XCOM Legends was a free-to-play turn-based role-playing game for Android and iOS, developed by Iridium Starfish and published by 2K Games. It was soft-launched in July 2021 for Android and March 2022 for iOS. The game was removed from stores in March 2024 and ended service on May 7, 2024.
Story[]
XCOM Legends is set two years after the events of XCOM 2. The Resistance has defeated ADVENT and XCOM must now reclaim Earth from the chaos left in the wake of the War for Liberation. A being called the Creator is using pieces of Elder tech called Archways, teleportation devices powered by exotic psionic energy unlike any seen before, to capture XCOM troops as test subjects and create and control Shadow Clones, diminished fragments of individuals resonating with Archway energy.
The Creator, main boss of XCOM Legends.
The Commander is now in control of an experimental XCOM base called the Bastion, which is staffed by John Bradford, Lily Shen, and Richard Tygan. The Commander dispatches a squad headed by Jane Kelly to capture an Archway. Tygan discovers the Archway can be activated with a resource called Quintessence to rematerialize a portion of the psionic essence of trapped heroes as physical simulacrums. It also allows copies of individuals to have their genetic material fused in a fast, effective and mostly painless way, resulting in increased power. These rematerialized heroes join the Commander's forces and they travel the globe trying to stop the Creator.
Eventually, XCOM discovers that a construct was developed in a City 31 facility to oversee the Elders' teleportation Archways. The construct, called Prototype 159, discovered the ability to create Shadow Clones of living creatures from the Umbral energy that powers the portals, and she was rebuilt to utilize these powers. She was abandoned in a stasis pod after XCOM defeated the elders. A Shadow Clone of the abandoned construct continued to evolve in Umbra, becoming the being known as the Creator. The Commander and XCOM end the Creator's plans to terraform the Earth into a shadow world under her control.
Gameplay[]
XCOM Legends employs a gacha mechanic to summon hero units from the salvaged alien archway. The player can spend resources to upgrade heroes and fuse duplicate heroes. There are a total of 51 heroes to collect.
The game includes PvE and PvP gameplay modes. In PvE mode, the player deploys squads of 5 heroes in a 15 chapter single-player campaign from the base's Geoscape. The player can also collect resources passively gathered by drones and deploy heroes in various operations, including:
- Daily Bounties to attack extremely strong enemies.
- Fighting through the levels of an ADVENT Megafactory and its towers.
- Completing Hero-specific War Story quests to unlock backstories and signature weapons for each Epic Hero.
- A set of daily Special Operations.
- A set of daily timed, automatically completed Covert Actions.
- A PvP virtual reality Shadow Arena allowing the player to fight other players' squads.
- Battling through other Hero squads in a PvP Archway Assault event.
- Joining an alliance and battling bosses cooperatively with other alliance members.
These activities provide various items and resources that the player can use to gear up and upgrade Heroes.
The Bastion base includes the following features:
- The Archway, allowing the player to summon Heroes, Hero Tokens, and Hero Fragments.
- A Hall of Fame documenting the strongest players and alliances.
- A Comm Center providing resources for watching ads.
- A Black Market where the player can spend resources.
- A fusion facility to upgrade Heroes and Artifacts: the facility fuses Hero Tokens to upgrade the Hero's Star Rank, and fuses duplicate Artifacts into an Artifact of higher Star Rank.
- A Research facility to unlock various Base, Operation, and Hero upgrades.
Heroes[]
- Main article: List of XCOM Legends heroes
There are 51 recruitable heroes in XCOM Legends, divided into three categories of rarity: 36 Epic Heroes, 11 Rare Heroes, and 4 Uncommon Heroes. Heroes are further categorized by role, type, faction, and class.
A hero can have one of three roles on a team: Damage Dealer (inflict as much damage as possible); Tank (take the brunt of the damage); and Support (provide healing and buffs). Role has no impact on gameplay mechanics; this category is only a guide to help the player compose a team.
All heroes and enemies are classified into four types that have advantages and disadvantages against each other in a rock-paper-scissors style system: Natural (beings with unmodified DNA); Hybrid (genetically altered beings); Cybernetic (robotic constructs and beings with organic and robotic body parts); and Psionic (beings with psychic powers).
The six hero factions are EXALT, XCOM, Reaper, Templar, Skirmisher, and Alien. Heroes recruited to the Bastion's roster have background affiliations to one of these six factions.
There are five hero classes in XCOM Legends: Assassin (specializing in heavy damage); Operative (offensive buffers); Heavy (tanks and AoE attacks); Specialist (defensive buffers); and Trooper (front line attackers).
Epic heroes have unique War Story missions that unlock biographical lore, unique weapons, and level cap increases. Epic and Rare heroes have unique Leader bonuses that activate when that hero is assigned to the Leader role on a team. These bonuses sometimes apply to team members of a specific type or faction.
Type-specific Megafactories are only accessible to teams with specific type compositions. Some War Story combats are only accessible to teams of specific category compositions.
Equipment[]
Heroes have six inventory slots (head, body, pants, hands, wrists, feet) plus an additional artifact slot. Inventory gear can be upgraded to increase power and unlock passive bonuses, and equipping multiple inventory items of the same type can provide set bonuses. Artifacts boost a hero's attack and health and provide additional class-specific passive bonuses. There are 10 artifact types – two for each hero class. Any hero can equip any artifact but passive bonuses and additional attack and health boosts are only activated if the artifact is equipped by its corresponding hero class. An artifact's quality can be improved by spending credits to upgrade it and by fusing duplicate artifacts at the fusion facility to increase its star rank.
Epic heroes can complete War Stories to unlock a legendary weapon at level 70 that provides a unique bonus.
References to prior XCOM games[]
- In XCOM Legends, the player takes the role of the Commander, the protagonist of XCOM and XCOM 2.
- The game features appearances from John Bradford, Lily Shen, and Richard Tygan.
- The Speaker makes an appearance as an early game antagonist in chapters 1 and 2 of the main campaign; he is hiding in an abandoned Bureau bunker.
- Jane Kelly is a controllable hero and a major character in the single-player campaign.
- Geist and Betos are recruitable heroes.
- XCOM visits City 31 in chapter 11, where ADVENT is working with the Creator's Shadow Clones.
- XCOM enlists the help of Floyd Tesseract to instigate opposition to City 31 Shadow Clone patrols.
- The recruitable hero Rak'Tahar, code-named Charon, is a failed attempt at creating a Chosen. He was raised by the Gray Phoenix and later allies with XCOM to break the Grey Phoenix's control of New York City.
- The recruitable hero Wish'Ta, code-named Hex, is a failed attempt at creating a Chosen and a precursor to the Warlock.
- The recruitable hero Hator Con'Ra, code-named Prophet, is a Chosen known as Archon created by the Elders to control humanity through faith and religion They split from the Elders to side with the humans during the War for Liberation.
- The recruitable hero Zhao "Hyperion" Huiwen is a former lab assistant, bodyguard and romantic partner of Dr. Moira Vahlen. He was critically injured while protecting Vahlen from her creations and she saved his life by combining his DNA with Chryssalid DNA.
Trivia[]
- In the earlier, soft-released version of the game, the Quintessence resource was not used to summon Heroes from the gateway, and instead what was used was something Tygan called "a psionic decoding Engram".
- The recruitable hero Serena "Angel" Ricci is the first canonically transgender character in the XCOM franchise.
External links[]
- XCOM Legends campaign story transcript (complete to chapter 15-8)