Xenonauts 2
XENONAUTS-2 is a vast single player strategy game in which you control a multi-national military organisation defending our planet from alien invasion.
Battle the extraterrestrials in tense, complex turn-based combat across a variety of maps and missions, recovering and researching their technology to unlock new weapons and equipment!
Take a global view with the real-time strategic management layer: you must establish and develop your bases, conduct research, battle for air supremacy and try to keep the panic level in your funding regions under control.
The strategic and tactical layers of the game are directly related, with ground missions affecting the overall balance of the Geoscape and your research efforts on the recovered items unlocking new equipment for your squads and aircraft. Every management decision you make filters down to the troops you control in battle; every shot you fire could change the balance of strategic power.
Can you hold off the invasion long enough to discover a way to defeat the alien forces?
No knowledge of the previous game is required to play – XENONAUTS-2 is a standalone title with its own setting and narrative.Key Features
- Ground Combat: The highly-detailed turn-based combat system gives you fine control over your soldiers as they battle the aliens across multiple different mission types and numerous varied environments. The day / night cycle and destructible battlefields open up endless tactical possibilities to defeat your enemies, and your soldiers will grow stronger as they gain combat experience – provided you can keep them alive!
- Strategic Management: A complex strategic layer allows you to coordinate the defence of our planet. Establish bases to extend your reach and use customisable interceptors to shoot down attacking UFOs, then deploy your soldiers to secure resources. Capturing crash sites can secure alien technology and live specimens for research, whereas protecting regions from alien activity and terror attacks will protect your funding and prevent them surrendering to the aliens.
- In-depth Simulation: The structure of Xenonauts-2 is not linear; no two campaigns unfold in exactly the same way. Every element of this complex interlocking simulation has been designed to create maximum coherence between the strategic and tactical layers: small decisions can have an impact across the entire game.
- Extensive Tech Tree: XENONAUTS-2 contains a vast variety of aircraft, vehicles, weapons, armour, and battlefield equipment for you to experiment with. and a deep research tree with over a hundred projects to unlock. Play the game the way you want to play, devising your own tactics and strategies to defeat the extraterrestrial threat!
Key Improvements from XENONAUTS-1
In addition to the new modular upgrade systems mentioned previously, here is a very small selection of key changes and enhancements:
- Improved visuals across all parts of the game, including full 3D tactical environments with a rotatable camera!
- A more detailed and immersive Geoscape simulation incorporating greater player choice and stronger elements of territory control!
- More environments and maps to fight in – including our new Jungle and Boreal biomes!
- New aliens have been added and many existing ones have been redesigned, all of which will benefit from our new and improved AI system!
- A larger research tree with more lore and an expanded variety of equipment for your soldiers to use in battle!
Game Discussion
Steam User 351
Fans of XCOM who want a deeper strategic layer will feel right at home with Xenonauts 2. The game clearly draws inspiration from the classic X-COM: UFO Defense, focusing heavily on base building, squad development, and research & development while responding to UFO activity across the globe.
Compared to the more streamlined modern reboot XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Xenonauts 2 leans harder into planning and long-term strategy. Base placement, aircraft interception, soldier equipment, and research priorities all have meaningful consequences, making it feel less like a cinematic tactics game and more like managing a global defence program.
The game is best described as a spiritual successor—not officially part of the X-COM franchise, but intentionally recreating the depth and style fans loved. A similar example would be Stardew Valley, which captured the spirit of Harvest Moon without being part of the original series.
Combat is where Xenonauts 2 really appeals to strategy purists. Missions use a time unit system, meaning every action—moving, firing, turning your soldier, or even kneeling for better accuracy—costs resources. Unlike the more automated actions in XCOM 2, players are far more hands-on with positioning and action management. This adds an extra layer of tactical control, rewarding careful planning but also making mistakes painfully obvious when your soldier runs out of time units in the middle of an alien ambush.
If you enjoyed XCOM but ever thought “I wish this had more strategy and a bit more chaos,” Xenonauts 2 delivers exactly that.
8 alien autopsies out of 10
Steam User 181
EDIT: V1.0 07/5/2026- I have now finished my full first run and messed around a little.
As foreword, this game is soo close to being excellent.
I initally gave this game a disservice my comparing it to Xcom EW Long war. As i played on i saw my error and acknowledged it as a comparison to the base Xcom EU/EW experience. It is a really solid game with great depth. I had a lot of fun, and had some normal "thats xcom baby" moments.
So I don't ramble forever i'll put my key notes below. These might seem a bit harsh but please remeber i really enjoyed this game, i'm just being quite critical for it to reach the amazing category.
Pro's:
The air combat is amazing. I really like how my skill and planning had direct impact on the world around me. If i keep shooting down all the enemy planes, then nothing lands and no missions are created. Great, my skill has a direct effect on the world. I did find however the towards the end game, your planes are really strong and I could take out everything without much of a fight.
Neutral's:
It took quite a while to develop all the equipment items for my troops. While i really liked all of them, i found myself setting up a normal set up, and never really deviating from it. May I got them too late in the game to be gamechanging.
The enemy hit chance is interesting. I found that I had to "alpha strike" every enemy as i found them because if they were alive when thier turn came up, they were going to hit, regardless of how i positioned my troops or used cover. I really miss (from Longwar) firefighting with the enemies and feeling like we were in a bit of a stalemate. both sides in effective cover and having low hit chances, causing both sides to either destroy the cover or seek flanks.
The scale of the war seems a bit small. Minor spoilers ahead - Once the war begins i might have one workshop with like 5 engineers working there, and 10 soldiers. With the full backing of the world, it seems like a bit of a small operation. With this, I was always using the same units in combat and never had any reason to deviate as they came back from injurry quick enough. This game could almost scale up to like 50 engineers and 30 troops at a time in the baracks. with longer fatigue times. This would give me a reason to not always take the same 10 units.
Negatives:
I agree with my previous sentiment. Some of the line of sight test are way too tight. There are plenty of times i felt i should have been able to make a shot and was blocked by something only slightly in the way. I understand lowering my hit chance but not giving a flat 0% due to a small branch hanging in.
This game could really benefit from a 'lean' option when behind hard cover. In a real tactical situation - if i'm holding a doorway into a long corridor, i absolutely have the upper hand to anyone who enters that corridor. This game has me beleive i have to step rully out of cover, take the shot and then move back in. It just doesn't really make a lot of sense. For this exact reason I often found myself struggling to settle into effective cover.
Final word - This game is great. Well done Goldhawk. I look forward to future updates and/or DLC. 8.5/10
(PRE-RELEASE)This game is interesting. I'm a vet of the modern XCOM's with plenty of experience across the board with xcom-likes (pheonix point, original xenonaughts ect) and xcom-lites (gears tactics, chaosgate ect) so it's very much up my alley.
I sat down with another vet to give this a "sneakpeak" in the week before full release. We played for about a 5 hour sitting. Here are my inital impressions:
I really like the equipment options and the general gameplay. It feels tense, gritty, and also weighty.
I haven't put a lot of time in yet but at the start of the game there is a few mechanics unexplained (in the globle and tactical layers) which do make sense when you mess with them. I'll reserve my judgement on the slow start as i haven't seen how it develops yet.
The thing that makes me write this review is the tactical layer design choices. I think the idea of line of sight checks is good, but the implementation is sloppy. Multiple times I placed units in tactically sound positions and was punished for doing so. For example - I placed a sniper on a rooftop leaving him pretty much exposed but with the hope that it would mean a good shooting position. Every time i tried to target ground units there was always something "slightly" obscuring them leading to either significantly lowered hit chance, or completely blocked shot. In reality a sniper with high aim - aiming at a dude like 50 metres away and his legs are obscured by a container (on the angle), would still be an easy enough shot, not an unviable blockage. It feels nitpicky like a ruler nerd at tabletops, and does away with a little of the rule of cool flow these games often have. Don't get me wrong, there does need to be a line drawn but this one is a bit to hard.
I really look forward to the 1.0 update where i can hopefully praise this game for all the hard work the devs have put in so we'll see next week.
Steam User 97
I do not usually write reviews however I wanted to do so for Xenonauts 2 which has gone through both good and bad patches of development. The main issue was the length at which it has taken to get to this point but I am happy to say that I both enjoy the game as it is today on release.
It truly captures an old style of XCOM, more similar to UFO defense and is the only game I have played that was released in modern times which scratches that achieves everything I want out of an XCOM style game, not since enemy unknown/within in the early 2010s have I felt this way.
I whole heartedly recommend the game and I encourage people to play it if they love this genre.
Steam User 71
Perfect game for anyone who likes turn-based tactics.
It feels like a more mature version of XCOM, where you are actually weaker than a superior invading force. You will lose a lot of soldiers, even whole bases, but losses are replaceable and you grow with each battle.
If you liked the original Fallout games, Battle Brothers, Menace, or just want something more brutal than XCOM, this is for you.
Steam User 67
A complete improvement over the first game in every single way I can think of. The guns that your troopers use actually sound somewhat punchy compared to the airsoft guns your troops used in the first game, there are new mechanics and previous mechanics were overhauled to be even better. The graphical improvements are actually my favourite, the first game was entirely 2D with a fixed camera angle while this is completely 3D with free camera movement, so no more getting shot by an alien that was completely obscured by a wall. Overall if you enjoy Xenonauts 1 you should definetely get this, it's not just a graphical improvement, it has an entirely different story that is even more indepth than the first and is actually just the better game to play.
Steam User 141
First kill outside of the tutorial was one of my squad accidentally shooting another in the back. 10/10
Steam User 41
This is a fantastic ode to the early XCOM games. It feels to me like it has a lot more mechanical depth than the XCOM reboots. The atmosphere is wonderfully bleak, the writing is very good and there is a palpable sense of tension throughout the whole experience. I completed it on soldier difficulty, iron man mode and ended up losing 23 Xenonauts to some 463 aliens. This difficulty level is balanced in such a way that once I got better technology, my soldiers started surviving more and I snowballed a bit - those poor aliens were soon out of their depth. Higher difficulty next play through!
My only criticisms are that the technological advancement of weaponry is essentially just damage boosting. The lasers were the coolest as they had the most distinctive characteristics. Also, make the weapon sounds more punchy - I want those high tech guns to sound like they're tearing big holes in whatever they hit (especially the tech level after lasers, they sound so wimpy!).