I just finished the Early Access 180-day romp of Xenonauts 2 once again, and I got to say, I’m much more favorable to it this time. All in all, I just had a really swell time battling the aliens. The story is shaping up to be something more interesting beyond “the aliens are coming”. The battles are fun, and so are all the research and upgrades you can get for your men and vehicles (air fleet included).
Just going by that, I highly recommend the game, it is an improvement over Xenonauts, and you can’t be too picky when you are a lover of the X-com-like genre in the first place. However, Xenonauts 2 suffers currently from one major issue, and I’m afraid if this is not remedied it will make the whole alien-blasting adventure feel utterly lackluster.
See, the game is astonishingly short. Yes, it’s not the whole game, as I understand it. Apparently, it’s around 65% done from what I have heard (don’t quote me on that), which leaves at least 35% of the content to the unknown. But when I finished the 180 days now, I was at 98% done with the research into the “endgame” state (whatever that means), in only 10-13 hours or so. I even recorded the whole deal for Youtube (if Google ever lets me into the account again), so it’s not some random fever dream of mine. That is SHORT! When I reached the 180-day cut-off it still felt like the beginning time-wise to me. I only have about 20 to 25 missions done or so. There have only been a handful of UFO crash sites to explore, and for being a war against extraterrestrials forces this doesn’t feel epic at all. It’s more like a short skirmish against a minor troubling nation in some third-world hellhole.
I hope the developers realize this because otherwise there is a fairly large risk that Xenonauts 2 will be viewed as a lazy sequel to cash in on the popularity of the original. That is regardless of how much focus went into general improvements, like armor, combat mechanics, and such, since the experience would be so brief that you don’t have time to experience it anyway.
I’m worried about this, even if this playthrough was very enjoyable. Especially since this is not some random bug or anything, this is part of the fundamental design of the game, which is not easily changed. I have some hope that the Early Access version is sped up in some way, but I doubt it is. In my heart, I think we are playing the game as it is. Stuff will change, of course, that has been promised by the devs, let’s just hope campaign time is included in these changes.
Thanks for reading,
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Vault 