Enemy Unknown made it absolutely clear what the core of XCOM was: sacrifice. Whether it be the sacrifice of opportunities for chances, the sacrifice of soldiers for objectives, or the sacrifice of countries for the planet. This key theme carried over into Enemy Within where with MEC Troopers your soldiers were permanently sacrificing their body parts and with Gene Mods it could be said they were sacrificing their humanity.

By the end of the game your originally merely-human squaddies were not only armed with alien technology, but they were part alien themselves. If they hadn't ascended into a new dimension of cognitive realization, they were literal killing machines. This combined with a knowing wink at the player for casting you alongside such characters as a genius Japanese [sic] engineer, a sadistic German scientist, and a straight-laced American general as you set about defending the planet against a hypothetical alien invasion featuring a laundry list of classic paranormal threats like greys, reptilians, and flying saucers cement the game as not only an excursion into the realm of science fiction, but as an out-and-out archetypal tribute to the alien invasion subgenre.

There are many many additions to XCOM 2 that I love and will invariably miss whenever I go back to EW (carrying your mortally wounded soldier through gunfire to a custom EVAC!), but XCOM 2 differs from XCOM 1 the same way Bravely Second differs from Bravely Default: It tries to be it's own thing.

It's no longer a loving tribute to a genre, a liquidation of all the things that make it great into one solid package, it has it's own characters and story now... and Firaxis thinks players care more about the actual characters and story than what they collectively represent. And to a degree that's certainly true... but as time wears on and players reflect on their experiences, they begin to feel a disconnect, that much as they like the additions, there's a spirit that feels lost amidst this renewed focus on guerilla warfare in a unrecognizable future earth.

Even the notion of sacrifice feels lost... gone is the bagpipe dirge that plays on the way home from a fatal mission.

If Bioshock is any example, I'm well aware that there are people who cry foul when the same concept is "reused", but I, for one, thought Bioshock 2 was great. It meaningfully improved upon gameplay in signficant ways while expanding thoughtfully on the philosophical concept of the original game. Everyone liked Rapture, now you could explore more of it. That's what I wanted for XCOM.

While I got the significant gameplay improvements I wanted, I don't think it could ever recapture sensation it originally exposed me to. Compared to MEC Troopers, Spark Units are lame.