I'm surprised so many people disliked this DLC, it's great.
In short it adds a new mission, 3 new armors, 4 new weapons and 3 special enemies to the game, making the early game easier while keeping the late game interesting.

- The new enemies are pretty tough. They can act after each action your soldiers take and can show up at any moment after you finish the new optional mission. Fortunately they're easily countered by freeze/stun and will try to flee from battle as soon as you damage them enough (they don't recover from wounds between encounters). If your soldiers are well positioned and have decent weapons you'll lose half a turn focusing on those new enemies in the worst case scenario.

- The weapons and armor are a little overpowered, perfectly counter the new special enemies and make the early game a lot easier so you'll probably take them with you in pretty much all missions after you find them. The fact that those weapons are too useful and you'll use them most of the time is in my opinion the worst part of the DLC.

- The new mission just introduces you to the new DLC content while giving your soldiers a bunch of kills and EXP, nothing special but fun nonetheless.

In my opinion this is the best of the 3 XCOM 2 DLCs.

It's a above average DLC to be honest. Here is why:

So, first off, you get new weapons early game that makes your life easier. They all do more damage (except the grenade) and have bonus abilities / stats. Bolt Caster (rifle) has only one shot, but can stun enemies, Shadowkeeper (pistol) has ability to conceal your soldier IF you kill your enemy, and the Axe(s) can be thrown without using an action point. The Grenade doesn't do damage, and has smaller AoE than regular Frag, but it freezes enemies.

Next up, the thing everyone is complaining about. The Alien Rulers.
These 'Rulers' are like (mini) bosses. They are difficult. They will wipe your squad in few turns if you get caught unprepared. This is where your new weapons and new tactics come in. Rulers are not broken. In fact, they are quite easy if you take more careful approach to XCOM 2 (atleast I did).
Rulers take their turn after you have used your soldier's turn. This might sound horrifying, broken and game breaking, but trust me, it's not. Yes, rulers will damage your team, but if you are careful, they don't even harm you. You got your new weapons to counter this. Use them right, and rulers will go down pretty quickly.

Third we have the new armors / suits. You get these by killing the ruler aliens. They all have different abilities and bonuses that make them worth of their price. These abilities mostly doesn't need to use an action.

Last up we have the new 'story mission'. It is decent. I'm not going to spoil you what happens in that mission, but it mostly tells you some back story for this DLC.

Now, final conclusion. Is this DLC worth it? It's not worth of 9,99€, even though it has good content. Alien Hunters DLC is fun and requires you to adapt to these new enemies and let's you play with more stuff. However, this DLC would be worth it if it would be like 4,99€ - 7,99€, but 9,99€ is little bit too much.

Quite bored of the opinion that "You suck at Xcom" if you hate this DLC.
Frankly, the story line (especially if you played Xcom 1) is awesome and really has you on your toes.
The new weapons, Why do we need Steampunk in dystopia? They are out of place.
Boss's. They certainly add something to mid-late game but there is nothing more anoying and gamey than thier turn after every soldiers turn.

This is a badly thought out and buck counting DLC. I personaly play with this DLC disabled. But if you believe everything you read here then that must mean I suck at Xcom.

I have mixed feelings on whether this DLC is worth the pricetag, but the reason I gave it an up-thumb is that it changes the difficulty of the game in a perfect way for my personal tastes and playstyle, and I haven't found a reliable mod that does what this DLC does to the game.

It makes the game less difficult on 80% of the missions, but makes the 20% of missions with ruler much harder (don't quote me on the percentages, that's a guesstimate on how often I saw them). This is personal perference, but I enjoy this change in gameplay. So basically, the game difficulty is more spikey, but on average easier.

The way it makes the game easier is the weapons it introduces are powerful. The new weapons - a unique frost grenade, a unique rifle, a unique sword (axe), and an unique pistol. If you utilize them immediately and correctly (ie using frost grenades via grenadiers), they really make it hard for most missions without rulers to mess you up as badly. To me, X-Com 2 is now more relaxing on most missions - something I enjoy - while still throwing in very difficult missions with alien rulers for challenge.

TLDR: New equipment is overpowered and makes original game way too easy. Boss aliens you find break core game mechanics and are unsatisfying to fight and horribly balanced. Wait until modders balance new content.

As a seasoned veteren of Long War (945 hours, Brutal Ironman Wins) this DLC is wholly unsatisfying to include in an Xcom 2 playthough. The joy of finding some hulking monstrosity to bring down is the complexity of balancing defensive gameplay and control of the alien with an output of aggression that will bring it down eventually.

The alien bosses break the game at its core, pure and simple. In a turn based strategy game, giving something as powerful as one of the alien bosses a free move everytime you make an action (blue move) destroys any hope of a fun and satisfying engagement. Yes, you should dread running into one of these beasts but there are much better ways of doing it. You cannot play defensively against it as it will run any suppression without fear (with its enormous health) and effect grenades (frost or flash) will wear off in 2 of IT'S turns.

Since you cannot control it and it will always out-maneuver you regardless of positioning the engagement is unsatisfying you will ultimately suffer losses. It doesn't feel fair when you suffer casulties however since it can have 12 moves during your turn and you often just have to wait out its onslaught until it decides it is bored and teleports away. I don't accept the reasoning that the new equipment is designed to help you in these engagements and they make standard encounters laughably easy.

I like what they envisioned with this DLC, I really do, but it suffers from the worst balancing I have seen from Fairaxis in any content they have I have experienced. The new equipment trivialises standard engagments so the challenge suddenly comes from these boss engagements, which are random and unsatisfying. I have actually uninstalled this content as it ruins the rest of a fantastic game.

The story mission is ok, nothing special. Was nice to hear from Dr. Vhalin again and cool to see Bradford in the field but you will probably play it once and never again.

My advice is to hold off purchasing this content until either Long War Studios or other modders have had a serious crack at balancing both the equipment and the boss encounters.

Makes a game that already has an absolutely broken, horribly-designed difficulty "curve" even worse by introducing enemies that break the rules and can show up anytime, even during a mission that is already far too hard. Buy only if you enjoy masochism and losing entire squads to a single foe.

One of the worst DLC's ever designed by Firaxis, absoleutly terrible. Instead of designing enemies that are a challenge, they implement the most frustrating system for your rookies to deal with. Rulers are units in the game that can move whenever your soldiers do an action. That means it is possible for the alien ruler to make 12 actions. The weapons are also kinda lackluster and the dlc is overall a mess. I actually enjoyed the XCOM EU dlc's with the Triad more than this. It would make sense if the rulers were introduced oh you know when you have guass weapons but nope, they do it with your weak rookies to screw you over at the start of the game.

Bad DLC, ruins XCOM 2 for those who use it.

Honestly after a couple playthroughs I have to say that this is not a very good piece of DLC, I would not even call it decent. In a nutshell the alien rulers are not really fun to play against, as they can have up to 12 actions a turn and on top of that have really overpowered skills.

I've played mostly on the hardest difficulty and a little on the second to hardest, and can't really say this has done anything to enhance my "gameplay experience". They instead make me truly hate their appearance on missions and more often than not end up ruining my fun with the game completely. It's not the fact that I lose troops, but the fact that they are not fair or fun to fight against.

The "rulers" don't provide a nice tactical conundrum for you to solve, they instead turn the game into an RNG based damage mitigation roulette. They all have the ability to knock troops unconcious, they all deal a ton of damage and on top of all this they have the aforementioned 12 actions a turn and a bunch of AoE damage.

And the armors that they drop look like they are the rejected designs from some low budget 90's superhero cartoon, not only that, but they look completely out of place in the game and generally detract from the cohesiveness of the art direction (If you care for such things).

The 4 weapons that come with the DLC are nice, but do not justify the asking price of this DLC in my opinion.

I love Xcom 2. It is a balance of challenge and fun with a pintch of strategy. Then I see this DLC being installed since i have the $90 version of the game. At first i was excited and eager to start playing. The Viper King is, in my opinion, awesome. I love that challenge of the DLC. Then I kill it. You would think another mission would pop up to continue the story line right? Wrong. The DLC will just send another ruler your way. I can't get past the second boss of the three that are in the DLC. As I have seen in a review, it is much better for you to dissmiss every single one of your units and not worry about anything above the Viper King. The two after are over-powered and, in my opinion, impossible. Do not buy this DLC. It will end all of your play throughs of the game either from no more units, no more Avenger, or the Avatar Project is complete. Reason for that last one is: the first time you play through and figure out what you are up against, you will eventually restart and work on weapons and armour before your objective to at least give you a minuscule fighting chance.

I do not recommend this DLC for any one, no matter how good at he game you are.

This DLC is a complete trap the first time you play it and will ruin the first campaign you try with the DLC installed unless you read extensively ahead of time about the alien rulers, what triggers them to spawn, and how to fight them. If you are not carefully prepared when you encounter your first alien ruler, they will likely kill several soldiers and soon after make your campaign unwinnable.

Once you understand their mechanics and how to delay them from spawning, they are beatable, but can still ruin a campaign if they spawn at the wrong moment. That's right -- a single RNG roll can end your campaign. Even when you encounter them in a beatable situation, they just are not that fun to fight. There is only a single strategy that works against them, so every encounter with the alien rulers is exactly the same.

In short, this DLC takes an exceptional game and makes it much, much worse. Do not buy.