Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Xenonauts - Worth it?

Stavrophore

Most trustworthy slavic man
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Aug 17, 2016
Messages
12,612
Location
don't identify with EU-NPC land
Strap Yourselves In
Xenonauts is very bland, it has no character, nothing that would make it memorable. It would be best described as tech demo, or student group game project, which goldhawk interactive is not far off. It's a game that you will play but in 99% cases you will drop it halfway through. There's not much in strategy layer, and tactical layer is quite dumbed down with shitty decisions -like throwing grenades using whole turn, while for example smoke grenades are basically useless, and in reality should be the most powerful utility that xcom soldiers could use -making concealment, breaking contact, that is not possible to circumvent even with great technology -you would need a transmitter-receiver device that would use waves of wavelength bigger than the size of dissipated smoke particles, as if otherwise they would scatter on the particles, thus producing no usable image.
 
Joined
May 3, 2011
Messages
260
Location
USA, NY
You'll all be happy to know I bought it for $6. Played for about 15 hours. Played on Normal, got to the point where I needed to capture an alien leader and outfitted my soldiers with Plasma weapons. Feels pretty easy thus far, maybe should have chose a harder setting. In any event, I'm losing momentum to keep going because the tactics are a bit repetitive. Overall, its ok, feels on par with Fallout: Tactics, with perhaps FO Tactics being slightly better because there was more character choses/leveling up choses.
 

Grif

Learned
Joined
Nov 4, 2016
Messages
231
Has anyone tried the Community Edition of Xenonauts? Does it improve the boring gameplay of the vanilla game?
 

Plisken

Learned
Joined
Oct 8, 2017
Messages
255
Has anyone tried the Community Edition of Xenonauts? Does it improve the boring gameplay of the vanilla game?

CE is mandatory IMO, even if just for the map packs and tileset expansion alone.

I've been playing with the CE + X-pansion mod and its recommended addons (instructions are found here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=877861459). This is the ideal set up. However xenonauts in general has the problem of too many fucking ground missions, and you HAVE to do them because the economy is so reliant on successful ground missions. You'll do about 30 missions in the time span you would've done 5 or 6 in the original x-com. This has a tendency to induce fatigue/wear out its welcome regardless of how varied the areas can be.

It's been a while since I've played unmodded xenonauts, but with the x-pansion pack it is ruthlessly difficult especially on ironman runs. So there's that, for masochists.
 

Grif

Learned
Joined
Nov 4, 2016
Messages
231
Has anyone tried the Community Edition of Xenonauts? Does it improve the boring gameplay of the vanilla game?

CE is mandatory IMO, even if just for the map packs and tileset expansion alone.

I've been playing with the CE + X-pansion mod and its recommended addons (instructions are found here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=877861459). This is the ideal set up. However xenonauts in general has the problem of too many fucking ground missions, and you HAVE to do them because the economy is so reliant on successful ground missions. You'll do about 30 missions in the time span you would've done 5 or 6 in the original x-com. This has a tendency to induce fatigue/wear out its welcome regardless of how varied the areas can be.

It's been a while since I've played unmodded xenonauts, but with the x-pansion pack it is ruthlessly difficult especially on ironman runs. So there's that, for masochists.

Thanks. I started with playing CE first, since I never actually finished the vanilla game. So far, it seems to be almost identical, though I could swear they tweaked the numbers so that rookies aren't so worthless.
 

Plisken

Learned
Joined
Oct 8, 2017
Messages
255
Has anyone tried the Community Edition of Xenonauts? Does it improve the boring gameplay of the vanilla game?

CE is mandatory IMO, even if just for the map packs and tileset expansion alone.

I've been playing with the CE + X-pansion mod and its recommended addons (instructions are found here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=877861459). This is the ideal set up. However xenonauts in general has the problem of too many fucking ground missions, and you HAVE to do them because the economy is so reliant on successful ground missions. You'll do about 30 missions in the time span you would've done 5 or 6 in the original x-com. This has a tendency to induce fatigue/wear out its welcome regardless of how varied the areas can be.

It's been a while since I've played unmodded xenonauts, but with the x-pansion pack it is ruthlessly difficult especially on ironman runs. So there's that, for masochists.

Thanks. I started with playing CE first, since I never actually finished the vanilla game. So far, it seems to be almost identical, though I could swear they tweaked the numbers so that rookies aren't so worthless.

they're still fucking worthless if their bravery is below like, 50 or so.

Panic is one of those features that make me want to break things while its happening but when i calm down I realize how much it adds to the game and makes you appreciate the units that stood their ground.

sometimes if i get a particularly cowardly soldier, irrespective of their wonderful stats, I will send the subhuman to his death.
 

YES!

Hi, I'm Roqua
Dumbfuck
Joined
Feb 26, 2017
Messages
2,088
Yea, with the X-files expansion or whatever its called the game is really good. It is much more like the original Xcoms than the new XComs. Personally, I think the new XComs with the long war mods are much better because of the single base with much better and strategic base building and the much better character development. I hope Xeononauts 2 has a decent chardev system with tons of choices. I would love to see this type of game with a good implementation of GURPS or D20, and not the lite two choice level up of the new XComs.


UFO Extraterrestrials is really good as well with some great mods for it.
 

titus

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Sep 28, 2011
Messages
1,719
Location
Romania
Guys, try X-Division. If you liked Long War you'll like this. Some micromanagement with the disassembly feature but it's bearable.
 

zool

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2009
Messages
897
Is this X-Pansion mod compatible with the latest CE 0.34.3 edition? It seems to me that it was released when CE was still at its 0.34.2 edition.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Mar 3, 2010
Messages
8,819
Location
Italy
all i need is x-com with xenonauts' suppression system. hell, i would be happy even with xcom 2 + lw2 + xenonauts's suppression system.
 

Ivan

Arcane
Joined
Jun 22, 2013
Messages
7,474
Location
California
Damn Fine
C0CDEB283FD1DB97CD3FE2598B068E05F315495F
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
Xenonauts is very bland, it has no character, nothing that would make it memorable. It would be best described as tech demo, or student group game project, which goldhawk interactive is not far off. It's a game that you will play but in 99% cases you will drop it halfway through. There's not much in strategy layer, and tactical layer is quite dumbed down with shitty decisions -like throwing grenades using whole turn.

This pretty much sums it up for me.

It was solid enough, but it just got dull & lacked the atmosphere, mystery & X factor which the original X-Com has. The whole game seems to run a very repetitive cycle of events, and the drama definitely decreases the longer you play.

It also feels more chore-like than the original X-Com.
 

Ivan

Arcane
Joined
Jun 22, 2013
Messages
7,474
Location
California
Some final thoughts:

I dropped the original X-Com due to fatigue felt during clearing the larger UFOs over and over and over again. I started to feel fatigued here too, around the same time: same ufos, same layout, same tactics. However, Xenonauts lets you "airstrike" crash sites for easy/fast cash (in leu of soldier xp and resources) which is probably why I ended up finishing this game. All told I airstriked far more sites than I did tackle with soldiers on the ground. I was able to make easy money this way and speed my way to the end. Maybe I didn't pay too much attention with X-Com, but I liked how Xenonauts showed you how your soldiers were improving, particularly which stats. It was also a more tense experience due to the fact that you can't sell Alien weapons "picked up" during battles (they're instantly converted to cash that doesn't break the game). I'm not sure if I will return to the original X-Com, maybe I played it "wrong" during the first few in-game months and fell behind. One day. All in all, if they fix the line of sight issues then I'm all set for Xenonauts 2. Looking forward to the kickstarter.
:3/5:
 

geno

Savant
Joined
Aug 21, 2018
Messages
718
Location
Spain
Is the X-Division mod good? Anyone tried it?
I've played like a couple of in-game months, maybe more but I dropped it because reasons (one of these may be the game raping my ass)
It fixes one of the biggest problems of the vanilla game which is the lack of content. One of the things I really liked was the AI, which was much more fun to play against. I think it's worth a try.
 

Cyberarmy

Love fool
Patron
Joined
Feb 7, 2013
Messages
8,452
Location
Smyrna - Scalanouva
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Is the X-Division mod good? Anyone tried it?
I've played like a couple of in-game months, maybe more but I dropped it because reasons (one of these may be the game raping my ass)
It fixes one of the biggest problems of the vanilla game which is the lack of content. One of the things I really liked was the AI, which was much more fun to play against. I think it's worth a try.

This mod looks like a blast! Need to try it while on vacation, gotto kill some aliens while sunbathing.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom