That’d be absurdly damage-spongy, except these aliens are cleverly built as multi-stage battles: they’ll retreat off the map when you knock off a certain amount of their health (which doesn’t regenerate) to return at random in a later mission.
These three beefed-up variations on the Viper, the Berserker, and the Archon have terrifyingly powerful abilities and multi-row health bars that dwarf even the Sectopod. Fighting them takes some entirely new tactical thinking, and some new weaponry, which makes this DLC a net positive even though it creates some balance and replayability questions.Īfter being triggered by a tense story mission that both partially answered a lingering question about XCOM lore and presented a surprising type of fight that hadn’t been seen yet in XCOM 2, Ruler aliens crash the party in random missions (even those with timed objectives) to make XCOM’s job much more difficult. This DLC pack brings in three new major enemies that don’t just soak up more damage, they tilt fundamental concepts of combat in their favor enough to threaten even experienced commanders.
Just when I felt I’d gotten a handle on using the complex rules of XCOM 2’s combat to my advantage, XCOM 2: Alien Hunters has gone and turned them against me.
