XCOM 1 or 2?

[Silverraptor]

Agreed, 2 is the better experience, and it assumes you 'lost' at XCOM 1. Though you'll want to grab the Expansion as well, as it made a lot of performance improvements that were unfortunately not back-ported to the base game.

Actually, how I understood it, XCOM 2 still happens even after you 'win' the first game as well.

Spoiler: Xcom 2 story spoiler

Show

At the beginning, you, the player, are rescued by the remnants of XCOM from a machine that had you hooked up running combat simulations in your head about the alien's initial invasion. Meaning essentially, that every game from Xcom: Enemy unknown/within is technically an xcom 2 moment where you are running another simulation in your head before XCOM rescues you in 2. It was actually a very ingenious way of tying the two games together whether or not you win the first game at all.

As for my opinion on which game to get (Even though any sale is likely over) the difference is what kind of flavor you want with your gameplay? Do you want to be the earth defense force and try to cover every country for defense as aliens pop up here and there and you have to defend humanity, pick 1. If you want to flip to roles and make you the infiltrators attacking all around the planet and keeping the defense force guess, play 2. Otherwise, the gameplay is pretty damn close.

[boomwolf]

The biggest issue with immersion breaking in the first game though, is how scares manpower is.

you are supposed to be a multi-national organization with funding through the roof while there are multiple armies worth of humans still fighting the alien-why does it cost so much to recruit a handful of rookies?
Guys can't even handle heavy weapons, lay proper suppressing fire, or do much of anything beyond pointing in the general direction and pulling the trigger-they are NOT top of the line troopers, they are more like fresh out of basic training.

You want to tell me that you really can't get them by the hundreds and deploy dozens of people into every fight?
Especially after you run 4-5 successful missions and prove that you CAN handle the aliens, while everyone else is miserably failing? what kind of moron isn't sending you whole platoons to at least train if not outright command at this point?
Why are they NOT mass producing the tech you uncover? (why are you not distributing said tech either?)


In the second the lacking manpower makes sense.
You are on the run, feared and hated by most of the foolish mass, nobody has your back and you rely on recruiting random stragglers, loners and resistance members that don't trust anyone (for a good reason) and are basically scattered.
The way the game plays out is far more rational given the fact you are the resistance rather than the top-of-the-line defenders of earth.

[Bastian Weaver]

Well, X-COM 2 had all those cool underwater creatures, but they pumped the difficulty so high that I never got past mid-game. The tech tree was too complex, as well, having to research specific topics in a specific order to get to the stuff that you need.
X-COM 1 had no cool underwater creatures, but researching stuff made sense. So I'd vote for the first one.

[Hunter Noventa]

Well, X-COM 2 had all those cool underwater creatures, but they pumped the difficulty so high that I never got past mid-game. The tech tree was too complex, as well, having to research specific topics in a specific order to get to the stuff that you need.
X-COM 1 had no cool underwater creatures, but researching stuff made sense. So I'd vote for the first one.

Ah, talking about the originals. The difficulty thing is actually a big, int he original it was locked to the lowest difficulty regardless of what you chose, and people complained...so they increased the difficulty, but didn't fix the bug for Terror From the Deep, so it was super hard no matter the difficulty there.

[Bastian Weaver]

Ah, talking about the originals. The difficulty thing is actually a big, int he original it was locked to the lowest difficulty regardless of what you chose, and people complained...so they increased the difficulty, but didn't fix the bug for Terror From the Deep, so it was super hard no matter the difficulty there.

Indeed! If I remember correctly, the difficulty setting in the first one only affected the frequency of UFO appearing, the higher the difficulty - the less UFOs there was, and the less money you could make. And you didn't even need the more powerful weapons - it was possible to bring down a battle ship with simple interceptors, and beat the final mission with laser rifles (but a psi-lab still was useful, to find out which of your troopers have higher resistance to mind control).
The second one was out for your blood from the start, and it only got worse.

[Abemad]

Ah, talking about the originals. The difficulty thing is actually a big, int he original it was locked to the lowest difficulty regardless of what you chose, and people complained...so they increased the difficulty, but didn't fix the bug for Terror From the Deep, so it was super hard no matter the difficulty there.

And speaking of the originals, here's the obligatory link to openxcom - it makes it easy to run and mod the originals.

[Bastian Weaver]

Thank you. I've never heard of them before. Nice to know there are people out there who keep fighting the good fight against the Sectoids and their ilk!

[tonberrian]

Man, mind control is so buggered in 1. You have to kill off any mind-controlled dudes to finish any mission that requires eliminating the enemy.

This even includes the final mission. Killing the final dude doesn't trigger the end of the mission as it should if you've got a mind-controlled dude. I know, because I just did it.

Luckily AoE can kill off mind-controls if you have to.

[deuterio12]

The biggest issue with immersion breaking in the first game though, is how scares manpower is.

you are supposed to be a multi-national organization with funding through the roof while there are multiple armies worth of humans still fighting the alien-why does it cost so much to recruit a handful of rookies?
Guys can't even handle heavy weapons, lay proper suppressing fire, or do much of anything beyond pointing in the general direction and pulling the trigger-they are NOT top of the line troopers, they are more like fresh out of basic training.

You want to tell me that you really can't get them by the hundreds and deploy dozens of people into every fight?
Especially after you run 4-5 successful missions and prove that you CAN handle the aliens, while everyone else is miserably failing? what kind of moron isn't sending you whole platoons to at least train if not outright command at this point?
Why are they NOT mass producing the tech you uncover? (why are you not distributing said tech either?)

In my head there's a couple explanations for that:
1-The troops you recruit are technically elite, however any area with aliens will be saturated with dangerous unknown radiations, so their efficiency drops to that of rookies until they've fought a bunch of missions and grown more resistant to it. That's also why you can't just bring dozens/hundreds of cheap cannon fodder. They would just collapse down vomiting or worst. In particular in X-com 1 in the mission where your base is attacked turns out you have a bunch of extra cannon fodder standing by, which were useable because for once you weren't fighting in an area already saturated by alien radiations. That would also explain why you can't just move your fancy new alien hybrid weapons to world-scale mass production, only your veteran troops can handle them.

2-Despite all the fanfare, your organization's sponsors are actually riddled down with corruption and petty in-fighting. After all do you expect all countries of the world to suddenly drop their old grudges and start working in perfect harmony? No, they'll be delaying their promised payments or shifting them to their own secret national projects, thus X-com has to stop the aliens with the equivalent of scraps when all's said and done. In particular there's several hints the aliens are already infiltrating the governments themselves, so they would further hinder your resource gathering. And since you're playing a military dude, you can't really hope to do politics or intrigue, just make due with what you get.

[Bastian Weaver]

Man, mind control is so buggered in 1. You have to kill off any mind-controlled dudes to finish any mission that requires eliminating the enemy.

Doesn't stunning them work, though?

[tensai_oni]

Ah, talking about the originals. The difficulty thing is actually a big, int he original it was locked to the lowest difficulty regardless of what you chose, and people complained...so they increased the difficulty, but didn't fix the bug for Terror From the Deep, so it was super hard no matter the difficulty there.

That's a myth. I mean, the part where the difficulty is locked to lowest (after the first battle at least) in Enemy Unknown is true, but the difficulty bug is fixed for Terror from the Deep. You're not always playing on Superhuman, it just feels like it because that game is hard and not in a fun way either.

Don't worry though, TftD had a lot of other, new bugs to make up for fixing this one.

Indeed! If I remember correctly, the difficulty setting in the first one only affected the frequency of UFO appearing, the higher the difficulty - the less UFOs there was, and the less money you could make.

Not really. Any correlation between difficulty level and frequency of UFO appearances is coincidental. It could be that aliens generated missions that take place away from where you located your base though.

As for making money, higher difficulties are actually better for it because UFOs have larger crews, which means more corpses and especially more weapons/mind probes/other expensive equipment to sell. This assumes you'll manage to kill the crew first, of course.

The biggest issue with immersion breaking in the first game though, is how scares manpower is.

you are supposed to be a multi-national organization with funding through the roof while there are multiple armies worth of humans still fighting the alien-why does it cost so much to recruit a handful of rookies?

XCOM soldiers are elites, that's why they're expensive. It's just that in an alien invasion, being the best of the best means little when you face off against strange powers and powerful unknown technology - at least until your soldiers learn in practice and adjust their training to fighting an extraterrestrial threat. Which is what gaining experience and new ranks represent.

As to why your squads are so small - the Skyranger can only carry so many people. Look how fast the Skyranger moves on the geoscape, no other aircraft can reach this kind of ridiculous speeds. It's the only craft that can react fast enough to alien abductions, landings and terror missions, anything else won't make there in time. And since its carrying capacity is limited to 4-6 people, that's the best you can take with you.

The new XCOM isn't a series about using human waves of rookies like how some people played the old X-Com titles. It's about utilizing small, elite strike teams.

[Anteros]

The biggest issue with immersion breaking in the first game though, is how scares manpower is.

you are supposed to be a multi-national organization with funding through the roof while there are multiple armies worth of humans still fighting the alien-why does it cost so much to recruit a handful of rookies?
Guys can't even handle heavy weapons, lay proper suppressing fire, or do much of anything beyond pointing in the general direction and pulling the trigger-they are NOT top of the line troopers, they are more like fresh out of basic training.

You want to tell me that you really can't get them by the hundreds and deploy dozens of people into every fight?
Especially after you run 4-5 successful missions and prove that you CAN handle the aliens, while everyone else is miserably failing? what kind of moron isn't sending you whole platoons to at least train if not outright command at this point?
Why are they NOT mass producing the tech you uncover? (why are you not distributing said tech either?)


In the second the lacking manpower makes sense.
You are on the run, feared and hated by most of the foolish mass, nobody has your back and you rely on recruiting random stragglers, loners and resistance members that don't trust anyone (for a good reason) and are basically scattered.
The way the game plays out is far more rational given the fact you are the resistance rather than the top-of-the-line defenders of earth.

Maybe humans in the X-Com universe are just really incompetent by default?

It would explain why the governments need you to do everything for them. And why entire cities in heavily armed countries get decimated by enemies who slowly walk towards them that they outnumber on a scale of millions to one.

[tensai_oni]

And why entire cities in heavily armed countries get decimated by enemies who slowly walk towards them that they outnumber on a scale of millions to one.

What millions to one? Surely you can't expect untrained (or barely trained) civilians to take out aliens with powered armor and plasma weaponry, no matter how many of the former there is.

According to the sequel, aliens used the heaviest hitters such as Sectopods against the world's armies. Considering sending a whole squad of fresh rookies with human-level weapons and armor against a lone sectopod will end up with a TPK for the former and maybe a few points of damage for the latter, I can believe that a squad of Sectopods can totally obliterate a small human army. Especially since aliens have the advantage of being able to pick their fights, attacking high value or vulnerable targets instead of fighting pitched battles against the human forces.

[Anteros]

What millions to one? Surely you can't expect untrained (or barely trained) civilians to take out aliens with powered armor and plasma weaponry, no matter how many of the former there is.

According to the sequel, aliens used the heaviest hitters such as Sectopods against the world's armies. Considering sending a whole squad of fresh rookies with human-level weapons and armor against a lone sectopod will end up with a TPK for the former and maybe a few points of damage for the latter, I can believe that a squad of Sectopods can totally obliterate a small human army. Especially since aliens have the advantage of being able to pick their fights, attacking high value or vulnerable targets instead of fighting pitched battles against the human forces.

Sure, but you can have entire cities decimated by early game enemies if you don't show up to help them. The game assumes an unrealistic level of incompetence in the world's militaries in order to make the narrative work. Which is fine, because it wouldn't be a very interesting game otherwise.

[warty goblin]

According to the sequel, aliens used the heaviest hitters such as Sectopods against the world's armies. Considering sending a whole squad of fresh rookies with human-level weapons and armor against a lone sectopod will end up with a TPK for the former and maybe a few points of damage for the latter, I can believe that a squad of Sectopods can totally obliterate a small human army. Especially since aliens have the advantage of being able to pick their fights, attacking high value or vulnerable targets instead of fighting pitched battles against the human forces.

Actual armies have much heavier weapons. Like proper anti-tank rockets. If its damaged by a handheld grenade, it's wrecked by a Javelin.


Basically XCOM makes no sense as a game about alien invasions, because it's fundamentally a fantasy special forces vs. terrorists game, but with aliens instead of terrorists. So far as I can tell, this is true at pretty much every level of both games, except for their absurd plots. I mean in the first game the best way to win is to set up surveillance satellites everywhere, because an orbiting camera is definitely going to phase beings that have mastered interstellar travel. Except for maybe the early game, your soldiers have at least as good of equipment, and better training and abilities than the enemy. In the second game you somehow fly around hostile airspace all the time in a flying aircraft carrier.

[tensai_oni]

Agreed, it's not a War of the Worlds style alien invasion game. It's a game about fighting terrorists who are also aliens. They act like terrorists and even have agendas like terrorists - to destabilize and pressure countries by show of force that makes them feel paranoid or powerless.

This has been true for the series since the very first X-Com way back in 1994. The aliens' goal is not to conquer Earth militarily but to infiltrate human governments and pressure them into signing an alliance pact. They do have some very substantial firepower and basically unlimited resources, but they always have bigger plans for humanity than just annihilation so they pick a more subtle (and insidious) approach than brute force.

[Knaight]

Actual armies have much heavier weapons. Like proper anti-tank rockets. If its damaged by a handheld grenade, it's wrecked by a Javelin.

Not to mention vehicles - XCOM involves taking out alien land forces entirely with infantry, while dealing with ships entirely with individual fighter deployments. Even a crappy tank seems like it could utterly wreck a sectopod, an attack helicopter seems like it would just be hilariously effective against basically everything you see on the ground.

[tensai_oni]

Not to mention vehicles - XCOM involves taking out alien land forces entirely with infantry, while dealing with ships entirely with individual fighter deployments. Even a crappy tank seems like it could utterly wreck a sectopod, an attack helicopter seems like it would just be hilariously effective against basically everything you see on the ground.

For what it's worth, War of the Chosen has event missions where Advent fields armored combat vehicles against you, and they're hilariously easy to take down. They're not tanks, but I assume with Advent's access to alien tech they might be better than any land vehicle Earth could field 20 years prior.

As for individual fighters, remember that XCOM's Interceptors (and X-Com's Interceptors in the original game too) are basically overengineered super tech as far as human vehicles go. The Avalanche missile has a nuclear payload for crying out loud! And yet these nuke-equipped super fighters have trouble bringing down most but the smallest, most basic alien UFOs.

Standard fighters wouldn't stand a chance, no matter how many of them are there.

[Triaxx]

I always think of it like Independence Day, huge swarms doing bugger all.

[deuterio12]

To be fair some Xcom's maps do show stuff like wrecked human tanks, suggesting there's big battles going around.

Plus:
-You know how the maps often start dark? No satelite coverage or anything, the aliens clearly have some really good jamming tech so air support isn't that effective if you lack boots in the ground to actually pinpoint the targets.
-You want to capture that fancy alien tech to reverse-engineer it, thus just carpet bombing the area would be counter-productive (doubly so when it's an urban area). Not to mention actually capture some aliens alive to gently question them and learn the secrets of psionics.