosen. It’s a total overhaul that makes the game much longer, much harder, and significantly deeper. It’s not for everyone—it’s for the people who think the base game is "too easy" even on Legend difficulty.
The tactical "Deep End"
Let’s be real: XCOM 2 is a game about failure. It’s about the 95% shot that misses. It’s about the roof collapsing under your sniper because a Sectopod walked through the building.
War of the Chosen embraces that chaos. It adds more variables to the equation. When a mission starts, you might have "Sitreps." Maybe only certain soldier types can go. Maybe there are explosive canisters everywhere.
It forces you to stop using the same "overwatch creep" tactic that everyone used in the first game. You have to be aggressive. You have to take risks. And when those risks pay off—when your Reaper detonates a remote start on a fuel truck, killing a Chosen and two pods of Advent in one go—there is no better feeling in gaming.
How to actually win your next campaign
Don't just jump in blindly. If you want to survive the first ten hours of XCOM 2 with War of the Chosen, you need a plan.
- Build the Resistance Ring first. Seriously. This is the building that lets you do Covert Actions. It is the most important room on the ship. It gets you promotions, resources, and—most importantly—it’s how you find the Chosen.
- Prioritize the Assassin. She is the most dangerous Chosen because she ignores "Overwatch" and always hits. Get her out of the way as soon as you're strong enough.
- Rotation is king. You need at least two, preferably three, full squads of soldiers. If you rely on one team, they will all be "Tired" or "Shaken" exactly when the aliens launch a major counter-attack.
- Use the Reapers for scouting. Keep your Reaper in "Shadow" mode as long as possible. Knowing exactly where the enemies are without them knowing you're there is the single biggest advantage you can have.
- Don't fear the Lost. Use them. If Advent is pinning you down, throw a grenade near the Advent troopers. The Lost will swarm them, giving you a turn to reload or reposition.
The beauty of this game is that it doesn't hold your hand. It expects you to learn from your mistakes. It expects you to lose people. But with the additions in War of the Chosen, the "Losing" part becomes part of a much bigger, much more interesting story. Grab the expansion, turn off the lights, and try not to get too attached to your soldiers. They probably won't make it to the end anyway.