There are many video games that use the alien invasion trope as the main focus of their plot. This offers an excellent opportunity for fun gameplay and engaging storytelling. Xenonauts, a popular indie turn-based strategy game that let the players fight back the alien invasion, is one of these. The second installment of the franchise is now out on early access.
Xenonauts 2, developed by Goldhawk Interactive and published by Hooded Horse, provides players with tactical turn-based combat to fight against the aliens, base management to accrue resources, and strategic gameplay to control the panic and expand their influence across the globe.
The first thing that catches the eye when starting the game is the highly customizable difficulty settings that Xenonauts 2 offers. For strategic and tactical gameplay, detailed difficulty options can be very helpful for players to learn the game and get comfortable with the mechanics over several playthroughs. I started the game with the normal setting and played through the tutorial as Xenonauts 2 taught me the basic mechanics of turn-based combat.
After your first encounter with the aliens through the tutorial, you are given control of a secret base. You can select which part of the world your first base is located in, and this decision does have some strategic effects towards the later stages of the game. In your base, you can recruit soldiers, research upgrades, make weapons, armor, and aircraft, and send out air strikes or tactical teams to face alien attacks.
Xenonauts 2 has multiple layers of gameplay: tactical combat, air battles, and base management. Air battles are still not fully incorporated in the early access version of the game, and you can auto-resolve them to avoid the unpolished mechanics of that part until the game is fully released. But the other two gameplay elements are fairly developed and worth evaluating.
The tactical battles are the most interesting part of Xenonauts 2. Combat is hard, and, unless your every move is not carefully considered, defeat is a very real possibility. You can lose your soldiers on the battlefield and have to recruit new ones, but each time your soldiers survive a battle they increase their attribute points and become much more effective. This encourages the player to try to keep their soldiers alive during combat. I managed to keep a sniper alive through most of my playthrough. By the end, he was a force to be reckoned with!
Each combat mission can also have various objectives that make the game really fun. You’re not always sent to kill every enemy. One of the most engaging missions was to raid an enemy base and extract data from their systems before reinforcements arrived. There were also rescue and extraction missions that changed the way you approached combat in unique ways. You eventually unlock various tools and weapons that can be suited to different missions, and, with high-skill soldiers, you have a lot of options to prepare for each fight in the most optimal way.
The amount of customizability is what makes the tactical battles in Xenonauts 2 interesting, and this is where the over-world base management ties into the main gameplay loop. After each mission, based on what you recover, you can research new technology, upgrade your arsenal, and make advanced weapons and armor for your soldiers. Another purpose of the management aspect of the game is to keep the panic level of different parts of the world in check. If the panic level in a continent reaches 100, you lose control over that continent – and, if the whole world reaches a panic of 100, you lose the game.
You can eventually expand your operation and establish new bases in different parts of the world to be able to fight back the alien invasion on a larger scale. But operating multiple bases can be really expensive. If you are not prepared for the cost, you might go over budget and lose control faster than you would have if you had only one base. The balance of the management aspect of the game doesn’t feel as good as it could be. It can be made easier by lowering the difficulty at the beginning, but it’s also something that could be enhanced and changed with more playtesting.
The visual aspect of Xenonauts 2 is nothing to write home about. Graphics are simple but decent, but the overall color theme of the game looks bland. The UI can definitely use some improvement, as it can get overwhelming at certain points. There are also slight performance issues during combat and at specific times in the overworld, but it’s nothing too major or game-breaking.
The sound design is also of middling quality. The music is nice enough, and the sound effects are realistic, but the game overall felt a bit quiet. You can’t really tell how much a good audio experience can immerse you in a game until you play a game that doesn’t do it justice. Xenonauts 2 could use some more dynamic tracks and exciting sound effects to make the experience more engaging.
There have been multiple updates during the closed-beta period that have already fixed some of the bugs and issues in the game. The development team is actively improving the game. If this pace continues throughout the early access period, Xenonauts 2 could have a very bright future ahead, and live up to the expectation that fans of the previous game have.
Nima played Xenonauts 2 in Early Access on Steam with a review code provided by the publisher.
