The Best Xcom 2 Mods You Need

As great as XCOM 2 is, everyone has small things they gripe about. Be it a few, repetitive animations wasting their time or being unable to tell how much health an enemy has without tediously counting out the bars of health.

XCOM has small problems that add up over time, getting on all our nerves. Luckily, we have an active modding community to remedy this plight, and it’s only thanks to them that this list may exist.

Note: the entries are in no particular order. Each is great and, in my opinion, should be considered when starting a new campaign. Without further ado…

15. A Better Advent 2

A Better ADVENT 2 Mod Gameplay

Providing not only more enemies, but – as the name of the mod says – "better" enemies, A Better Advent 2 opens up new avenues of gameplay with more than 60 new enemies and variants along with an ambitious AI overhaul. A Better Advent isn’t just adding some random stuff to the game to make it harder; it directly improves the core gameplay… but, it does make the game notably harder. Really, it’s designed for a squad of 6-8 soldiers rather than the default 4-6. If you want a challenge that the base game sorely lacks in the late game, slap this into your game and strap in, and maybe get a mod to increase squad size. Good luck. Get it here.  

14. More Maps Pack

An official Mod image showing off new features.

So, a single video or image can’t really capture why you need this little guy, but trust me when I say you do. After a while, the vanilla maps will start to get a bit stale. With a few structure changes, you’ll see the exact same landscape, and sometimes the exact same layout of buildings.

This mod makes you feel like you’re actually going around the world and fighting through unique areas instead of the exact same places a couple of times. You’ll thank me after you’ve played XCOM 2 for your 5th time.

Get it here.

13. Evac All

After a long mission, with enemies chasing you down, it really is a bit immersion breaking when, despite having all your soldiers – and maybe even a VIP – on the extraction point, you must manually go through up to 7 people, finding the “EVACUATE” button on each, to get them out.

Wouldn’t the logical thing be telling them all to just, you know, evacuate the area at once? Base XCOM 2 didn’t think so, but we do. Pull everyone into the Evac Point and just hit the “EVAC ALL” button to bring your brave soldiers home. They’ll thank you as much as you’ll thank me.

Get it here.  

12. Long War 2

No singular video under 2 hours can truly cover this one, either, but just look at how radically different even just the first mission is. Long War 2 is a top-to-bottom overhaul of XCOM 2. Its goal is to give players the feel of running a worldwide, guerrilla war against ADVENT while offering them a greater variety of strategic and tactical experiences that the vanilla game sorely lacks.

In the Base XCOM 2, they don’t let you do a lot of things that you’d think an underground, guerilla force would be able to do – like sending out multiple squads to hit multiple targets at once – for balancing reasons, but Long War 2 even addressed that by adding dozens of new enemies and strategic ADVENT AI that tries to counter your moves.

You can get so much more, do so much more, and hurt so much more in this long, long war.

Give it a shot.

Get it here.  

11. LOS Preview Ability

XCOM 2 Base LOS

Alright, so it sounds like it’s an ability that’s unneeded, right? I mean, you have the red tiles around enemies that tell you if they’ll see you, so why do you need this? Well, this handy little mod adds an ability to all soldiers to preview LOS range by tiles, even beyond movement range. Yeah, this just lets you know what your enemy can see, regardless of your concealment status.

This lets you measure their LOS edge more easily (and reliably) and provides LOS indicator for allied units and civilians. No more guessing. But we don’t just get a Line of Sight ability, we also gain an ability to preview the movement range of enemies and the ability to preview carry-able bodies.

In the end, it’s just useful. Not everyone will think it’s fair, which is fair, but I’m just throwing this one out here for the ones that like knowing things more precisely. For those who like taking on an enemy blindly or only with vague knowledge, this one isn’t for you.

Get it here.  

10. Show Health Values

A few health bars are nothing. 

Your enemy has 3 health, 4 health, 7 health – none of them really take much to count out at a glance. But what happens when your enemy has 50 health? Are you going to try and count that out?

I hope not, or you’ll be counting for a while, and needing to keep track of any damage they take. How about just letting the game tell you how much health they have left, huh?

This is really one of those mods that should be an option in the base game.

Get it here.  

9. Stabilize Me!

You can die without even seeing it coming.  

Doesn’t it suck to sit there, dying, with the supplies that you’d use to heal yourself in your pocket? Doesn’t it suck even more when your teammates are surrounding you, and know how to use it too, and still don’t save you?

Yeah, I know the feeling. Well, get rid of the bad feels with this guy. Now, if your soldier is bleeding out with a medkit on them, any other soldier can use it to save their life.

This is another one of the logical mods that should already be in the game.

Get it here.

8. Stop Wasting My Time

An official image from the mod.

While a bit controversial, Stop Wasting My Time is really nice… when it works. So long as it functions, it’ll remove a lot of fluff from the game that does nothing but waste your time the 7000th time you see it.

Those couple seconds add up over time, and you’ll waste away hours of your lives seeing too many repetitive animations. Give it a shot and see if it works for you. If not… well, there are alternatives.

Get it here.  

7. PanicMod_AlwaysHunker

An acceptable time to panic.

Ever thought about what you’d do if you panicked in your poor soldiers’ positions? Would you go running wildly in the middle of an active battlefield, ignoring orders and becoming trigger happy? Would you hunker down on the spot?

For those who think the latter option is simply the better option, this mod is for you. Panicking doesn’t make you stupid.

You know you’re in the middle of battle. Hunkering down when panicked just makes more sense. Or at least it does to me.

Get it here.  

6. EU Aim Rolls

Try not to miss...cause he did. 

When aiming in XCOM, you’re told your chance to hit and chance to land a critical hit as an on-screen percent value for each. Well, what it says and what it means are two different things. When it says you have a 70% chance to hit, but a 90% chance to crit, you’d think that means, if you hit the shot at that accuracy, you’ll have a 90% chance of that shot being a critical hit, right? Wrong. XCOM calculates all of that with one roll, so, if that shot hit, it will crit, no questions asked.

This mod makes the critical hit/hit chance make more sense by separating Hit, Crit and Dodge into its own individual rolls.

Get it here.  

5. Gotcha (Flank Preview Evolved)

Flanking an enemy.

One thing that bugged me is the flanking system. Sometimes, I really wonder how I’m not flanking an enemy I maneuver around. Well, no more wondering. Gotcha expands on XCOM 2's Line of Sight indicator, adding the ability to anticipate if a move will flank an enemy if they are visible through squadsight, and when mission objectives will be in view to either hack or shoot at. If they’re going to give us an indicator, it should at least tell us that much, right? Get it here.  

4. Advent Officer: Call in Reinforcements

The Advent Officers.

This is a mod that simply makes a previously underwhelming unit more dangerous, shifts player targeting priorities, and expands on an enemy unit concept that could have been so much more. 

When you hear officer, you expect the enemy to have a bit more authority and just general weight to his presence on a battlefield, but the vanilla XCOM officer simply didn’t. This fixes that.

Get it here.  

3. ShowMeTheSkills

Skills in the base game.

This is a nice, quality of life mod that just removes extra steps for us as players.

Previously, to see all the skills your soldier has when selecting them for a mission, you’d have to go to the armory, see their skills, then come back, or you’d select them, enter customization, then see skills and stats. This is just a nice way to put it all in front of you when you select your soldier.

It may sound minor, but you’ll get annoyed rather quickly at all the clicking around needed to, say, find out which grenadier has Shredding. I wouldn’t recommend simply picking one and hoping, though, as going into a mission without knowing the abilities of your soldiers is a recipe for disaster. Thus, we have this mod.

Get it here.  

2. Bleedout Duration Customizer

Maybe with the mod he would've survived. 

Ever wondered why your soldier died immediately when they just got grazed by a bullet? Well, now they don’t. They lay there, bleeding out, instead.

Yes, this does in fact make the game slightly easier, especially the early game. It’s mostly intended for use with highly modded, insane difficulty playthroughs to make them more bearable and/or to reduce the urge to save-scum, but if you just want to play XCOM with this as a general feature, then feel free.

Get it here.  

1. Advanced Modular Weapons

A modular weapon.

Ever felt bad that you missed out on a weapon upgrade slot because you didn't get the "Armed to the Teeth" regional bonus? 

It’s silly that such a thing could happen at all, so a brave, internet warrior took it upon themselves to fix this injustice.

It also felt like the weapons could barely handle any extra attachments, which was also silly. So, as far as I’m concerned, this is two birds with one stone.

Get it here.