XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

When I bought the XCOM 2: War of the Chosen DLC in a bundle, I figured it was a short sequel set after the XCOM 2 story, since it launches separately from the main game. Having just played through the game twice (once vanilla, and once with the Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift DLC), I was initially a bit disappointed to find I was going to have to stop the Avatar Project yet again, because War of the Chosen is, once again, the base game with different DLC content woven through it. Still, though, the experience is different enough to be worth it.
War of the Chosen introduces three factions separate from XCOM that have been fighting the Advent forces. These factions, as you might imagine, introduce three new soldier classes with new abilities to unlock. You'll have to work with the factions, in the form of completing special missions for them AND lending them use of your soldiers in order to gain their trust and further advantages. This last one's an especially strange and unsettling feature, as your soldiers may return wounded, get captured, or trigger special ambush missions where they have to fight their way out. Speaking of your soldiers, a series of new features get introduced to perhaps get you more attached to them, so as to make it hurt more if you lose them. Before, soldiers under fire could end up with the 'Shaken' status, which would lower their Will and make them more susceptible to Psi attacks, Panic and other ailments. Now, your soldiers have a whole host of traumatic problems they can suffer, which might for instance make them Hunker Down out of caution or attack on sight out of paranoia. It rather reminded me of the Quirks from Darkest Dungeon. It's a mechanic that's more likely to pop up if your Soldiers are Tired, which is a new feature similar to the Wounded state. Combat actions tucker your soldiers out, requiring you to leave them at base to keep them stable. All in all, I find it requires you to keep a bigger pool of regulars around than in the base game. Your soldiers, if they spend time in combat together, also have a chance of developing bonds, which provide them with little bonuses and special actions if they're fielded together. There's a slight adjustment to the Buildings, too, with the caring for the wounded no loner being done from the Advanced Warfare Center, but from the new Infirmary, which can also cure their mental issues. There's also a mandatory building added in the form of the Resistance Ring, to keep track of your Covert Actions with the various factions. Since the amount of space in the Avenger is the same, this means you'll have to consider even more carefully where and what to build, and what not.
Aside from the factions and the heroes they send your way, there's the titular Chosen - three humanoid alien brawlers who will taunt and harass you through missions. The game tends to give you ample warning if they might show up on a mission, but get ready to see them a LOT. Though you'll be forced to put them down, they'll teleport out and unfortunately don't require the kind of recovery time your wounded soldiers do before they make a reappearance. The writers of this DLC clearly like these characters a lot, as they do a whole lot of trash-talking, either during missions or inbetween, as they mock you long distance. I couldn't help but feel like the writers rather wished they were doing fantasy instead of sci-fi this time. The Chosen kind of feel like they walked straight out of Warcraft, and both they and the new faction heroes talk and act like they're from a Saturday morning cartoon. It's all very heavy-handed with everyone getting quasi-religious, the faction heroes about their struggle and the Chosen about their Elder masters. The developers cast some recognizable Star Trek actor voices in this DLC, such as Marina Sirtis and Michael Dorn, who both kind of sleepwalk through the clichéd dialogue, and John de Lancie, who sounds like he's having a bit more fun with it.
You can choose at the start whether or not to involve the the Alien Hunters or Shen's Last Gift DLCs. You can either have them as normal, with their associated missions coming up, deactivate them completely, or have them integrated without their associated missions, which is the default. This means you'll have the Alien Hunter weapons pop up as a research option, you can build SPARKs as soon as you build a Proving Ground, and you'll be warned if one of the Alien Rulers is set to appear at a location. It's your choice, but you might want to carefully consider if you want it all on together. Especially early on, the game feels really overwhelming as it just keeps throwing prompts at you about stuff that needs doing. The Chosen start showing up while you're still fielding rookies, XCOM and the Faction characters start haranguing you to do covert stuff, and all the while, the Avatar Project ticker keeps on ticking. Having to deal with the Alien Rulers as well might be a bit much, though the associated gear remains helpful.
Not every new element that War of the Chosen introduces works as well as intended. Research now has a feature where your scientists frequently become Inspired, and either a unique research project will pop up, or the research time for one of your existing projects will be lowered, IF you immediately go for that project next. It's a nice idea, but it ends up feeling like your research gets railroaded along a path the game sets.
But set against that, there's a lot to like. The presence of the Chosen adds a new element of suspense and danger to the missions (though I could see it becoming an annoyance after a while). There's new procedurally generated environments to explore, and if any of your soldiers get captured, you can undertake rescue missions that involve a lot of stealth, and there's zombies. The base game had Psi Zombies, but in War of the Chosen, there's the Lost - dessicated fast zombies that result from the bioweapons that the aliens attacked human cities with in the first XCOM. They like to swarm, which is offset by the fact that they have little health, can of course only perform melee attacks, will attack Advent forces as well, AND every succesful kill against them grants your soldier an extra action. Not only are they another suspenseful element, it also shows that the XCOM 2 playstyle could probably be adopted well to other genres than sci-fi.
There's updates on the practical side as well. Notably, War of the Chosen seems to have much reduced loading times from the base game. Missions, briefings and actions load much faster, and while I'm sure there's a reason for it, I don't understand why the base game doesn't have these improvements. There's still considerable bugs that haven't been ironed out, though. On one occasion, I was unable to complete a mission where the final objective was to kill all enemy forces, because I combed the entire map, and there weren't any left. On another, reloading an in-mission save meant that two of my squad members got popped back to the location where they started the mission, with the rest fully entrenched. And later, a VIP was suddenly no longer selectable before I could move them into the evac zone. I guess it's just something to be expected, but it honestly makes the Ironman play impossible.
While it's a bit of a bummer to have to play the Avatar Project scenario again, War of the Chosen adds a lot to make it worth going back in. Very pricey for DLC, so wait for a good deal on a bundle, as I did.

This update grants a MASSIVE quantity of new content!
The biggest draw back is that it turns the balance of the base game inside out.
While XCOM is able to field additional special units (3 new classes) and gain bonuses from factions around the world, the greatest issue is that this is a slow burn. It takes quite a bit of time to get to where these new factions power scale you to become a more powerful version of XCOM than in the base game.
On the other hand, not only does this demand more resources (Making the game generally longer) it also means that the DOOM CLOCK of the Avatar Project is a much greater concern... all the while, the difficulty of the game begins harder and ramps up faster.
THE CHOSEN are the new big bad guys and act as regional bosses that pop up in combat missions to ruin your day and force you to uninstall the game. While they are not much of a threat with a full team of well equipped veterans, they can stomp a team of rookies into the dirt with little issue after a handful of missions.
This DLC is a tradeoff:
You Receive - Hours of new content! (Yay!) Lots of increased variety (Yay!) and your XCOM will become stronger and more powerful (Yay!)
ADVENT receives - More demanding campaign (uh oh.) MUCH harder early game (Uh Oh!) and a much faster, more punitive power ramp that can decisively end your run before you get to your second story mission (UH OH!!)
overall, it's worth the investment, especially if you're a fan.
Get it on sale if you're skeptical or feel like the base game is already pretty hard.
Otherwise, it's a fantastic addition of content that makes replaying the campaign a lot more rewarding and interesting.

Very good. Lengthy story, Want to see an XCOM 3. Easy mode is the most fun for me.

I don't ever remember buying this "DLC" - but it was in my library so I thought I'd revisit XCOM2 after enjoying it a few years ago and recently catching up on XCOM (1).
What an impressive update this is. I cannot remember the last time a game grabbed me this hard - the "one more mission" addiction is huge and this is very much a massive leap from the vanilla XCOM2. The production values have been hugely ramped up and the new Chosen bosses are a considerable challenge. The swam missions / Chosen and variety of missions are a small part of what is a range of massive improvements Firaxis have made. I cannot recommend this enough.
Also - love the surprise voice acting credits this update adds; lots of fun for fellow Trek fans. :-)

This DLC made the game so much better and I loved it.

With this DLC they've managed to refresh a game by adding zombies.
The full price is a bit much though, worth it on sale however.

Highly polished, chock full of content, and with high replayability.
The definitive way to make an expansion.
Also great mod support.