Originally Posted by
warty goblin
Decided to waste some more time with XCOM 2 this weekend. As happens whenever I pick up XCOM again, it makes an overwhelmingly positive first impression. Everything looks super cool, the game feel legible, and kicking E.T.s ass has seldom been so much fun.
...And then the usual school of irritations start gnawing, piranha-like, at the edges of my enjoyment. Why does Bradford never, ever, ever just shut up? Why are there these frequent random pauses after an action where nothing happens for several seconds? Why are there two entirely different systems for advancing soldiers, using two (or three) kinds of XP, in two entirely different screens? How is it that with the large piles of money thrown at this, it has one of the least easy to navigate UIs of any move-n-shoot TBS game I've played? Did their UI designer just give up, drink a quart of gin, and move to Tahiti to become a spear fisherman? Why won't Bradford stop yammering at me about the campaign missions, when the campaign missions are total traps that must be engaged with extreme caution? Why is the campaign designed to stomp you so hard for actually taking your advisers' advice? Is it actually beneficial to have to manage my solders' bromances and various psychiatric problems? If Bradford tells me that the aliens continue to make progress on the Avatar project, is it physically possible for me to chew my own ears off?
I like XCOM, I just fine myself wishing there was a bit less of it. They've packed so much into them that you can just about feel the game starting to burst at the seams, like a boardgame with one too many expansions packed recklessly into the box. The tactical battles are great, but there's just so many of them that one starts to lose motivation for a random battle to stop a random bad thing from happening. Same with the Geoscape, the game throws options at you like condoms during move-in week at college. Which is weird, because the only gameplay on the Geoscape is go there and wait for a timer, which will inevitably be interrupted by Bradford blathering at me about another time somewhere else. I need XCOM 2: But 3/4 as Much version.