XCOM 2: Alien Hunters Review (CraftySam)
So for context, I only started playing Xcom recently - and with the guidance of my friends made the decision to go for the original game and disable as much of the DLC as possible. It's here I made my first blunder, as my friends and I falsely assumed that turning off the missions for the Alien Hunters DLC would disable them and stop them from appearing.
We were dead wrong, instead what happened is the Alien rulers now are no longer bound by a specific mission and can appear whenever, wherever.
On the surface this isn't too bad, Alien Rulers are an interesting challenge and threat that can completely turn an easy mission into a close and careful boss fight where you need to make every action count.
However, the flaw is that there is very little balancing when each Ruler can appear, Viper King is manageable since it's not too hard to get magnetic weapons before they appear - however having the Ruler of a monster I've never even fought before appear mid mission while another ruler is still active is pure nonsense.
The existence of Alien Rulers practically demands that you ALWAYS prepare for them because if you don't some of them will absolutely destroy you. Any timed objectives become virtually impossible. 12 turns to extract? nope, you need to spend at least a few turns trying to damage the Alien Ruler since it can act on you extracting and every time you move it gets to act so you can't even run from it. I'm looking at you Berserker Queen that appeared before I'd even SEEN a normal Beserker.
Generally, the Alien Rulers will ignore whatever tech level the aliens are at and will just appear and ruin you. In base Xcom 2, this DLC absolutely sucks if you're not fully aware that it's there. I was not, and it ruins a first timers enjoyment of the game.