Dude, all you have to do is use the workshop mods to alter it to your liking.

I beat longwar on hard. spend some time and learn the mechanics. this mod is a must have for anyone who loves Xcom2

It's supposed to be hard. That being said, unless you are in a region with ballooning ADVENT Strength, missions shouldn't be impossible with 20-25 enemies, although there are exceptions. Generally, you want to try to get to Very Light, and you'll get those amounts of enemies up until around Strength 5, and that's where you'll get ballooning pod sizes and enemy numbers.

Boosting infiltration is extremely important as you can lower the amount of enemies significantly by spending Intel. It's not something that you can just willy nilly do unless you are on Veteran (I'd say that the costs in Veteran are such that you can throw it around pretty easily without any real issues.)

I'd also recommend Robojumper's series of mods, including the ones that show infiltration percentage in the squad loadout screen. It'll show you what infiltration you will get to AND approximately what the boosted infiltration will be. You need to be very careful about when the percentages are extremely close around 100% as I don't think it takes the skyranger travel time into account, so generally you need to be at or around 101% to ensure that you have 100% infiltration.

As for a soldier running up to your soldier when he was on overwatch, enemies can get abilities just like your soldiers that allow them to not trigger overwatch, and overwatch itself is nowhere near as powerful as it was in the original Long War. It still has its uses on a soldier or two in your squad though, and I generally always have a Ranger (or if you roll lucky in the AWC) that has all the overwatch perks. The good thing about Rangers is they generally are versatile enough to either shoot a couple of times at people with decent shot percentages, shoot once, and overwatch multiple times potentially, or suppress to try and control a target (although Covering Fire is able to do that with less ammo usage although it doesn't confer nearly as much of an aim malus).

Shinobis are EXTREMELY important, because if you use them correctly they will give you the ability to play a lot more aggressively and move your soldiers up without triggering more enemies on the map. You don't really want to be using shinobis for killing people, unless ♥♥♥♥ is hitting the fan and you need everyone to be killing units every turn and you are confident that being aggressive won't trigger more pods. The key is using your shinobi to clear a corridor for your Assaults, Technicals, and other high move soldiers, and investing in the left tree of perks will almost ensure that your shinobi is able to get in extremely close without losing concealment, and once you get Tradecraft (I believe that's what its called), you are able to basically have an extra soldier for free, who's main job it is to scout for the rest of the squad and then get their hands dirty if need be.

Sharpshooters specialized with all of the aim bonuses, death from above, as well as some other specific perks are also extremely important too, because they're a source of fairly reliable damage when given the right PCSs combined with their high aim progression. Some people say that Snapshot is far better given how missions work in XCOM 2 with turn timers but I've found that it isn't hard to stick your sniper in good positions, and then have them sprint closer to the fight to extract once the threats have been taken care of. And if you have an elevated position, you can stick a stock on your soldier and suddenly you have the ability to potentially kill a target, and then use the extra action you get from DFA to resteady and continue the chain again next turn. Having 2 Sharpshooters in your squads that are assaulting the regional HQ or some other big big missions allows you to be able to use your snipers to work in tandem with each other, as one can holotarget, and the other can shoot, or both can shoot and potentially resteady. There's a few different strategies that you can employ but Sharpshooters are an important tool that every squad needs to have, and not having one can be crippling, since sharpshooters will stay relevant throughout longer missions, where grenadiers, and technicals are more geared towards shorter missions.

Grenadiers and Technicals are an important part of any squad, and when used in the right way they can attack multiple enemies, clear the cover off of multiple enemies, and pave the way for your other soldiers who don't rely on consumables to drop enemies left, right and center. Personally for me, I think there's only one way to build the Grenadier and that's taking Sapper, Tandem Warheads, and other specific things that are mainly purposed around removing cover and dealing the same amount of damage to all enemies that you target with your grenades, but I think Grenadiers are best specializing in doing that one thing. Specialists can also be extremely useful here because they can give grenades to your grenadiers with airdrop once they run out of grenades, which means that your specialists can be extremely useful in combat even if they're not the ones using the grenades themselves.

Technicals on the other hand aren't as easy to shoehorn, I tend to gravitate towards the flamethrower side of things because you get the ability to panic/disorient targets, not to mention the high chance you'll set the target on fire, which for the vast majority of enemies makes them harmless for at least 1 turn, more if they panic. The only downside is they're far more risky in terms of positioning, since you have to push forward into the enemies which carries the risk of spotting more enemies, which... well, we know what that entails. You can go down the rocket tree but I find that rockets are just... mediocre. Like, you'll have times where rockets are straight amazing, and then times where the rocket just misses because of scatter, or does minimum damage and just makes you sad. That's not to say that there isn't usefulness with rockets but, I don't find myself using them nearly as much.

Specialists are very interesting. On one hand, you can make them an extremely effective overwatcher. Or, you can give them things like Combat Protocol which increases their utility in providing a source of guaranteed damage as well as a counter to robotic units. Airdrop grenades as mentioned before are INCREDIBLY valuable, Field Surgeon as well is an amazing perk in that it gives you 1 more hp of threshold before someone will actually be wounded, i.e. if someone has 6 HP, an enemy has to get them to 5 HP before they're actually wounded. Combat Protocol is something that is incredibly useful early on, but starts to drop off a bit later compared to things like Revival Protocol and Medical Protocol/Field Medic. Yeah, you could make the argument that Medkits are bad, but there's nothing quite like being able to stabilize someone at the touch of a button, as well as reviving them as well. Aid Protocol is also something that's incredibly valuable. Stick them on your Assault with Lightning Reflexes, and suddenly they can run multiple overwatches with a lot less risk, or protecting someone who is in half cover, or giving someone more of a chance to dodge when you don't have someone with Lightning Reflexes. Also only takes one action, so you can aid protocol and then shoot or perform another action. A lot of people don't realize just how versatile it is (or a lot of the Specialist's skills for that matter).

Gunners. Now here's an interesting and versatile class. You can gear someone for full area suppression builds, complete with being able to hit targets that are suppressed far more easily, and do more damage to them on top of it. You can build them in a more tanky way. You can also build them in such a way that allows you to really become a vital part of your team with impactful class abilities like, Hail of Bullets, which is Guaranteed Damage on a cooldown, Demolition, which is fairly reliable cover destruction on a cooldown, Overwatch perks like Cool Under Pressure which makes the Cannon hit like a truck especially if you build for reaction shots and give your gunner tracer rounds. Saturation Fire, which gives you the ability to fire at a lot of targets, not guaranteed damage mind you but still an interesting ability. Killzone, which is incredibly useful as well because you can get so many overwatch shots off, and combine that with Cool Under Pressure... oh ho ho. Love them. I don't make a ton of gunners in my campaigns, but the ones that I do create are absolutely vital to my squads that I send out.

Assaults... they're quite interesting. I generally use them as a way to drop huge amounts of single target damage on something. They're very much a soldier that has the ability to just, go and do something at the drop of a button, and while there can be some risk in charging, that's the nature of the Assault. Obviously, they're a class that you have to really get used to within the context of LW2, which is not unlike how you have to get used to Shinobis in LW2. Now, you could go down the middle tree which gives you effectively an unlimited source of disorientation at the very least, or an incredibly amazing feeling when you stun a target for a turn and don't have to deal with them for a bit. I tend to think that Electroshock is on one hand quite OP in certain context, especially when combined with Chain Lightning. It's something that you can't ignore and you can build your assault as far more of a, second-line, defensive option for your squad. Again, I don't tend to build that way, as I stick more towards damage, but Assaults have options.

Psi-Ops. Extremely valuable. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. They're incredibly, incredibly powerful. You don't *NEED* a Psi-Op, but once you train them, I don't think there's a more versatile soldier out there, with regards to being able to be aggressive at the drop of a hat, or defensive by managing the battle with Stasis and other incredibly impactful abilities.

Coming around to the point of my long winded rant, the fact of the matter is that once you understand the mechanics of LW and LW2, there is so much depth and so much here with regards to expression of strategy and how you want to play. LW2 has far more strategic depth than the base game, and the mechanics of LW2 thematically fit perfectly. You're fighting a guerrilla campaign, you can't go on every single mission and there are far more important missions that you need to prioritize whenever they come up, especially missions that give you corpses for research as well as resources like alloys, elerium crystals, and elerium cores. Not to mention weapon mods and PCSs. Is there a bit of a curve? Absolutely. But that's just it, this didn't get to be one of the most popular XCOM 2 mods (or XCOM mods for that matter, there's a reason why Long War is legendary) because its bad. It's an amazing achievement of expanding upon what is already a great game (not sure I'd say that vanilla XCOM is a great strategy game, but I'm really being hard on it because I love my strategy games with depth and difficulty).

I implore you to take a bit of time and understand the basics of the mod, because once you have grasped the intention of what this mod is trying to do, it's incredibly fun, and the end result once you have achieved victory is even more satisfying than the base game.

I'm sorry but "You moved to the wrong square despite no indication of it being the wrong square, 30 enemies jump out and massacre your squad!" is not good design. To make matters worse, this was an "Extremely Light" enemy presence. This the behavior of the kind of jerkwad who hosts a D&D campaign and has a trap or unkillable monster murder the party within 5 minutes of starting play. The interesting additions and new mechanics added to the game are wasted because they are all hidden behind the aforementioned brick wall. It's a shame that this mod has so much potential for expanding the game but that potential is wasted on the designers' obsession with sadistically unfair difficulty. Having encountered the same problems with Long War 1, I can't say I'm surprised by it. Egregiously disappointed, but not all surprised.

Kind of agree with both sides here.

The core issue is that pods are grouped too closely together. So, when fighting a single pod, the other nearby pods will often trigger just by proximity during the natural movements of fighting the original pod. It is my only complaint with LW2, and it can be a demoralizing flaw in an otherwise spectacular mod.