Xenonauts 2 Review

Xenonauts 2 is a turn-based asymmetric tactical warfare game with a brilliant science fiction story. The game starts with an alien ship being gunned down and quickly escalates into a fight for the survival of Planet Earth. The enemies that emerge from both inside and outside Earth’s atmosphere are tough and take a lot of skill to defeat.

After the Xenonauts ‘ original base is infiltrated, the team has no choice but to seek out the backup shelter, unknown to the higher-ups, who the enemies have seemingly influenced. This small battle is the catalyst for the rest of the game, serving as a tutorial and as the explosive exposition of the game’s story. I took control of the forces in a battle of strategy as I learned how to both control my Xenonauts and how to best defeat the alien threat.

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With the tutorial complete, I was now ready to place my secret base. I, of course, chose the beautiful Island continent that is my home, Australia, and placed my base at the top end to try to cover most of the immediate area with the scanning arrays. It was soon time to scan the skies for threats and begin building and recruiting my team.

Centring on the base and moving through the menus made it easy to discover what I needed. I selected the World map. Using the scanning arrays, I was able to cover all of Australia and most of the island nations that bridge the gap between it and the Asian continent. Within days of setting up our base, the arrays discovered a UFO. I sent my two-interceptor aircraft to engage the enemy ship and sadly lost one in the battle. Next, I sent a team to try and recover the alien ship’s wreckage, but was beaten to it by the mysterious team of enemies known only as the “Cleaners”.

After this brief mission, I decided to better familiarise myself with the menus, including base management. These menus cover buildings to personnel, including soldiers, researchers, and engineers. Research tasks that included dissecting aliens and human enemies alike, pulling important data around how they were swayed or controlled or how to utilise the enemies’ weapons against them. Storage and sale of the goods found on the mission to assist in the upkeep of the base. Aircraft management and finally the Xenopedia, which is the encyclopedia on all the items, enemies, personnel, and more in-game.

With the menus sorted, it was time to get to saving Earth. After a few more in-game days, I had discovered something interesting on the map and was quick to dispatch my freshly recruited team. Upon arriving at the landing site, I dispatched my team, aiming for a decent spread and a wide coverage of the landing site. Within moments, my team had discovered three alien threats and a series of pods. The enemies consisted of the aforementioned cleaners, and the pods contained civilians in need of rescue. With the reconnaissance completed, it was time to put my learned tactics into practice.

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Being a turn-based game meant trying to set up the team in a pattern and predict the enemy’s movements while trying to keep damage to my squad to a minimum. I aimed to place most of my squad behind cover while giving my sniper the best shot and then ending my turn. The enemies had a similar theory, quickly hiding behind cover and making my shots difficult, as the line of sight was poor or not existent. I used my two main forward attackers to destroy the impeding objects, as I was taught in the tutorial, then, using the now clear line of sight, dispatched the attackers with my sniper. However, there was a problem; I didn’t see a fourth assailant hiding in a building, and as I moved one of my soldiers into position, he was ambushed and died.

This was how the battles in-game commenced, each gaining a bit more difficulty as the enemies changed and advanced. I then used the discovered, researched and engineered technology to also better equip my soldiers and face the enhanced enemies. Combat was tough and often an interesting challenge; sometimes it was better to run and take the smaller victories than continue the fight and lose progress. With each engagement came learning and understanding, as well as more research to be engaged in at the main base. This ebbing and flowing of the game made it a great game to come back to at regular intervals.

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Outside of the gameplay is the game’s beautiful user interface art; the 2D artwork is prominent amongst the menus and displays a great many items and interactions in-game. From Autopsies to helicopters to the aliens I was fighting, there is artwork covering it all. The knowledge base in the games encyclopedia is astoundingly vast, covering the story, research results and all manner of the games’ extensive lore. It is breathtaking seeing it all and reading about the legacy of the Xenonauts. Tied in with this, the musical score, both the mundane and the more practical sounds, is great and subtle. The sound makes this game what it is, and in the more intense moments, it got my heart racing.

However, the game is less practical for taking on the go; with the small, abundant text, it was harder to see on the smaller screen of my Steam Deck. It was playable; however, I was unable to get my cloud save file to follow me when transferring to my Steam Deck. This made it more impractical, as I didn’t want to start over fresh and only played enough to ensure that the experience was available.

The art in Xenonauts 2 stands out and is enjoyable to look at while reading the endless lore. The game has many features to explore, and I have enjoyed my time with it, even though I was not able to bring it with me on my journey due to the cloud save issue. Even with this flaw, I will continue to enjoy this game as I plan my next run and main base location while writing this review.

(Review code provided to Explosion Network.
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