"The absolute best way to play XCOM." - Wired

"We're basically a 20-hour tutorial for Long War, and that's okay." - Jake Solomon, XCOM lead designer

"Terrific ..." - Kokatu

"This is a collection of profound and surprisingly careful changes ... It's like a free expansion pack ..." - Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Long War is a free mod for the 2012 game XCOM: Enemy Unknown and its 2013 expansion, Enemy Within. Long War dramatically expands on the base version of the game by adding scores of new features aimed at creating a richer and more challenging campaign experience. Long War has been praised in the games media and by XCOM's creators, who have cited it as inspiration for vastly expanded modding capabilites in XCOM's sequel.

Features include:

• An expanded and much longer campaign driven by a dynamic alien AI harvesting Earth's resources and looking for weaknesses in Earth's defenses
• Eight soldier classes: Infantry, Assault, Sniper, Scout, Gunner, Rocketeer, Medic and Engineer, and eight MEC classes: Valkyre, Marauder, Jaeger, Pathfinder, Goliath, Archer, Guardian and Shogun
• English-accent voicepacks for soldiers from England, Scotland, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, Southeast Asia and more
• New and modified perks, including Ranger, Sapper, Lock N'Load, HEAT Warheads, Fire in the Hole, Tandem Warheads, Hit and Run, and Javelin Rockets
• New and modified technologies and foundry projects, including Gauss Weapons, Alien Biocybernetics, and Advanced Aerospace Concepts
• Five tiers of XCOM weaponry, new armors for soldiers and MECS, and dozens of new equippable secondary items
• Earlier access to psionics and an expanded psionics tree
• A system of promoting XCOM officers who provide abilities that help your entire squad
• A fatigue mechanism for soldiers requiring you to build a much deeper roster of personnel
• A modified interception game that requires careful management by the player, and five new UFO classes, including the Fighter, Destroyer, Harvester and Assault Carrier
• An alien research system that allows them to field tougher enemies, who have better stats and perks
• Modified second wave options to support longer and shorter campaigns
• Vastly expanded modding capabilities with many game values controlled in ini files

Version 1.0 of Long War was released on Dec. 28, 2015. It is available for free for PC, Mac and Linux systems. Get it here (registration required).