I finished my Veteran playthrough and the final mission honestly makes me not even want to fuck with my Commander + Ironman game anymore. Jesus Christ. It’s still absolutely great but I can’t imagine going through that again since on Veteran alone one of the big baddies was dodging EVERYTHING and by the time I got there I was nearly tapped out of explosives and other guaranteed damage dealers.
Some general thoughts. Psi Soldiers are amazing, granted the way they level up conflicts with every other class it makes it hard not to use them to soften up targets then let someone else get the kill toward their next promotion but they’re so fun to play and really, really satisfying when you’ve been dealing with mind controlling assholes since the second or third mission.
I have no idea how to build radio towers. I’ve never done it and I really have no idea what it even means as right now I’m too lazy to Google it.
Stun Lancers are pricks but the damn Archon dodge constantly. 98% shot, yeah, no, dodged.
Serial is amazing. A static sniper with good elevation for los can mop an entire map up.
The character pool is fantastic. There’s nothing as funny as watching my girlfriend freak out over some badass looking Rookie she got then the look on her face when I tell her that it’s one of my soldiers.
I want to try SMGs. I’ve avoided them until now but I think I’m going to give them a shot on a clean start.
Every single class is built really, really well and with things like the W.A.R. and Wraith suits you can take a middling Specialist or Ranger and make them a terror.
Andromedon are the best VIP security ever. Mind Control one and absolutely ruin the Advents day with their own asshole unit…and there’s a twist with them that makes for a more challenging risk/reward than say a Muton Berserker.
The UFO hunt Dark Event mission is my favorite XCom mission of all time.
I only played on Friday over the weekend. Did a Retaliation mission where Chrysalids show up for the first time…
It went full Klendathu not long into the mission…I noped the fuck out of there and played Metal Gear Solid the rest of the weekend as a sort of comfort food.
I’ll jump back in soon I guess. But I can ill afford another Klendathu.
30 hours in, and I still haven’t quite gotten my head round how you play the strategic Geoscope metagame. I like that it’s more varied and less locked into one optimal path than EU, but it still has that feeling of forcing you to spin a whole bunch of plates simultaneously but not giving you time to keep the most important one spinning. Okay, so the main priority, at least in the early game, is making contacts and building up your income, but for that you have to keep building comms stations, and for that you need engineers, but you can’t throw all your effort into finding engineers because you have to keep upgrading your equipment and for that you need scientists, but once you have scientists then you need to gather resources and build facilities to research new equipment and for that you need engineers, and so on and so forth. And while you’re doing all that, you have to be working out what missions you should be taking and which you should skip because you can’t even finish scanning anything without the game going ‘LOOK! MORE SHIT YOU NEED TO DO!’.
Mod support is a godsend, and to be fair the game is encouraging me to learn its systems a lot more than EU did, but I think I have some homework to do.
I think all of you must be doing better in the geoscape game than I did my first playthrough. I was under the impression that the Avatar bar filling meant game over so I sandbagged until there were three boxes left and started storming every blacksite I could get into. From there it was a whirlwind of research, skulljacking and the next thing I knew it was over in about twelve hours total. I think Mongy finished even faster.
I’m tempted to try one of the mods that adds ticks to the Avatar project bar based on difficulty just to have more time pissing around.
Lately I haven’t been actually playing and just seeding the character pool with new faces and custom biographies for my girlfriend to stumble across in her game.
With the character creator on the pool letting you set your creations to be VIPs, etc. I have some fun making random game characters like Big Boss and then listening to her reactions while I’m painting.
“Hey honey!”
“Hmm?”
“The VIP looks like the snake guy.”
“What snake guy?”
“You know the cigar guy with the thing..the eyepatch.”
“Big Boss?”
“Yeah! That’s weird huh?”
“Yep.”
She also hates every custom Nation flag I’ve added except the Jolly Roger. That one flag has gotten her completely into the concept of making your own characters. She got a random spawn that looked like a librarian and proceeded to spin this whole narrative about her. “Her kids were sick and they were chosen for genetherapy. Then the doctors told her there were complications and she won’t be able to visit them. Then a year passes and she’s a mess and her husband is talking about a divorce. She still hasn’t seen her kids so she starts looking into other disappearances and the next thing she knows she’s in someone’s basement across town learning about the crazy, sketchy stuff Advent is up to. Now I fly in and make contact and boom, she’s my new rookie. Look at her hair! Could I cut mine that short? I wonder how it would look if it was red.”
I don’t stress recruiting Scientists that much. I think I only have like 3 at this stage. Less Scientists just means your research takes a bit longer. For me it’s all about the Engineers. You save a lot of space on The Avenger by putting them in Power Conduits and Resisitance Comms. And a engineer in the Advanced Warfare Centre is an absolute must because it increases your soldiers healing by a 100%. Oh, and make sure you get the upgrade from the Advanced Warfare Centre that lets you use Gremlins as Engineers. Frees up your boys and girls to do all the other important shit.
I do focus a lot on hampering the Avatar Project through storming sites and doing the relevant Guerilla Ops for Avatar Project Dark Events and just dealing with what the others do. That gives you a lot of time to do your research and build your troops and facilities up.
Ended up finishing this last night after a bit of a break from the tension.
Actually kicked ALL the ass on that gauntlet of a final mission. Only lost one soldier (RIP Major Tariq ‘Teardrop’ Perkins) and managed to straight up execute TWO of the Avatars on the first shot! I wish I recorded it because I can barely believe it happened and I WAS THERE.
Overall, a goddamn blast of a game and as worthy a sequel to Enemy Unknown as that game was a worthy reboot to a beloved franchise.
And that ending made me super excited for what comes next…
TERROR FROM THE MOTHERFUCKING DEEP!
I actually hope the sequel takes a page from X-Com: Apocalypse’s playbook and puts you in a position of relative power in the new, liberated Earth government.
While I love the underfunded and outgunned aspect of EU/EW and the Guerilla resistance of 2, it’s going to take a lot to make you feel like an underdog again. And I just don’t see them going the “You lost, AGAIN!” route. So try something different Firaxis. It couldn’t hurt.
Well, I’m sold. My kids and I still play Enemy Within, and it hasn’t gotten any less fun with the passage of time. If XCom 2 is as worthy as all that, I’m in.
The UFO attack is linked to the Avenger Hunt Dark Event. So if you let them organize that DE again without slowing or stopping it it’s possible you’ll have to run another Avenger Defense mission. Take advantage of it, level those rookies up.
It’s waaaaay more preferable to get the Avenger Defence mission early in the game instead of later.
Less of the scary enemies like Gatekeepers, Sectopods, Archons and Codexes to make shit difficult and the slew of promotions you earn saves you a lot of time training in the GTS.
With my current playthrough I got hit with this mission after already having Plasma Weapons and Warden Armour and it is a LOT more punishing.
So if you find a UFO hunt Dark Event in the late game make sure you counter the fuck out of that as soon as possible. And if you do have to do one, make sure you have a Ranger with Phantom and a Spider Suit/Wraith Suit. And turrets if you can spare the space and resources to get a Defence Matrix up and running.
I got my first one late and it was a bloodbath. I had psi-operatives by then and used them to mind control while letting the low level squaddies rank up.
The second was very early on and I used a sniper/ranger to get eyes on the tower and drew it out until the enemy reinforcements were multiple drops, each with 3-4 targets, mostly mecs. Again, just to level up my noobs.
A good sniper and a ranger with conceal and some luck on your part can make it a cakewalk.
Remember turrets take your kills, so if you want to use it to level people up keep that in mind.
Thanks, Jake. I used to live in the Politics forum, but I’ve backed away from that kind of thing as I’ve become more senior in the military. It’s one thing for junior officers to opine their hearts out behind the thin veneer of message board handles. Senior officers, handles or no, should try to cultivate an attitude of studied neutrality when it comes to partisan politics.
In other words, now that more people actually pay attention to what I say, I find that it’s best to husband my words.
That said, CHUD is still my internet home for pop culture. I can usually be found haunting the fringes of the Doctor Who and Walking Dead threads.
Finally, announced for the Console peasants! XCOM 1 on PC was an absolute delight, but unfortunately I sit at a computer all day and refuse to do so once I get home. Really looking forward to it, XCOM is my shit.
AThe second DLC adds a few new missions that give you a couple of unique weapons and introduce three new ‘boss’ type enemies. The enemies are also unique, and can stalk you from mission to mission if you fail to kill them or they escape. Nightmareishly difficult. I just narrowly avoided a squad wipe on the first one, the ‘Viper King’ (all are gravely wounded). Motherfucker teleported away at half health.
After a month away, I went back to my game and just couldn’t get out of the corner I painted myself into - all my squad in the hospital, four squaddies left to try and advance past a Dark mission… so I gave in and restarted as a rookie. Just to get a better start, then I’ll bump up the difficulty again.
XCOM 2 is one of the most brutal videogames I have ever played. I love that they just loaded up on weird gameplay systems. It really feels like a sequel, instead of a glorified re-texture.
(Alas, the graphics aren’t nearly as polished as OG XCOM, it seems like.)
