"Specialist help you recover from mistakes." I love that statement. It's not, "They heal your units." It's, "You fucked up, and I'm gonna temporally fix that."
I mean, it's not a mistake if you are unlucky. Why specialists are so good is because they make the average matter more than one unlucky shot. If I have maximum cover, but my soldier gets shot still, I couldn't do a whole lot about that, unless I ahve a spacialist, when I can increase the cover by 30%, and even if he gets hit, I can heal him up. What that does is it rewards good strattegy, instead of just safe strattegy. That makes it a mistake to not bring any specialists on a mission, because then you're opting in to using sub-optimal strattegies or lose soldiers cause of bad luck.
You learn at the beginning: Cover, flank, kill. Worst thing I ever learned. The way it really goes: Cover, flank, get spotted by 1 Andromedon, 1 Beserker, 1 brute boy, all added on the adromedon, sectiod, and lancer I was just fighting
You also forgot when they run so mu h farther then they can actually move and are now circled around your soldier and the only one left that can move is the sniper who needs to reload his weapon.
That’s why you cover use a battle scanner to see if you can flank ( or scanning protocol) if yes flank kill. If not next step is either acquire highground or destroy the enemies cover then kill.
The only ways to avoid that is to spot every enemy group before breaking concealment or having always scout ahead an entire screen. The scanning protocol ability of the specialist is also one of the most usefull abilyties you will never use. But unlike x-com enemy unknown it you atleast have some ways to find the aliens bofore having to engage them. But if you don't know what is hiding in the fog of war play it as save as possible.
@@markusbarten455 Yep. It's counterintuitive but playing like you WILL find some pod in the fog of war unless proven otherwise actually works great. Every time you pierce it, do it with one guy while everyone else still has all their actions and is at least one movement action away from decent cover. Makes for really slow action at first, at least until you have decently upgraded scouts.
Killzone ambush and followup with series. I have to stop myself from using my colonel sniper too much because she would starve my other squad members of xp otherwise. And considering snipers get hurt less often than rangers and other front liners, she reached colonel before any other character reached major.
@@noahblair-sparks7845 do it, it's incredibly fun. Just slap a superior magazine on the sniper rifle (better than auto reloads since the max number of kills in a killzone ambush or a series is your mag capacity, give the reloads to rangers and other classes), find a high point (the spider suit was made for snipers since you can grapple hook for free and then shoot with the rifle) and go to town. Ambushes in particular are amazingly strong with killzone since you can set it up, break stealth with another character, shoot every single alien in the kill zone during the ambush and then shoot them again when they move during their turn. If you itemize the sniper correctly they won't miss a shot, and they have a high enough damage output that they'll likely kill all lower level grunts, especially with special bullets like fire, venom or blue screen.
XCOM: The "Great, now my entire team has died because i moved this one soldier a tile farther than i should have, so now he's magically spotted 18 aliens who're all ready to make sure i'll never be able to walk straight again." simulator.
Commander! We must... Commander! There is a... Commander! The avatar project.... Commander! If we do not... Commander! We have a.... COmmAndEr! COMMANDER! CCOOMMMMAANNDDEERR
It isn't. Don't let them lie to you. I present the 100% miss. With a shotgun. Point blank. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2ar3NwhcCms.html
Xcom 2's random number generation is kinda bullshit and uses one number for every roll with a single shot (something EU didn't do). That means if your defense is high enough any shot that manges to hit you probably also manages to crit.
That ending was perfect. The number of times I have shrieked after a dude is killed outright from fucking miles away when in full cover is unreal. I am a diehard fan of the original X-COM games and I'm so glad modern gamers get to experience some of X-COMs brilliance. Even if it is watered down in the reboot series. I do wish they would bring back the simulation base/financial management though. It was awesome to build factory bases with their own veterean personal defence forces, dedicated research outposts etc. Being able to take full control and having a proper fleshed out economic system made the originals feel like they gave you 100x more freedom to play the game the way you wanted to. I would have an epiphany when I was in school of a new way of making money, or a new alien craft breaching tactic and I'd go home and test it out. As refined as the new XCOM is, it doesn't really require you to put that level of thought into it, which is a shame IMO.
@@Sir-Pleiades I delayed getting those cause I didn't feel the need, do a "savage" mission early and just buy 1-3 mimic beacon, plus get a free spark from the tower mission, not to mention the free alien hunter weapons you get within 10 days (including op frostbomb) also you don't have to win missions after the first one and keeping your squad healthy is worth more then the rewards so after the first mission, you shouldn't even get wounded, ever, if you play safe, get your second reaper and always know what's ahead
it really sucks, after some point in the game it becomes too easy, even on legendary: ranger in archon suite with serial and talon rounds just deletes pods. The same ranger with inspire and teamwork kills avatar in 1 turn. Sectopod? EMP bomb it. Not stunned? EMP bomb it again (salvo). Still moving? Hold my haywire. Snipers can kill from the other side of the map (the only thing that saves poor aliens are trees) or fire pistol 5! times in a turn (20-45 dmg)...
I enjoy analysis of design in games being explored further, i agree i had that feeling of gaining power during gameplay but instead of an increase of raw stats it felt like an increase in diversity of play. keep up the content.
That's one thing X-COM does really well across the board. Besides new weapons/armour, everything is just more options rather than a straight upgrade. I ended up getting acid grenades early on and that totally shook up how I fought MECs and other aliens with amour.
I agree that Ironman is how it's meant to be played... but I never put it on in XCOM 2. There's just too much risk of a game-breaking glitch that'll ruin my whole playthrough. The best example was when the UFO intercept event was bugged, the UFO didn't spawn on the globe, so my Avenger got stuck waiting for it to be intercepted. Restarting the game didn't help, only loading an earlier save worked. If it had been Ironman, I'd have been fucked. XCOM 1 wasn't perfect (An ironman battleship raid almost got fucked when placing my SHIV in the first doorway made the game decide that this only path in was now blocked permanently. I cleared it by having my two guys with Archangel armor go around that doorway and lure everything to the doorway killzone.), but I was dissapointed with XCOM 2 being even buggier. Not that that stopped me from having done multiple fun playthroughs of course.
James Brincefield Well, I got the above mentioned bug, plus one where a new level loaded and the screen was completely black. Restarting the game didn't help. So that's two of the three or so playthroughs I did that would've been trashed.
I always play Ironman of my own free will in XCOM, I don´t need and don´t want to tick any box off just because technical issues may happen, reloading because you can´t extract an injured soldier due to a glitch is not "cheating", happened to me more than once. You do need to replay the entire mission though since I never save in missions, I never play on the hardest difficulties though, Iron Man and normal difficulty is all I need.
It's true, in my last xcom2 playthrough something during the first blacksite mission broke and I was unable to finish it. Learned the hard way not to use ironman.
When i finally worked up the courage to do an iron man playthrou on one of the harder difficulties, it was rough in the first few months. This one time thou when i was doing a mission with the lost modifier, too many lost was loaded in. game crashed. when i checked my save file was corrupted. havent touched the game since. im not strong enough to go throu that torture again
Never gotten bored with XCOM for some reason (may have rage quit it a few times When missing an enemy who's 1 tile in front of my Ranger using a Shotgun) but I've never gotten bored with the game, its always in the back of my mind and I'm like what game do I want to play? XCOM
The schedule isn't really true. I've had XCOM 2 runs where I got lots of early scientists, rushed a laboratory, and was able to get magnetic weapons within the first month or so. The very next mission, ADVENT will send out advanced troopers. (so at least a month earlier than they typically appear) Since the aliens _always_ advance at the same pace as you, the truth is that there's no real rush to complete any of the research, aside from what you need to keep the death timers from going off.
Matthew Crazer hehe in nu current campaign. I put of researching new equipment until I get the inspiration bonus. This does end up pretty bad for your soldiers though
The aliens can deffinatly reach newer equipment earlier than you (learned that the very hard way) but i suppose it is possible that the aliens are always either one step in front of you or equal to you.
I haven't really checked, but I suspect there's a bit of both going on - the standard Advent grunt likely gets upgraded as you upgrade your weapons - keep them up with you, keep the pressure on, but let you have someone you can still deal with if you're behind the curve. The other aliens are (mostly) on a fixed schedule - every month, a new type or two is introduced. This lets you do things like I did one playthrough - I was short a vital corpse, so I skipped magnetic weapons entirely. This gave me a bit longer with the standard weapons - which definitely made for a few tense missions as I had to work out how to deal with not having the damage needed to reliably deal with the new aliens as they came out. However, it also saved me some time in research so I got plasma weapons faster - at which point (probably, I didn't really notice - I'd just been taking out mid-tier with ballistics, after all) the upgraded Advent grunts keep it from getting to easy, but I could deal with the alien types fairly easily for a while. So a reward for a risk, but not a cakewalk.
if you do a rushed game, to get the winning before july achievement, the game will obviously throw some loops at you by introducing plot essential enemies or just straight up Sectopods (which are meant to appear in august). When I did the rushed campaign I met every enemy except specters, they never appeared once lol.
Great points, and something I noticed Darkest Dungeon, despite feeling very similar to XCOM2, lacks in player progression. Like XCOM, it adds different enemy types into the mix as the game progresses, but your heroes never really get the upgrade as XCOM soldiers do. Once you unlock all skills at the base level, every further upgrade is just better numbers on that skill. in XCOM, your options in combat are always increasing, while they kind of stagnate in DD. Really hoping they improve on that in Darkest Dungeon 2 someday.
Based on the name, Darkest Dungeon, I don't think a second could be made. If their was an even darker dungeon in the world, it wouldn't be the darkest dungeon, and if the second isn't darker than the first, it doesn't deserve the name darkest. That's not to say that the makers couldn't make a "second" one by making a game much the same in concepts, but not actually be named, Darkest Dungeon.
20 hour campaign!? Am I that bad at this game when I use 40-50 on one run :(
6 лет назад
I took 80. Actually looking at sites like howlongtobeat I see that everyone takes less than myself to finish a game. Watching gameplays, though, I don't see a difference in my pace. May it be that everyone else finishes the game in a hurry? Or am I the wrongdoer here?
I'm a completionist, and I love the Long War mod. I have one game that I have been working on for over a year, the time is at over 300 hours. I could have beaten it quite a while back, but there is a certain enjoyment to playing X-Com 2 with 10 full squads of colonels. It has allowed me to test best possible end game combinations in ways that are impossible to get to in the vanilla game. I just wish the Long War mod would be adapted for War of the Chosen.
Running on 500 total hours in XCOM 2. I'm playing it over again on next-to-hardest difficulty and on Ironman, and I'm only about 10 hours in and I'm already set to steamroll the rest of the game's story. I should really invest in the "Impossible" difficulty...
The reaper and ranger with the conceal perk trivialize the game for me. While the damage output from the reaper is extremely low, their ability to permanently highlight targets, their claymore, and ability to remain concealed after killing a target made them a must have on every mission. The mimic beacons also made the game surprisingly easy as you could force ADVENT into disadvantageous positions. Civilians still took priority hits, but not getting decimated by a sectopod always felt good. Overall you're given an absurd arsenal to work with that can make the game significantly easier. Even with the added mechanics from WOTC it became relatively easy to find a balance for your soldiers given the new tools you have to work with. Also, psi troops are still just as OP as they were in Enemy Within. Blind null lances FTW.
3:33 Correction : Muton's aren't immune to melee attacks. There is a percentage chance that they will counter your melee attack (which feels like 2 out of 3) but they're definitely not immune. I've killed many Mutons with my rangers slash attack in Wotc.
1. Secoids are not priority targets. They ALWAYS resurrect if they can which means that they won't hurt you for the first turn. 2. The doom counter doesn't end the game when it runs out. It gives you another two weeks to lower it; which resets those two weeks. It is no threat what so ever. Otherwise great video^^
I got all the way to the assassin's fight using that two man dream team. Unfortunately, they both died, so I memorialized them and sent a bigger team to get revenge
I personally like having skirmishers use their grapple abilities to make lucrative grenades absolutely amazing. Have them pull themselves into an enemy then pull an enemy to them and next to said enemy. Have someone give them a free action via teamwork to escape then blow up the whole area.
Xcom 2 loves to punish the player, and the player had better learn to enjoy that punishment. It enjoys watching the player suffer, and takes every opportunity to show the player who is really in charge, hurting them in ways that they will not soon forget whenever it is unsatisfied with the player's actions. I love Xcom 2. I think that, secretly, it loves me too, and it's harsh treatment of me is at least partially because it knows that I like it.
My XCOM experience usually goes like this. Place a guy behind elevated full cover for max protection and aim bonus. Flashbang aliens to stun their movement and aim. Only to get said soldiers one shot critit’d through said elevated full cover by a SECTOID with squadsight!
While i haven´t played X-Com 2 until now, i already know the feeling you described from the first one. I think there is not just the timing you described, i assume the game also introduces new enemies depending on what technologies you research. This makes sense from the system perspective as it is easier for the designers to scale the difficulty this way.
Strangely enough, it took the doomsday clock to start ticking to get me to build new comms relays and contact a new region to go after a black site to buy some more time.
Xcom 2 gave me a feeling of stress not other game has ever done so It truly felt like i was a resistance fighting an unbeatable army This is game is truly unique and amazing I wish u guys could see my reaction when i first learned that my dead soldier wouldn't just magically respawn next mission ahahah I screamed in sadness I will miss u my deer grandeer
The one thing i hate about xcom and by extension fire emblem is the bloody rng. Moving a unit to where they get attacked 3 times? yh your fault. Missing 3 80% hit attacks in a row then having one guy die? Utter bs.
If you're regularly putting your soldiers in a position where they will die if they miss their shots, then that's your fault. There are also guaranteed hit weapons and skills that make it practically impossible to get hit.
The RNG can never make you lose the game in one or two rolls. It can make you lose soldiers, yes. Though even that was probably a mistake on your part. Losing soldiers and dealing with it is part of XCOM.
That's how many tabletop wargames work. Shit happens and then you deal with it. The point is you can't trust anything to succeed, so you need a plan B.
I loved both Firaxis's versions of the Xcom games but the massive flaw I find is that after a bit of xp is gathered no enemy ever gets a chance to fire back. War of the Chosen added a lot of new, often fun, game mechanics that unfortunately made this problem even worse, any error I made on Classic mode could be instantly solved with a special ability or team work boosting a soldiers action points.
use a mod to increase pod sizes I've hit the point in my current campaign where pods are often 5 spectres and a couple of andromedons, and my standard missions have more enemies on them than the avenger defense or chosen stronghold missions
Wait, orthogonal? Orthogonality means right angles, or two elements that are perpendicular to one another. How in the world did this become "enemies with different classes"?
If you imagine a class as a vector representing its attributes, orthogonal design in this context means that many or most classes' vectors cannot be represented as mere sums of those of other classes. No combination of other classes can e.g. pull you out of cover and suffocate you like the viper, so that class is orthogonal to the others. However, I'm not actually convinced that XCOM 2 is a good example of this principle.
Assassination missions are really easy if you don't need the intel and have a Reaper. Sneak in, place a claymore, explode the claymore, and fuck right off. Done. I really enjoy reapers, because they are the best scouts (low detection radius, enemies stay marked) and can fuck up your enemies in so many fun ways (exploding cars and explosives, sticking claymore on the ground or on enemies, and BANISH). Banish is especially fun when you got a highly skilled Reaper with AP skills and a fully upgraded rifle (with +4 magazines, for example). "Oh hey, a gatekeeper! "
A good example for why tastes are subjective. In optosite to this video I find that throwing a fucking timer at you nearly every mission ruined the game for me bc it added some superficial "difficultuy" to the game. To me it feels like those games where higher difficulty simply means slap a crazy amount of HP and DMG on the Enemies without any tactical nor new skill based additions - to me uninspired and lazy.
If you don't like an aspect of the game, that's what mods are for. You can prevent timers from ticking as long as you stay concealed: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=618077830. Or just get rid of them altogether: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616964599
I like the timers. It does a couple of positive things for gameplay. One, it adds an additional element of tension. One of my favorite things about XCOM is the tension of situations, and having a clock adds to that. Two, it forces you to be aggressive. Unlike in XCOM, XCOM 2 casts you as the aggressor. You are attacking the aliens, not defending the earth from them. By putting a timer on missions, you need to move across the map and kill enemies in a somewhat timely manner; you can't play as passively and safely as was allowed in some missions from the first game.
Just beat Xcom2 WOTC and I have to say the mission variety in my play-through made it far less common to have any form of counter which was nice. Also there is a mod that prevents the timer from starting as long as you are concealed which I think is a fair middle ground.
This analysis confuses me. How can you miss that the source of difficulty in xcom at least as far as enemy design goes is that enemies are designed as hard counters to possible builds you can field. You even hint at this towards the beginning, but then try to put focus on orthogonal design, which plainly isn't the case at all. Sure, the enemies are different from each other, but that's because they're designed to counter a different kind of operator. Add in the unpredictable nature of what enemies will show up on a map combined with the need to keep a variety of different operators leveled up, and you now ensure that you'll almost never see someone deploy a team that's optimal for the enemies and map that they're on, just the best possible choice at that moment, which layers on difficulty as well. I know some of you may read this and think this isn't a big difference, but no enemies merely being different from one another versus enemies being designed specifically to counter a given tactic/unit available to the player is a huge thing. Many of the creatures in No Man's Sky exhibit orthogonal design, for instance.
This comment is pretty off topic to the video, so you should just ignore this comment unless you're bored and don't really care about it being off topic. I know loads of people like the difficulty, but I'm someone who hates losing in single player games. In my last playthrough, I had 1 soldier who had incredibly cheated stats, 1000% crit chance, 50 health, 15 armour, 900 aim, and finally, had an 99 damage sniper rifle I modded in. Everyone else in my team all have legit stats. I have lost quite a few of them due to my incompetence, as well as the fact that I was playing on Commander. I feel like I can kinda still get that rush from the tension, because training up new guys is a pain, but I've always got my 100 health, armour, dodge: sharpshooter, who sits at the back just in case everything goes a bit too south so I don't fail the mission, even if the rest of my squad dies.
Heard they also have a sneaky background coding for the hit percentages. If everything is going fine they'll lower the hit chance without telling you so you miss and everything goes to shit(why your guy will miss even with 90%). Same if you have maybe 2 soldiers left and 3 dead then they'll bump up the hit percentage without telling you to make the soldiers seem like they pulled the impossible.
If thats the case its the shittiest mechanic ever and you should be able to turn it off. Seriously I get challenge and difficulty but it defeats any sense of fun - and in the end I play to have fun not get annoyed. Yes your comment is 1year old - but I just got this vid on my recommended and had to jump in here :)
Immersive Gamer dynamic difficulty is used in a surprising amount of games. I don’t think it should effect hit chances though. I much prefer the resident evil style of getting rid of enemies after you die a bunch of times in a row so you have to deal with less at once.Aka don’t make the player weaker or stronger make the enemies weaker or stronger. If I’m doing too well spawn more sectapods and gatekeepers or whatever is the strongest enemy at the point of the game I’m at. Don’t fudge the hit percentage numbers.
Love playing Xcom. On Legend the only time I really struggle is the first mission that has a sectopod. That's about the time it starts becoming a challenge.
possibly the crux for why there is so much discussion about how good and how hard x-com 2 (and to a lesser degree x-com 1) is due to the designers going back to 1994 in terms of game difficulty. this is a remarkable accomplishment for two reasons; one the game was made with consoles in mind (and console games are inherently easier than PC games, *especially* regarding strategy games,) secondly games in general just aren't as hard as they used to be and feel very dumbed down (possibly due to the move away from PC games to console gaming). x-com 2 is as hard as the original x-com was, an unforgiving title that is held in high regard for that very reason. caring for your troops? 1994. watching those troops get eviscerated early in the game? 1994. the satisfaction of surmounting the odds and regularly d the superior fighting force? 1994. no other game has come close.
I understand that a lot of this is said with less attention to detail, but I severely recommend watching someone like TapCat's guides before making certain claims. As someone who has completed Commander Ironman Mode, I want to correct a few of the claims. First of all, Sectoids are by NO means, an "I see it so it takes priority over everything", quite honestly it should almost always be the LAST thing you concern yourself about attacking, because it will almost ALWAYS use a psionic attack that does not do permanent damage, your remaining troops can focus fire on it the next turn. Second, the Muton is NOT invulnerable to melee, just resistant, and will very likely retaliate, though I can't say for certain whether it's 100% or not because I don't use melee on it.
I disagree with your initial opinion: your troops scale up with the difficulty and it always feels hard. In xcom EU (and EW), and in xcom 2, for me the game was always instead: the initial game is pretty hard, and you can get obliterated early, and then the game is obscenely easy as the enemies never scale fast enough for the rest of the game (and yes, i did turn up the difficulty). You die fast, sure, but if you put a minimal amount of thought into your actions the game is never difficult after the first few months (by the time vipers are out/confounding light is over the game only ever gets easier). So to me xcom is not a great example of this type of design but actually an example of not much changing over the game.
once you get 1-2 decent rangers and buy the plasma shotgun, the game is blown completely open on everything except the hardest difficulty(and even then it's not too bad). throw a talon round along with run and gun? you can one shot basically anything except a sectopod and gatekeeper. by that point in the game, the enemies need to have much much more variation. instead of 12 advent soldiers, 2 officers, 3 mecs and 2 special enemies, mix in some weird combinations of aliens. the levels with the weirdest groupings(like some of the avenger defense missions) are the most fun because of the variation.
In fact you are only half right. The code of xcoms 1 and 2 rubber-bands the enemy (think of old racing car games where once you get so far ahead, suddenly they seem to speed up so you can never really pull away) That early tech boost is so quickly useless because they tech faster due to it.... win too many battles? They get tougher... Get too many hits in vs your predicted odds? It will put an invisible debuff on your to hit odds until it falls back in line. The game actually is designed like a fruit machine... it wants to let you win only so much... fall behind or race ahead and it will change the rules in favour of the underdog.
I know I'm ghosting this 9 months later, but that is entirely wrong. Anything research progress you make does NOTHING to affect how the aliens progress, they progress based on a system called 'Force Levels', which increases every 10.5 days (15 in Legendary Difficulty) Starting at 1 and capping out at Force Level 20 around August, so you'll be facing Sectopods and Gatekeepers in September no matter what weapons you have
"Get too many hits against predicted odds?" Then basic probability will push your results to the expected outcome. A 50% chance to hit will hit 50% percent of the time. A 95% chance to hit will miss 5% of the time. No manipulation is happening.
@a Pickle with a Mustache you've clearly never played the original XCom. Predicted odds are only kind of related to actual odds. If you're standing right next to somebody with a low accuracy weapon it might give you a 60% chance to hit, but then you'll fire 5 times and hit every single one. Which isn't impossible obviously, but it happens every time. Similarly I've also missed chances that are above 100% many times, sometimes multiple times in a row.
orangesilver8 given that the video in question is talking about the recent xcom series I don't think it is reasonable to use the original games manipulating odds as evidence for if the modern games manipulate odds.
Sometimes you have to Kobayashi Maru your way out of the endless arms race. Just ask Captain Kirk. Also it isn't really an arm's race. A higher tier weapon only does on average 1 damage higher than the previous tier. Every other stat remains the same. The aliens however deal more damage, have more hp, more armor, more crit chance, more skills. The primary means of maintaining parity is not through upgrading weapons but through upgrading skills and increasing the squad size from 4-6. ANd 2 isn't as good as 1. There is just something missing from the formula in 2. It's like they concentrated on the wrong element and ignored the most important one.
Now I use a heavily modded system, featuring A better Advent and a bunch of other additions that make it a better war. Also playable Sanake Aliens and tanks. Or if you want to get creative: They have a Sectopod, meet my AT-ST. Another beautiful thing X-COM 2 has, I love Enemy Within, but XCOM 2 is fantastic in it's ability to mod easilly, turning an alien arms race into a multi-faction three and even 4 way war.
souls-em-ups aren't really a new genre though, It's just metroid-vania again. I mean oh wow a game about fighting challenging enemies when you save in particular locations and traverse the map to find upgrades that make you better at killing enemies. Such a new concept can't believe it's never been done before.
Mutons are not completely immune to melee attacks as you say. Their parry ability is chance based (30% chance). Most of the time, your attack will land if you attempt them. That being said, the risk that a parry can happen does make it pretty risky to attempt a melee attack.
My sister played Senua and got terrified because of the threat of a game over. She played it like her life depended on it lol. Such a nice concept to work around
There's a fairness to the original XCOM that's just missing from modern renditions. From bullets actually being individual damage dealers with their own individual arcs to the fact that aliens operate at a similar playing field to you with no pods and instead spawned into the maps together or separated depending on issue. XCOM UFO Defense is punishing, but its not slamming your head into a tiolet seat repeatidly like XCOM2's progression acts like.
I remember Terror from the Deep being probably the least forgiving of the games. And also had plenty of unforgiving bugs as if the game wasn't hard enough ;) And then there was X-Com: Apocalypse which for the most part wasn't that unforgiving... you just needed to know some tricks to deal with head crab launchers etc. except for that one late-game alien weapon that had homing acid missiles (100% guaranteed to hit, no matter the cover, even behind corners etc.) that would deal DoT to equipment and quickly leave your soldiers naked.
Keith Filibeck while they are really good, i have dominated, and i don't mean the ability, the game with both Psi Ops and Templars, even when i only had one of those units, the missions were almost too easy, and when i used them together, there was very little chance i even got hit, in most missions anyway. not even the last mission gave me much trouble. i just don't play with as much emphasis on stealth, and most of my snipers are gunslinger specced out, so they don't even really need that much range. just my preference, i suppose, guess i should try to use the Reapers more though, it could make things more entertaining, not that it was getting boring.
Tom Clancy’s End War also has this rock, paper, scissors design. Riflemen are strong against engineers, anti-infantry vehicles are strong against riflemen, and engineers that have no cover, and helicopters, engineers are effective against vehicles, helicopters are strong against tanks, tanks are strong against infantry that are out of cover and anti-infantry vehicles, and artillery is dangerous at long range but very vulnerable at close range.
Just now playing the DLC, only because I just found out about it. The game is awesome, the load times are killer it's why I'm cloning my PS4's hard drive on an SSD right now :). Also ironman is out of the question this time, The game crashes on occasion, think they rushed it out or something.
Also, as far as enemy designs and adjusting to new situations, if You like XCOM 2, especially WOTC, there's actually another series that I find myself comparing to it constantly. Tactics Ogre. It's often forgotten about, but the PSP remake and GBA game in particular (As well as the amazing One Vision mod and the original Ogre Battles) do a fantastic job of constantly mixing up unique enemies and classes (as well as skills and perks) to constantly feel like You are adjusting to new stuff. Actually One Vision in particular makes for a very interesting campaign, where You find Yourself adjusting the entire course of a battle because of one unit failing to block, and getting misplaced. One of my favorites was a fairly straightforward fight in which I put too much faith into a guy blocking a choke point, he got shield based off of a roof, which let all but 2 of my units get surrounded and eliminated, finally resulting in my leader and his trusty healer using poisoned claws and a spear's range to awkwardly keep away each unit until they finally won, right as the thunderstorm they were in cleared away. Their odds were grim, but they just barely scraped by. (Best part, got it on video.)
That just sounds like a bunch of novelty that adds complexity but very little depth. Chess doesn't need to throw in a new game mechanic to keep you from getting complacent. You never stop learning because the game is deep as hell.
Long War 2 basically takes all of this talked about but turns it up to eleven, wraps it’s hand in sandpaper, barbed wire and cacti, and proceeds to FIST YOU RAW through the entire run.
ErgonomicChair If you keep tackling facilities, or in war of the chosen’s case, picking certain faction operations or whatever they’re called, it will go on forever.
ErgonomicChair The war of the chosen operations are infinitely cycling, and yes, it’s not forever, but you can probably get a solid 18 in game months going.
Sectoids are not kill on sight at any point. Most of the time their first move is a harmless psi ability, you're better off killing the other stuff who always attack first turn.
Huh, I already noticed that it seems to be based on your perception. You say Sectoids are kill on sight... but generally speaking they either resurrect or make an ally lose an turn... This means you save them for last and if you kill everything else they will either flee... or do essentially nothing. The thing is, base X-Com has an intense flaw. Even WoTC only has a counter to it in Lost missions. How stupid powerful grenades are in this game. Enemies don't drop items each death, rather tends to be 1 item per mission. The problem being that once you get the item you can use them without penalty... or use an explosion on their cover with one of your 50 explosives. It never felt like a struggle because there wasn't a risk in using a 100% kill rate unlike Xcom 1, in fact even the lost swarms didn't really hurt you. One sniper can wipe out their entire group with a pistol and Between the Eyes. You say it interrupts things... but I say WoTC made the game even easier... by encouraging multiple groups of soldiers. So you can't build up a team creating a high risk vs reward... rather a death tends to be a minor inconvenience. This game flat out has units designed to counter melee... when melee running ahead causes them to reveal a new group of enemies. This tends to push using the other units in the game... meaning more explosives for destroying cover... or a reaper... or a PSI user since they essentially counter everything. I enjoyed the game... but you become increasingly more powerful as you play the game, more abilities, PSI troops, ect. You also have freeze grenades, which you can have 2 of them... with a decent range... which can be used to soft kill enemies. Literally... or even give melee units a free throwing attack that doesn't take a time unit. You can get a super sniper which can move and shoot without penalty... or a gun that is effective against PSI units making their tenancy to resurrect a joke, and the weapon is good enough to use against any unit. You just get stronger and stronger which means less penalties from what I've seen. This is why the last segment of the game is a fight versus 100 enemies. Because you need to be overwhelmed and forced to use these one time abilities or it is a joke of a final mission. Of course because of how cool downs work without a time limit... this results in it still being a joke from all my play throughs on various difficulties. You can also just bring a full team of PSI units to any mission really.
When I play, Sectoids immedaitely attempt a "hail Mary" 30% mind control of my top troops. And you know it it is in XCOM; 30% means 80% when aliens do the math. Thank god for flashbangs.
7:25 Wow. Ok. I didn't realise. Now I know why I'm failing so badly on the easiest difficulty - I am way behind on production. I've managed to get some troops to magnetic, haven't got a single gauss weapon yet, have no additional armour, and I'm already up to Mutons and Beserkers.
9:54 THAT ENDS THE GAME?! WHAT?! I'VE BEEN TOO SCARED TO DO ANYTHING THIS ENTIRE TIME, HOPING THAT JUST SPAWNS A BIG MISSION, SO I'VE DONE NOTHING AND I'M 3 PIPS AWAY!!
I played XCOM 2 recently and felt like a glorified dice roller. For me the amount of RNG in it, discourages me from forming any strategies. I mean does it really make sense to make any strategy when there are many chances of all 4 units miss their shot even when the enemy has no cover, or die and loose them forever even when they are behind full cover? The stakes are too high to leave them to the RNG. Admittedly I haven't reached mid-late game yet but until now the only thing that seems I can do is put them behind full cover and pray to God. I don't think there are much more I can do to the battlefield. Yes I know there are the abilities and tactical gear gives you some agency and variation but that's only a small part of the gameplay in a fight. At least at the early stages. I am really interested in your opinion people about how you see it.
Btw, I believe this RNG problem could be easily avoided if there was a standardised damage for each cover. For example if you have no cover you will receive 4-6 damage, half cover 2-4 and full cover 0-2. It still has a big amount of RNG but leaves you room to strategize. Will you move all your units in a way to secure a kill? Or risk them shooting to different targets but perhaps not kill them? I think this way the player had much more agency over the game.
Use the environment. Being above your target improves accuracy. Use grenades to destroy cover. Use the special abilities of your classes. I use grenades and mgs to remove cover before my snipers and riflemen shoot. Use melee weapons. Many have high accuracy. Once you get a robot, punching becomes viable.
i love xcom 2 but alot of decisions just don't make sense to me like why have a stealth timer when we start out concealed. half the time the situations don't even make sense if you ponder it for any length of time. they made a decent stealth system and then ruined it by shoving an annoying arbitrary time limit on you. not to mention if you go a certain period of time without encountering or attacking enemies they beeline towards you again in what seems to be a deliberate attempt to make stealth pointless. somewhat unrelated but when you realize that certain enemies are almost guaranteed to preform certian actions that don't hurt you several enemies become a joke. sectoids might sound scary but flashbangs render them inert and even if you didn't have one they prefer to make a zombie their turn rather than actually shoot at you
Actually, I find War of the Chosen a bit TOO cluttered for my taste. The fact that there's always something going on means that I get fatigued following minute details all the time. And the near-constant boss battles, that also becomes tedious rather than fun pretty quickly. Vanilla XCOM2 has the perfect balance between too simple and too complex IMHO.
honestly the arms race is one of the most frustrating parts of the game for me... god damn it's like the second I tech up a weapon or armor level the aliens are already "been there done that" by the very next mission. there is no power boost it feels like... that an the fact that the assasin is really infuriating to have to start off against... especially compared to the other 2 chosen who are just SO tame in comparison... I ended up just cheating her raid to push her out of the game an even then I still lost like 4 soldiers because I wanted to do the raid proper at first an it blew the fuck up in my face an before I knew it I had like 2 guys left an I knew I was gonna fail the mission so I was just like "fuck it. she's just killed 4 of my best soldiers and I'm not dealing with a squad wipe. so buh bye!" I ended up beating the game then I tried to start off fighting the warlock on a second play through because I consider him the most balanced but apparenltly just being on the same side of the globe with another chosens territory is enough to have them start harassing you... so BOTH of them started showing up in my missions not at the same time mind you but COME THE FUCK ON! long story short I don't play very much now. kinda killed my enthusiasm plus I had some shitty rng... that and in general coming back to the stupid fatigue system they implented to solve a problem that didn't even really exist was deeply tiring. "oh I can just play one squad the whole game" well? is that so bad? if so adjust your strategy instead of demanding the devs ruin others... I like to run my squad a bit like a football team. I have my core 4 to 6 an then I have some people I like to bench or switch out depending on the scenario. I used to run about 3 or 4 "special" guys. but with this stupid fatigue system I just fucking can't do that. I need like 12 to 18 soldiers an it just slows progression down SO FUCKING much. until I get sparks that is. if I get sparks early enough I'll usually build like 3 or 4 to start an might even play around with constructing an entire team of them. but it usually doesn't work as the aliens can fuck a spark team up real bad in like 3 turns. but I've never gotten all my sparks max rank usually because by the time I have the resources to build 6 sparks an have the time to start training them up I could've already just beat the game. I also find it annoying that the "counterbalance" for squads is the stupid buddy system... it's ok an builds a story.. but... it's a pretty weak counter balance for a devastating affect nerf... especially since tired soldier can get permanent PTSD effects vs some aliens so even taking them on a mission when you can is dangerous... just... ugh... they couldn't bog the game down anymore if they tried.
I have to agree with you on that. In all honesty, I can't really see what the hype for this game is all about. I've tried to play it and like it, but I just can't. Everything seems so incredibly punishing and frustrating. Every time you "level up", so does the game. So you never ever get to have an advantage over your enemies. And meanwhile, the game will punish you hard for even the slightest mistake. Some might like this kind of punishing gameplay. I don't. When I sit down to play a game I want to relax and enjoy myself. And X-COM never lets me do that. There are no easy missions. No time to take a breather.
Imho xcom 2 has a difficulty sense that makes you cautious of what choices you make, both on the global map and in the mission. Idk how many times i thought it would be a good idea to ambush early, only to have aliens said ambusher were weak against bumb rush the poor guy before i could adjust my action. The timer just reminds you of what is at stake and can be managed with practice(might take a few gameovers to get that sense lol ). Havent gotten the expansion yet but im going for it asap, though i AM dreading a second counter xD
you know... i want to speak my mind, but you clearly worked hard on this video, and it shows, so kudos, views and subs well earned :) but i personally feel XCOM 2 was a train wreck, a trash fire, a Zack Snyder movie, which massively prioritizes style over substance, it was an imbalanced mess, and even on the highest difficulty had you needing to simply roll your face across your keyboard to win missions because your troops get so overpowered, I appreciate the lead dev Jake Solomon ensued the future of the XCOM series by his decisions with this game, but it has me worried for the future of the franchise. I loved XCOM: EU/EW(/Long War) and over looked it's flaws because it was novel and i simply appreciated it existing in this day and age, but XCOM 2 felt like the worst parts of XCOM EU without improving anything, except for the cosmetics, gotta admit soldier customization was just blown out of the park :)
Officers will ALWAYS mark one of your soldiers in their turn. Unless the skill is on cooldowns. Advent Mec will always fire their grenade, the elite will always overwatch on discovery. Andromedon, first action always that acid grenade shot. Lancers will melee if they are in range, otherwise shoot Sectoids will use either Insanity or Ressurect a zombie. Archons will always use their Pillons move first (bombarding the area) Sectopod, first shoots then walks and will use wrath cannon Purifiers will use their grenade first, after that its on to the flame thrower. Ect, ect, ect They really are predictable, so just by prioritising the correct enemies you can prevent a lot of damage
@@kuolemanlaakso1696 LOL, after playing the game for hundreds of hours... yes they do🤷 Thank you for playing, please come again Edit: just for your information, these are their very FIRST actions
I think one of my all time favorite things about XCOM is the fact that a game-over state is actually possible. Losing is something that happens, and the game still ticks on, you're just worse off with any failures under your belt because you have less soldiers, less resources, or all three Dark Event modifiers screwing you over instead of just 2. Compare this to most games, where "failing" a particular thing forces you to go back and try again. I honestly can't think of any game other than XCOM where failing something still means the game continues on. There are a few RPGs I can think of that kind of do this, but it's not quite the same thing. In Fallout you may be able to kill whoever it is you're supposed to talk to for a particular quest, but if you die on your way there, you just have to re-load and try again. It's all...surface-level? I'm not sure how to describe it. In XCOM the pressure feels very tangible. I like that you can fail mission after mission, lose soldier after soldier, and still keep pushing. You might be able to survive and come back from all of the utter failures, but it could also be completely futile. XCOM is the only game I can think of that pulls this off so well.
The best gun i have seen in xcom 2 is the "Everything is nothing". It activates randomly and deletes your save file through a crash, by making it corrupted. It happened to me and my brother when we had boosted our soldier's mobility waaay beyond what he should've been capable of through covert ops. Did you know that those missions can make your soldiers run with the speed of light?
fire emblem mostly uses anti-class weapon diversity to force you to adapt rather than class diversity. i would say it's comparable to vanilla xcom 2 though not comparable to expanded xcom 2. it's also worth noting that in both xcom and fire emblem these can be considered gimmicky and focus the game on single-turn plays rather than the longer-term strategies you might see in games where units are more bulky and less damaging
I had to restart the game because I lost the arms race making dumb decisions with the research lol. I couldn’t even reliably one shot with the flank attacks.
