XCOM 2

SupremacyKing2 said:

I already got predator armor and magnetic weapons on all my guys so that is good. Yeah, I love predator armor. I am using one utility slot for grenades and one for the nanovest. My guys actually have pretty good health.

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Had good luck with scientists on this campaign, getting 2 early, and went for magnetic weapons ASAP (at that point I didn't have the alloys for Plated Armour). It makes a huge difference, and one-shotting Vipers seems routine. A bit too easy, since unlocking a weapon type once not only equips everyone carrying that weapon with the gauss equivalent, but they even keep their weapon modules.

I think gauss weapons should be a per-weapon unlock like Proving Ground upgrades, and certainly they shouldn't keep weapon modules.

PhilBowles said:

Had good luck with scientists on this campaign, getting 2 early, and went for magnetic weapons ASAP (at that point I didn't have the alloys for Plated Armour). It makes a huge difference, and one-shotting Vipers seems routine. A bit too easy, since unlocking a weapon type once not only equips everyone carrying that weapon with the gauss equivalent, but they even keep their weapon modules.

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I did not have enough scientists but was able to rush the research for magnetic weapons at the black market. It cut down on my research time by a lot. I did not realize how great the black market can be.

So what's the verdict, is XCOM2 a lot better than the first one? I did like the first one, but.. after 2-4 hours of gameplay, everything just gets old. Have they made big improvements to the sequel?

I think the sequel is hand's down better than the first one but not better than Long War. Needs some modding to get it up to that level.

I don't know if it has been talked about a lot but I really like the procedural maps. They look really good and they definitely add a lot of replayability.

Thanks Wolfbeckett, I might just have to pick this up once it goes on sale..

XCOM 2 contains big improvements all around over the first one... even the gameplay style of the XCOM franchise fits the sequel's theme much better than the first one.

warpus said:

So what's the verdict, is XCOM2 a lot better than the first one? I did like the first one, but.. after 2-4 hours of gameplay, everything just gets old. Have they made big improvements to the sequel?

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It's better in most areas than the first one. The few (mostly minor) exceptions are, I'd say:

- Promotion trees are now much more binary, something that seems to be derived from the Long War mod. You don't gain a lot by mixing and matching different sides of the tech tree, and balance between options and builds is poor.

- Sectoid psi powers are weak and the AI associated with them poor, mostly because all of them (even panic etc.) are linked to the survival of the squishy Sectoid. Psi powers were handled better in the first game from what I've seen so far.

- A minor issue, as stat increases on promotion are randomised, but while most of the old Second Wave options have been incorporated into the main game, rookies now all start with the same stats.

- The strategic layer is much better overall, but compared with the first game with Second Wave options enabled the first month of the campaign is too heavily-scripted (the first few missions all offer the same rewards and have the same mission difficulty - hence number and type of aliens). There's no randomisation in, e.g., the first council mission (which is always 'rescue a scientist'). Since this is only the first month, this is not a major issue - but I've now started several playthroughs and it feels a bit static if you're bad enough (like me) to need to restart fairly frequently.

- Just because of the new game structure there are no new Second Wave options; Training Roulette is the one I miss most, and its equivalent (a facility that occasionally gives free promotions from other classes to a soldier) is rather limited - a case of free boons rather than anything that changes your playstyle.

- I prefer the EU approach to tech-based upgrades, where foundry upgrade costs are one-time payments while new weapon types are bought as individual items (this also makes losing gear on character death more relevant when you have that Second Wave option enabled). Oddly given that you now automatically lose gear on character death (unless it appears as a loot drop), XCOM 2 has reversed this approach: grenades and ammo are bought as one-off items, while rifles, shard guns etc. are universal upgrades. This also reduces the relevance of the game's new module system, since you don't have to trade off using an advanced upgrade now vs. holding onto it until you have a high-tier weapon.

warpus said:

So what's the verdict, is XCOM2 a lot better than the first one? I did like the first one, but.. after 2-4 hours of gameplay, everything just gets old. Have they made big improvements to the sequel?

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This one is a lot more dynamic. There are time limits to most missions which add a lot more pressure. Instead of being methodical as in the last one, there is a lot of excitement added by the time limits.

There are also subtle changes that make it more exciting. For example, most of the perks you earned in the first one were passive abilities. Now there are a lot more active abilities earned each time. In the first one, snipers had an ability that allowed them to keep shooting after they scored a killed. That ability was automatic and could not be used in consequetive turns. XCOM 2 has a similar ability, but now you have a to press a button to activate it and there is a longer cool down between uses. That's a minor difference, but the addition of it as an additional activation makes it more tactically interesting to determine if you should use the ability now or in a future turn. Similarly, the longer cool down means you can set up for occasional really exciting uses. Combine that with the time limit and you've got an interesting push-pull.

I was playing last night and had an exciting mission. I'm early in a campaign and had the mission to hack an enemy mainframe located in a city. My troops finished off some early defenders and my hacker and her buddy moved in on the building with the mainframe while my sharpshooters supported them from the roof top across the street. Just then, a flare fell onto the building on which my sharpshooters were stationed indicating incoming enemy reinforcements. Unfortunately, I was running out of time before the mainframe shut down so I had to rush my hacker forward to the mainframe. As I did so, another band of enemy defenders appeared from the building with the mainframe. Neither my hacker's fire team nor the sharpshooters could easily defeat their own foes on their own. I had to run my hacker in under fire to get the data, and then engage in fighting withdrawals on both sides until the two teams met together in the street at which point they could synergize to take out the enemy.

The first XCOM tried to capture that same tension, but it did not do it as well or as frequently as XCOM 2.

Don't EVER try to get the hack reward "take control of a random enemy" on a protect the thing mission. It will trigger the pod, and the pod will go and everyone in it will shoot the device non-stop (as opposed to only one shooting it like normally happens) until you wipe it. I just learned this the hard way and lost 3 soldiers trying to salvage the situation

This is why I finally switched off Ironman, I just want to finish a game without getting screwed by these wonky interactions.

yeah i would not advice on taking ironman either. on my commander playthrough i only reloaded twice or thrice mostly due to some weird behaviour and all was fine (no save scumming). i would wait for ironman once the game is patched and you know all the little gameplay mechanics.

i am currently on my legendary playthrough and i had to savescum like crazy. the difficulty difference between commander and legendary is insane. personally i would like to have the tactical difficulty of commander and the gameplay tweaks of legendary on the strategy layer (longer game)

Im playing commander ironman. Not had any game breaking bugs yet. I have almost finished, but i keep losing soldiers. This is not in itself terrible, as you can replace them with staff at the black market and also HQ.

My verdict is that the game is excellent. I especially like the strategic overlay. And the graphics are also excellent. You need a high end PC though to make full use of it.

sherbz said:

Im playing commander ironman. Not had any game breaking bugs yet. I have almost finished, but i keep losing soldiers. This is not in itself terrible, as you can replace them with staff at the black market and also HQ.

My verdict is that the game is excellent. I especially like the strategic overlay. And the graphics are also excellent. You need a high end PC though to make full use of it.

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Well i spoke too soon. My ironman game is officially broke. For some reason it seems suspect on retaliation missions. Thats a real bummer as i am basically at the end. Sad face

BvBPL said:

This one is a lot more dynamic. There are time limits to most missions which add a lot more pressure. Instead of being methodical as in the last one, there is a lot of excitement added by the time limits.

There are also subtle changes that make it more exciting. For example, most of the perks you earned in the first one were passive abilities. Now there are a lot more active abilities earned each time. In the first one, snipers had an ability that allowed them to keep shooting after they scored a killed. That ability was automatic and could not be used in consequetive turns. XCOM 2 has a similar ability, but now you have a to press a button to activate it and there is a longer cool down between uses. That's a minor difference, but the addition of it as an additional activation makes it more tactically interesting to determine if you should use the ability now or in a future turn. Similarly, the longer cool down means you can set up for occasional really exciting uses. Combine that with the time limit and you've got an interesting push-pull.

I was playing last night and had an exciting mission. I'm early in a campaign and had the mission to hack an enemy mainframe located in a city. My troops finished off some early defenders and my hacker and her buddy moved in on the building with the mainframe while my sharpshooters supported them from the roof top across the street. Just then, a flare fell onto the building on which my sharpshooters were stationed indicating incoming enemy reinforcements. Unfortunately, I was running out of time before the mainframe shut down so I had to rush my hacker forward to the mainframe. As I did so, another band of enemy defenders appeared from the building with the mainframe. Neither my hacker's fire team nor the sharpshooters could easily defeat their own foes on their own. I had to run my hacker in under fire to get the data, and then engage in fighting withdrawals on both sides until the two teams met together in the street at which point they could synergize to take out the enemy.

The first XCOM tried to capture that same tension, but it did not do it as well or as frequently as XCOM 2.

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Just learned something related to this dynamism that gave me immense pleasure. In this playthrough I've lost only two soldiers - one, at the time my primary Grenadier, was killed in a mission. The other - also a Grenadier, indeed one I'd bought off the black market and given my best PCS and weapon upgrades - had been left behind when I ran out of time on a VIP rescue mission (her first mission, in fact).

Just had a new VIP rescue mission - turned out the VIP was the missing soldier, who is now back in my roster, and who appropriately I had to break out of a prison cell. It's a bit odd that she kept her upgraded weapon and indeed her lightly wounded status from a mission a couple of months earlier, but it's a great touch that you can rescue lost soldiers this way.

PhilBowles said:

Just learned something related to this dynamism that gave me immense pleasure. In this playthrough I've lost only two soldiers - one, at the time my primary Grenadier, was killed in a mission. The other - also a Grenadier, indeed one I'd bought off the black market and given my best PCS and weapon upgrades - had been left behind when I ran out of time on a VIP rescue mission (her first mission, in fact).

Just had a new VIP rescue mission - turned out the VIP was the missing soldier, who is now back in my roster, and who appropriately I had to break out of a prison cell. It's a bit odd that she kept her upgraded weapon and indeed her lightly wounded status from a mission a couple of months earlier, but it's a great touch that you can rescue lost soldiers this way.

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Wow that is incredible. I didnt know that could happen.

i think the game has lots of nice little touches like that. I quite like the main menu screen being of roughly where you are in the game and also having one of your soldiers as the person is shot.

sherbz said:

Wow that is incredible. I didnt know that could happen.

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Better yet, she came back with a Twitchy attitude - I don't think that was her attitude before. I may be wrong, but even so I like thinking it's a consequence of the trauma she suffered.

She's definitely earned her place back on the team, twitchy or not - 12 kills in 3 missions (5 from the one where she was captured).

So, I got my first defeat movie since I was unable to stop the avatar doomsday clock. I get that completing the avatar project is the aliens victory condition, but the video seemed a little sudden. It did not really explain how the aliens won. I mean one minute I have a strong resistance movement, I have several regions across the globe that are working with the resistance, I have a strong squad of lieutenants and a captain with predator armor and magnetic and gauss weapons, I am winning every tactical battle and then the next minute, I get a video saying "aliens have crushed the resistance once and for all and the Avenger has crashed and is nothing but a pile of junk and every xcom person is dead".

Also, I feel like the game is being a bit coy about what you are ultimately supposed to do to win. It tells you to attack black sites but that even that will only slow the avatar project, not stop it. But, then when all the pips fill up, the game suddenly says "oh you have 20 days to attack a black site or you lose". I did not know that. Unfortunately, I maxed out my contacts and power so I was not able to build a power core, build a radio comm facility, make contact with the region with the black site before the timer was up. And I am still not sure what I am supposed to do even after I stop the avatar countdown. Also, I did not do the skull jack thing in this campaign. Maybe that prevented me from doing the mission to stop the avatar clock?

Now, I get that I need to be able to attack a black site as soon as the countdown starts but I did not know that before. But I am still not very clear exactly what I am supposed to do win the game which makes it difficult to form a clear overall strategy. Is that part of the campaign story? Is the game purposely being mysterious in terms of game objectives so as not to spoil what the avatar project since the player is supposed to learn about it gradually throughout the campaign? Is it that the game wants the player to gradually learn how to win the game so as to mimic how as a resistance movement, you are not really sure what the aliens are up to?

fulfilling the story leads to a campaign victory. it tells you your goals in the upper left on the strategic layer.

by the way you do not necessarily need to make contact with the region that have an avatar facility to raid it. you can get facility leads through hacking, which when researched allow you to raid a facility no matter if you have made contact with the region or not.

in my current legendary campaign i basically waited until the avatar counter hits full, made contact with 2 regions that have facilities in the mean time and got one lead. once the counter hit i raided all 3 facilities and the blacksite and reduced the counter to 4 pips. without any facilities it raises very slowly if at all.

sherbz said:

I guess the medic trade off is that you have to accept that without a medic you basically have to use utility slots on other soldiers. But imo their perks usually make up for this.

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I use the utility slot on the psi operative now I have one, since it doesn't get any particularly relevant options and since it's not a good combat soldier with its assault rifle, the specialist is better for carrying special ammo.

Covering fire is not actually as useless as it first seems. A later perk guardian allows the specialist to chain over watch.

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Except that Threat Assessment is exactly as good for that - just use Aid Protocol on the Specialist himself. With the advantage that it provides the defence bonus and can be used to give another squad member an overwatch opportunity while the Specialist himself goes onto standard overwatch.

Wolfbeckett said:

Flashbangs are good early on because they can interrupt sectoid psi abilities. So if one your guys gets mind controlled, flashbang, mind control ends. Later on you can just one shot sectoids and end the mind control that way. Overall I was a bit disappointed in flashbangs, I used them a lot early on because I was used to Long War where they're awesome but it felt like they aren't nearly as effective in this game, maybe just because the tactical game is easier in general so it's almost always better to go for more offense over defensive options like flashbang.

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I've been using them a bit more and they do seem more effective than I thought - best use I've found for them is to disorient the Codex, since while disorientated it won't clone when hit. But they become redundant once the specialist unlocks the upgrade that acts like a small-radius flashbang.

Wolfbeckett said:

I was surprised in that regard about the chryssies too. They are a lot less terrifying in this game because by the time they show up they're too weak to be much of a threat. They don't even do that much damage anymore, one of my soldiers got hit by one last night and it did a whopping 4 damage.

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Just ran across them for the first time - I think the big issue is the AI isn't coded correctly. Chryssalids in the last game (and in the original) were as dangerous as they were in part because they actively went after civilians to zombify. In this mission Chryssalids made no effort to attack civilians, even when next to them - they spent too much time burrowing and unburrowing.

Though they did kill my specialist colonel, hitting him twice (the first time I healed him, but then had no medikit left) and he bled out a turn before the mission ended. Chryssalid poison seems not to go away naturally - that seems to be the secret danger.

They can also miss entirely now, the same soldier got attacked by a second one in the same round and it just missed. I should note that I fought a sectopod several missions before I even encountered a single chryssalid.

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Hmm, odd - I haven't seen any sectopods yet.

Have a medkit somewhere in case someone gets poisoned and they're no trouble at all. Game has some weird balance issues.

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Berserkers are still bad for the time they show up (and probably generally), and the shieldbearers also seem a bit weak. None of the ADVENT grunt types really seems to get much better with their 'heavy' versions - probably the game could have benefitted from giving them the same kind of variety as EXALT, so that they have access to sniper and heavy weapons.

tesb said:

fulfilling the story leads to a campaign victory. it tells you your goals in the upper left on the strategic layer.

by the way you do not necessarily need to make contact with the region that have an avatar facility to raid it. you can get facility leads through hacking, which when researched allow you to raid a facility no matter if you have made contact with the region or not.

in my current legendary campaign i basically waited until the avatar counter hits full, made contact with 2 regions that have facilities in the mean time and got one lead. once the counter hit i raided all 3 facilities and the blacksite and reduced the counter to 4 pips. without any facilities it raises very slowly if at all.

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Good to know. Thanks so much.