Quick question for anyone who has finished the game:
Is attacking the alien base the end of the game?? If so, it’s been a pretty short game for me, as I found the alien base after only about 4 hours of play.
My own thoughts on the game are that it’s pretty fun to play, but I agree with others that it you should be allowed multiple skyrangers. Makes no sense to me that you only get one, especially since by this time I have a full squad of colonels, with a bunch of majors and captains that never get used. It would be more fun if you could have multiple skyrangers and send out multiple squads…especially since there is a time lag between sending out your team and when they arrive…and also it would be more challenging to try and equip multiple squads (right now I have what I presume to be the best weapons and armor in the game for my 6 player team, and since the game automatically un-equips the armor and weapons for a hurt or killed player, that’s all I really need). I’d also like to see some sort of option to go back into countries that have withdrawn from the X-COM program (more than half in the game I’m playing right now) to raid or maybe persuade them to come back into the fold (and, of course, start paying again).
Overall though I’ve really enjoyed the game. Some of the missions are quite challenging, but I’ve found that nothing has been down right impossible (as I’ve seen in a lot of the new games coming out these days…stuff like some of the missions in Jagged Alliance, or Stronghold 3 springing to mind).
Yeah, no, that’s really just the start of things. For reference, I finished that mission with basically no tech upgrades at all.
And I agree that the scope of the game is a little bit smaller than I would like (Would have preferred larger squads and maps, overall myself. I’m less concerned about “I wish I could micromanage more squads”. When you get right down to it, they made a decision that things were going to get away from you, so if they had let you control multiple squads, they just would’ve had alien abduction events happening in (Number of Skyrangers + 2) locations. For everything else, there isn’t really any point.
While I usually ran two squads in the original, that was more “because I could” than because I felt like there was usually much benefit from it. Yeah, every once in a while I’d shoot something down while squad 1 was already busy, and have to send in the B Team, but I don’t know that my game would have been meaningfully changed if I’d just let that UFO rot where it fell.
The difficulty curve of the game is interesting, actually. At the beginning, it felt pretty easy, because, well, sectoids and thin men aren’t real fierce, but it started getting a little mean with the introduction of chryssalids. But then things ramped back down as my research apparently got ahead of the difficulty and I was slaughtering stuff wholesale for a while, but now the aliens have doubled down and things are getting downright nasty.
Not sure if this is a spoiler, but the worst thing I’ve met so far is a two legged robot with a ton of hit points, two attacks per round and Thor’s Hammer of Doom as weapons. It’s extremely nasty and actually killed one of my top guys in the best armor I had. To kill the thing I actually had to hit it from multiple squad members with the heaviest weapons I had…and get lucky on at least one miss. Everything else in the game so far has been fairly easy, especially since my guys have plasma weapons now (the sniper plasma is especially nasty).
That thing was so mean. Although mercifully it trudged around and let me shoot it on overwatch like 4 times due to my positioning, before it fired the Beam of Death and actually blew open the command chamber of the UFO by destroying the entire wall. And missing the actual target of the attack. Things got hairy from there, because that command chamber was NOT empty.
I downed a Battleship once - with two of them in the cargo hold. I got really lucky, since I’d discovered them with my two heavies on the roof, who promptly started to rain rockets big enough to catch both of them in the blast. Still lost my best Assault soldier though. Poor Redshirt.
Has anyone tried the multiplayer? I only found a game once, the rest of the time it says there’s a problem with the multiplayer, whether it’s ranked, quick or custom (as broad a possible).
I’m just barely into the game - found the alien base last night - but agree with the general consensus that it’s an excellent successor to X-Com but they blew it, big time, with having only one Skyranger. I cannot for the life of me understand why you would need 99 soldiers.
The alien base mission, though… should I be waiting longer to take it on? I went straight for it and had my ass handed to me, in large part because even executing solid tactics, there just was no way to take down a group of three Chrysalids before they sprinted towards my front liners and chopped one up and turned him into a zombie. Can you put that mission off for awhile?
I was a bit afraid of taking on the alien base mission. I noticed that after completing it, the game became a lot easier. I put it off for a bit, just enough time to get titan armor and (I think) some plasma weapons.
Related to what I said earlier: Multiplayer now seems to work well. I’m having fun beating guys who go for rambo toons.
Picked up the game today. Played it all afternoon on Standard/ Iron Man.
Just did my first Terror mission with only basic starting weapons and armour.
Two guys survived. Not completed the mission, I mean while heavily-wounded just made it back to the Skyranger to evacuate ahead of multiple Chrysalids and zombies.
Perhaps you just got the light plasma rifle? If I remember correctly, the only difference between the laser rifle and the light plasma rifle is that the latter gives you a +10 to aim.
The actual plasma rifle you will want to get. Weapon tech improvements seem to give roughly a 50% boost per level.
[ol]
[li]All hail the sniper. With Doubletap and Squad Sight, my two snipers kill everything. My other 4 team members are like hunting dogs scaring the game out into the open. Especially with Ghost armor later on, most of their job is finding the prey for my snipers to kill without getting killed themselves. Your mileage and strategy may differ. [/li][li] Overwatch all of the time. With the exception of the terror missions to rescue people, I almost never go out of overwatch. Move up slowly from cover to cover and stay in a fairly tight group (though not so close a grenade can hurt more than 1 or 2 people). About 1/3 of my kills come within a short distance of the start point just by sitting over overwatch and letting them come to a kill zone[/li][li]Satellites. Get them fast. You can’t win without getting lots of satellite coverage fast. Not only do they reduce panic and get you money/scientists/engineers, but the added benefits of covering a continent are massive. I think covering Africa and North America are the most important to ensure a good income. All of your early game resources need to be focused on building new sats and getting them into the air. [/li][li]Panic > Engineers > Money > Recruits > Scientists. That’s my general rule for picking missions. Scientists are not important. At least, less so than any other reward. Engineers are the most important thing because they allow you to get gear cheaper. As a side note, high ranked recruits need to accumlate a LOT of XP before they will level. Effectively, if they came to you as a Major, they still have 0 XP and need to get the same amount a rookie would need to get promoted to colonel[/li][li]Catch-A-ALIEEEEEEEN. Sorry, Borderlands reference there, but the point is there. Catch aliens whenever possible. Don’t risk a wipe for them, but it’s important. You get a research credit for each live alien you interrogate (which further invalidates the usefulness of scientists as rewards). Also important is getting their gear. Each plasma rifle you steal is one more you don’t need to build. [/li][/ol]
My tactic is to get a Support character with the Deep Pockets and Sprinter skills (2 inventory items and 3 extra squares per turn) to just run full-pelt at them and heal himself if he takes any damage. The others just whittle down the enemy’s health with pistols.
That said, I was right pissed because I’d just lost four of my soldiers in order to get the one with the Arc close enough to a Cyberdisk to capture it and, damnit, it can’t actually be captured. Same with the Sectopods, Drones and Chrysalisks.
Smoke grenades only work if your character is healthy enough to actually survive a hit. I have never had an injured character survive an alien shot through a smoke grenade, and I’ve never had a healthy character get hit through a smoke grenade.
Once you autopsy one, you get to see that it has a special ability that makes it completely immune to stun.
Anyway, finished my Classic Ironman campaign, and I just got more and more disappointed in the game as it went on. The campaign is on rails because there’s a script to follow instead of victory conditions, your soldiers get massively overpowered from the Colonel abilities, psionics are utterly game-breaking, and the end mission is really pretty lame. Just, meh. Not much replayability. This one won’t have the legacy of the original by any stretch.