XCOM 2 is on sale 60% off...

[Avilan the Grey]

...And I am... debating whether or not to pick it up.

Two things really is telling me no:

1. The silly reason: I really REALLY detest that they made a "sequel" that makes losing the first game "canon". Makes me feel like all I did in the first game was pointless, somehow.
2. Timed missions. I HATED them in XCOM. And now apparently many many of the missions are timed. There are mods to remove the timer, but that seems... cheap.

A minor problem is also that I honestly prefer the graphics style from the first game.

[boomwolf]

Get it. It is so much better than the first game.

Losing bring cannon let's the game move on without having to give the aliens a "this isn't even my final form" excuse to how you are the underdog again, and the setup to being a resistance actually fits so much better than a multi national government agency that somehow only have a handful of untrained rookies as thier forces.


As for the timed missions, they work great. They give a sense of urgency that you can't just camp forever and wait, and it fits because you are a resistance, you just can't afford to be slow and steady, but in the other hand you got the advantage of striking them when and where they don't expect it, as it goes in game with the concealment mechanics.


The upcoming expansion will only improve upon it with the other resistance cells you can cooperate with, and the chosen that activity hunt you down, making the whole dynamic so much more interesting.

Is also recommend to get she's last gift and the alien rulers DLCs. And play them in the original way, without the expansion integration option - the story missions there who are not in the integrated version are quite fun, and well written. (God damnit vallan! You crazy woman!)
You can't use the integrated version without having the DLCs to begin with, but do them at least once without integrating.

The cosmetic one (anarchy's children?) isn't very important.

[Sian]

1. The silly reason: I really REALLY detest that they made a "sequel" that makes losing the first game "canon". Makes me feel like all I did in the first game was pointless, somehow.

Actually it could be read a bit more involved than that ... It's suggested that in the first game you failed the first invasion mission, but that the commander was plugged up in their neural network thingy and made to believe to have been successful and then 'playing' (maybe up to several thousands of times) through the rest of the first game as part of their tactical R&D program, which was used to train their officers

[Silfir]

The silly reason: I really REALLY detest that they made a "sequel" that makes losing the first game "canon". Makes me feel like all I did in the first game was pointless, somehow.

More pointless than if the second game told you that you didn't win the first game after all because *actually*, there are even more aliens, and then found some contrivance to put you back at square one in the tech tree ("No, you still have plasma weapons. They just suck now for some reason") and all your experienced soldiers are gone?

In a way, XCOM 2's alternate timeline approach is more respectful of the canonicity of your victory in the first game than any other. "You won. You won so thoroughly we had to move to another timeline so we still get to have an underdog man vs. alien story. Well done you."



Can't particularly help you with the turn limits. They're a reaction to the fact that the optimal strategy in Enemy Unknown was to slowly crawl across the map carefully engaging one pod at a time, because there were virtually no repercussions to taking forever to complete a mission. It should be mentioned that XCOM 2 has a vibrant modding culture and a turn limit remover or extender mod is just one of many available.

[Sian]

And the fact that most missions have a fairly premissive timer ... as long as you don't inches forward at a snails pace, you should have ample time, even if your forced to hunker for a couple to fight opponents

[Eldan]

Yeah, that. The timer is there for one reason. To prevent the winning tactic from the first game, moving single steps and then overwatch-spamming, from being quite so prevalent. It still works, but you'll occasionally have to take a risk.

I played quite mobile and the timer was never much of a problem. Occasionally, you'd rn into something that's hard to handle, sure, but it works.

Additionally, the aliens move and patrol areas, now, so the "I just activated three pods" thing is no longer happening, as such.

Really, the only complaint I had about XCOM2 was that after finishing it, I wished there was more of it.

[kraftcheese]

It's a GREAT game, better than #1; I highly recommend it.

[tigerusthegreat]

Yeah, that. The timer is there for one reason. To prevent the winning tactic from the first game, moving single steps and then overwatch-spamming, from being quite so prevalent. It still works, but you'll occasionally have to take a risk.

I played quite mobile and the timer was never much of a problem. Occasionally, you'd rn into something that's hard to handle, sure, but it works.

Additionally, the aliens move and patrol areas, now, so the "I just activated three pods" thing is no longer happening, as such.

Really, the only complaint I had about XCOM2 was that after finishing it, I wished there was more of it.

Out of all problems a game could have, tgat is the best one (as long as you feel that there was enoigh content for the price)

[Avilan the Grey]

So... next question: Is the Reinforcement Pack worth 10 euros? It seems so, though I really REALLY hate the look of the Alien Hunter armor (I honestly laughed my ass of looking at the stupid design) and I won't use 80% of the Anarchy's Children stuff. I prefer the Army look.

Also, I am pretty sure I will install the mod that removes the timer from missions. I absolutely hated the timed missions in the first game, and I'm just not good enough at these kind of games to not turtle.

[Eldan]

Try it first? I was never all that good at the game either. I stayed far away from Impossible difficulty or Iron Man. On Normal, I think the timer really works well and I hated Meld in the first game, as well as timers in general.

[Avilan the Grey]

Try it first? I was never all that good at the game either. I stayed far away from Impossible difficulty or Iron Man. On Normal, I think the timer really works well and I hated Meld in the first game, as well as timers in general.

That's encouraging.

[warty goblin]

The thing about the timer is that, at least on normal, it makes you take a few risks in a smart way. This vastly improves the game, since it requires you to maintain forward momentum as much as possible. 99% of the time, this is literally it's only effect.

Very occasionally, some combination of map, enemy placement, and other forms of cused bad luck will bork stuff up for you, and the timer is a real problem. I recall one extraction mission where I was just plain out of time and there were some bad enemy reinforcements. Injudicious use of explosives had removed pretty much all cover near the drop point, so I had people standing out of cover, people sprinting to extract, the entire thing was a glorious mess. Turned out to be one of the most tense and fun missions of the game.

And usually on the big, complicated story missions there is no timer, so you can take as much time as you need to systematically murder all the faces. This also goes a reasonable distance to making different missions actually play differently.


There's also some stuff that I don't really like about the game so much.

After the substantial strides that Enemy Within made in allowing some degree of mechanical individuality in your grunts, XCOM 2 takes a couple steps back. Guns are literally more unique and harder to replace than most of your soldiers will be.


There's still too damn many missions, and power treadmill is still too much a numbers game, too little a diversity game. So you're shooting bigger numbers at aliens with bigger numbers, but it's still very much the same as the first mission.

The game spends a lot of time and effort establishing a sense of urgency. Unfortunately if you actually push the plot events as hard as the game tells you to, you will get totally screwed. XCOM2 basically beats you over the head for actually playing it the way it tells you to. This pisses me off.

It still uses the same bloody pod system.


Overall I think it's certainly better than vanilla XCOM, and maybe about equal with Enemy Within - I really like the stuff Enemy Within added. My problem was that most of the stuff that annoyed me about Enemy Within is still there (pods, too many missions, pointless leveling treadmill) and I'd already tolerated that stuff about as long as I wanted to. So I think I don't actually like it as well, because I was pre-exhausted of the bits of the XCOM formula I don't like, even though it improved the good parts.

[Theodoric]

So... next question: Is the Reinforcement Pack worth 10 euros? It seems so, though I really REALLY hate the look of the Alien Hunter armor (I honestly laughed my ass of looking at the stupid design) and I won't use 80% of the Anarchy's Children stuff. I prefer the Army look

Shen's Last Gift's pretty decent but the rest isn't really worth it.

Timer from missions isn't really as big a problem as it might seem. They're usually more than long enough. Psychologically it seems like a big deal, and I'll admit it took me a while to get over it, but the actual impact on gameplay is a lot smaller. Most of what it does is make the old 'hunker in Overwatch and make the aliens come to you' cheap strategy of the previous game obsolete. And IIRC the amount of missions with timers is going to be cut down a lot with War of the Chosen, which is another 1.5 game expansion like Enemy Within was.
Now the whole Avatar project, that's an annoying timer.

[Avilan the Grey]

I've decided to get this.
Anyway... I had fun reading some of the complaints. Yes, there were tons of bug problems but I love the people who don't know how probability works. Tons of bad reviews from users because "I had 35% chance to hit but my third shot didn't hit! The game is broken beyond belief!"

God, why don't people actually go to school?

[Aotrs Commander]

I've decided to get this.
Anyway... I had fun reading some of the complaints. Yes, there were tons of bug problems but I love the people who don't know how probability works. Tons of bad reviews from users because "I had 35% chance to hit but my third shot didn't hit! The game is broken beyond belief!"

God, why don't people actually go to school?

Keep us posted, if you ahve time during the week.

I have XCom 2 on my wishlist as well, but have hestiated basically for the exact same reasons you did, so I'd be interested to hear how you get on, especialy with regard to the timer.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I have actually disabled Alien Hunter DLC because it is such complete and utter garbage.

Three MEC's, and a pod of Mutons with an Elite leading them and a Berzerker included. Okay, difficult, but I have the advantage of surprise. So if I...

*VORP* Proceed to not only break ambush but draw in a third pack as the King proceeds to warp all over the place.

Umm... no. Notta chance in hell no.

Shen's Gift is... unimaginative, and SPARK's are just as useless as XCOM's robot minion things I can't even remember the name of they sucked so badly. I was hoping for something similar to MEK's. It did not live up to my expectations. But at least you can ignore it without needing to worry about suddenly having the entire mission tossed into the crapper by Suddenly Boss.

[ICN]

The True Concealment mod, which can be found on the steam workshop, might be to your liking. It changes the timers so that they don't start until you're revealed. I believe there is also a mod on the workshop to remove timers completely.

Also, the expansion, War of the Chosen, comes out in a couple days, and is worth keeping an eye on. In addition to adding a seemingly massive amount of content, it offers some more timer management options. At the beginning of the game, you can choose to double the timers, no strings attached. One of the new possible faction bonuses duplicates the True Concealment mod. And it seems like Firaxis has added a few more soft timers in place of the current game's hard timers (e.g. if you take too long, more zombies will show up, rather than losing the mission/any soldiers not in the evac zone).

[Avilan the Grey]

The True Concealment mod, which can be found on the steam workshop, might be to your liking. It changes the timers so that they don't start until you're revealed. I believe there is also a mod on the workshop to remove timers completely.

Also, the expansion, War of the Chosen, comes out in a couple days, and is worth keeping an eye on. In addition to adding a seemingly massive amount of content, it offers some more timer management options. At the beginning of the game, you can choose to double the timers, no strings attached. One of the new possible faction bonuses duplicates the True Concealment mod. And it seems like Firaxis has added a few more soft timers in place of the current game's hard timers (e.g. if you take too long, more zombies will show up, rather than losing the mission/any soldiers not in the evac zone).

Sounds good to me. The expansion is of course the reason for this sale in the first place, since it drops on Tuesday. For almost the same price as a full game (40 euros). So I will be getting this when it is on sale, probably Christmas or possibly Halloween. But yes, it seems it contains a lot of things that should have been in the base game, just like the expansions for XCOM did.

[factotum]

Yeah, that. The timer is there for one reason. To prevent the winning tactic from the first game, moving single steps and then overwatch-spamming, from being quite so prevalent. It still works, but you'll occasionally have to take a risk.

Why is it a good thing that the game is forcing people to play in a particular way? I *like* to play slow and cautious, I do that even in games where it's not an optimal strategy (see: Doom 2). Hated X-Com 2's turn limits for that reason. At the very least they could have had some mechanic like in the bomb missions from 1, where you have a turn limit but you can extend it by taking certain actions within the mission.

[Sian]

Why is it a good thing that the game is forcing people to play in a particular way? I *like* to play slow and cautious, I do that even in games where it's not an optimal strategy (see: Doom 2). Hated X-Com 2's turn limits for that reason. At the very least they could have had some mechanic like in the bomb missions from 1, where you have a turn limit but you can extend it by taking certain actions within the mission.

From what i understand they felt they had to choose between 2 options

Add some sort of time limit so moving at a snails pace is no longer possible
Add enough challenge (in terms of enemy numbers) for slow/cautious to be interesting gameplay-wise, which in turn would cause any other way to be suicidal play.

XCOM2s timers are charitable enough that you don't need to rush anything, and getting into a couple rounds of back'n'forth shooting usually wouldn't mean much, as long as you don't play extremely cautious.

[Drascin]

Why is it a good thing that the game is forcing people to play in a particular way? I *like* to play slow and cautious, I do that even in games where it's not an optimal strategy (see: Doom 2). Hated X-Com 2's turn limits for that reason. At the very least they could have had some mechanic like in the bomb missions from 1, where you have a turn limit but you can extend it by taking certain actions within the mission.

The problem is that the first one kind of forced the "inch along" gameplay, because it was just the strictly optimal way to play in every situation. And it made every mission last an hour.

2 traded one gameplay for the other, just that.

[Avilan the Grey]

So, any newbie tips?

[huttj509]

I've decided to get this.
Anyway... I had fun reading some of the complaints. Yes, there were tons of bug problems but I love the people who don't know how probability works. Tons of bad reviews from users because "I had 35% chance to hit but my third shot didn't hit! The game is broken beyond belief!"

God, why don't people actually go to school?

An Awkward Zombie comic I love...and find myself doing: http://awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=072312

[ICN]

So, any newbie tips?

The most important habit to make in the tactical layer is to try to only reveal new territory with your first move. Triggering extra pods when you don't have the actions to deal with them hurts. Ranger sword attacks are very risky for that reason. Explosives are your best friend. Where most things are a chance, explosives are guaranteed damage, shred armor, and remove most cover, making it easier for everyone else to shoot them. Flashbang grenades are magic. They give significant penalties to aim and movement, but more importantly, they disable all special abilities on non mechanical units. In general, offense is better than defense, both because of timers, and because a dead alien won't hurt anyone.

On the strategic layer, the most important facility to build is the guerilla tactics school. The squad size 1 and 2 updates are the strongest ones you can get. After that, I'd recommend the advanced warfare center, especially if playing unmodded. Stationing and engineer there will cause your wounded soldiers to heal twice as fast. Soldiers have a chance for a special ability when they level up, but only if that facility exists, and it's not retroactive without mods. I'd say that the workshop isn't worth building, and the turret facility isn't very good either. Engineers are more important than scientists; the base management game revolves almost entirely around them.

[Avilan the Grey]

Thanks for the tips!


In other news, apparently the game automatically launches into debug / developer mode if you start it from an icon on the desktop or taskbar (not via Steam, the direct shortcut). Whoever coded that in is a very VERY peculiar person. I freaked out when I got the Red Screen debug screen the first thing when starting the game.

[factotum]

The most important habit to make in the tactical layer is to try to only reveal new territory with your first move. Triggering extra pods when you don't have the actions to deal with them hurts.

Didn't they largely fix that by having the very obvious "These guys won't wake up until you move into this zone" indicators? It was in the first game you had to be careful not to wake up adds.

[Vitruviansquid]

Tips:

You are trying to neuter or kill every pod of aliens in 1 turn, definitely kill it in 2. When I say "neuter" I mean render the pod's actions highly unlikely to cause damage, whether it's because the remaining members of the pod aren't likely to try to use an action that deals damage (Sectoids tend to prefer using their non-damaging abilities over shooting), or by making sure any fire you take will only be aimed at soldiers in high cover.

In order to achieve this, you want to bring plenty of grenades to every mission. Grenades are given free at the beginning of the campaign because they are the best. Grenades can achieve guaranteed kills for when you simply can't take any risk of leaving an enemy alive. Grenades can also strip cover to highly increase the chance of getting a kill without causing you to lose loot.

The experimental grenades are extremely good, as most of them are basically normal grenades (which are already good) plus some benefit. The ones that have a drawback have a drawback because their benefit is ridiculously good. I found that experimental ammo are more specialized, and so should be produced after you have sufficient grenades (however, you probably should not leave home without experimental ammo on any pistol-oriented Sharpshooters).

[Avilan the Grey]

Thanks again.

So... I am planning on starting the tutorial, do the tutorial then start over. What I have heard the tutorial is kinda... counter productive at times, for example Teaching you things by forcing you to lose troops for example.

[ICN]

Didn't they largely fix that by having the very obvious "These guys won't wake up until you move into this zone" indicators? It was in the first game you had to be careful not to wake up adds.

That's during the concealment phase. Most missions start out in that, but once it's broken then pods will trigger like they did during the first game. Breaking concealment is a squadwide thing (i.e. if it breaks for one member, it'll break for everyone) with the exception of rangers who take the phantom ability.

A note I forgot earlier: save your alien corpses. Once you get enough of them of a specific type, the autopsy for that alien species will be instantaneous. After that feel free to sell them though if they're not used to make any item you'd like.

Quick note on grenades since Vitruviansquid brought them up: IIRC only frag or plasma (upgraded frag grenade type) grenades destroy cover. Grenades also get into some status effects. Poison and Incendiary grenades only affect organic targets. Poison significantly debuffs aim and mobility, while incendiary prevents the use of special abilities. There are ammo types of those two grenades as well. Acid grenades work on every unit except one late game enemy. They don't debuff, but they shred more armor. All three inflict dot effects, which tick for around 1-4 or 5 at the start of the aliens' turn. They can last a few turns, but generally most aliens will be dead before they can time out.

Edit:

Thanks again.

So... I am planning on starting the tutorial, do the tutorial then start over. What I have heard the tutorial is kinda... counter productive at times, for example Teaching you things by forcing you to lose troops for example.

The tutorial soldiers you lose don't count against how many you get at the beginning. You'll get the same amount of starting soldiers either way. The tutorial missions do contain some of the story for the game, and IIRC it's a bit easier of a start than jumping right in.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The problem is that the first one kind of forced the "inch along" gameplay, because it was just the strictly optimal way to play in every situation. And it made every mission last an hour.

2 traded one gameplay for the other, just that.

Not really. Overwatches were mostly, except under certain circumstances and with certain specific character builds, a sucker's bet and trap. Particularly in higher levels of difficulties, moving to partial cover and going into overwatch is absolutely a BAD idea compared to making a sprint to full cover and no overwatch. The overwatch penalty alone is effectively giving enemies at a minimum partial cover. This gets exasperated under conditions such as distance penalties (because overwatch triggers the moment it is possible, not when it is optimal), already existing cover when overwatch triggers, and other factors. In many cases, you actually have a BETTER shot had you NOT gone into overwatch, but simply Hunkered to deny an enemy a good shot at you, then fired in response.

The primary example when overwatch is appropriate is a) Longwatch Sniper, because his job, when not directly plugging aliens, is to find a good sniper's roost that has a commanding view over the majority of where the team is moving and respond in the event a pack either 'self activates' by patrolling movements or someone activates a pack prematurely, or b) someone with the ability to apply a useful effect even if they miss, such as when the soldier has the perk that gives an aim bonus to subsequent shooters at that target.

The overwatch crawl is a 'newbie tactic', and very rarely optimal in nearly any circumstance. It often places the soldiers in greater danger than moving without insisting on being on overwatch every turn due to availability of full cover vs partial cover and 'discovered packs', and survivability.

This goes double with the concealment rules in XCOM2. Other than triggering packs, which is harder to do in XCOM2, there's no real threat involved in moving to otherwise insecure locations while you are still in the stealth phase, meaning you can move rather dramatically and get into a good position (unless you are unfortunate enough to trigger a Faceless) with relative impunity.