Monocause
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2008
- Messages
- 3,656
I've been looking for my strategy game fix lately and stumbled upon Azira 's LPs of the three games of the UFO series - check the LP database for links if you're interested in these.
Aftermath was completely underwhelming. The global map was mostly useless, missions were repetitive, gameplay was clunky, enemy design was horrible both in terms of mechanics and in terms of aesthetics. Honestly, I don't know how did it happen that the devs managed to scrape up a sequel after that - perhaps it was due to starving X-COM fans who would gobble up whatever seemed to be relatively similar. It did happen though, and Aftershock was a rather large improvement over the first game in multiple aspects - however there's some severe pacing issues there.
I've been playing on Veteran. Start of the game is pretty nice. You face mutants or reticulans, but your weaponry is completely shit and you need to conserve ammo to boot, so you have to consider carefully whether burst fire is a viable option. Each new base and new research is important and opens up new options, and manufacturing first decent weapons is helluva fun.
The problems start mid-game. At some point you research ARs, sniper rifles and machineguns, and at that point mutants and reticulans are just incredibly boring enemies that cannot be any sort of threat. The cultists can, yes, and I imagine that they're supposed to be the mid-game enemy (mid-game being the 14 days until the alien ship arrives). Trouble is that 80% of your game is still going to be fighting mutants and reticulans, and you feel like you're wasting time. The way cultists expand is way too slow.
I think the best way to fix this would be to introduce two more hostile factions, each with its own agenda and preferred weaponry, so that they'd need different tactics to cope with. That'd increase enemy variety a lot, would help the AI with map-painting so that in mid-game you're mostly fighting the three factions instead of mutants and would make the game enjoyable for me to finish it probably. Also, I've no idea why did they scrap the Aftermath's idea of being able to delegate missions. It would spare you the tedium of conquering most of the mutant provinces and give you an incentive to actually build military buildings (as it is now they're completely useless and a waste of space).
Also, the only research that gives you that "OMG important" feeling is the first firearm research. From that point most of the stuff you're going to research you can easily do without - like, say, the whole medical branch of research. Autopsies are completely useless, and since medkits magically replenish after each mission the three basic ones you start with are completely sufficient; later on you scavenge enough advanced ones from the cultists so there's no need to manufacture any.
Another problem is that they seem to have fucked up the faction interplay. It seems to me that their original idea was that you could easily build enmity with one of the three factions. It would be infinitely better for the game if doing a mission for one faction would lower your relations with two other factions. The penalties would diminish along with the upper research tiers, and earlier on if you would opt for peaceful annexation of all the three factions you would have to bribe them with surplus resources. It would slow down the pace of the game while increasing the challenge, as a faction you've made enemies with would attack you and it'd be harder to appease them and it'd limit your recruit pool...
... which is an another issue altogether. I can't imagine getting fucked in this game, ie. losing. When you build up enough rep with a faction you can hire lvl 10 recruits from the get go; lvl 4 recruits are easily available, plentiful and are enough to handle most of the missions. This means that unless you're mentally handicapped you don't have to ever worry about losses, since everyone's easily replaceable.
So: Aftermath was shit, and Aftershock had a couple of decent ideas, but the game's execution is ultimately flawed. I think I'd still recommend it though, just play it on veteran instead of normal. Contrary to what Azira said in his(hers?) LP it doesn't increase the rate of attacks on your bases (and thus the tedium). Au contraire, veteran is the way it's meant to be played as on "normal" the enemies receive a penalty to damage dealt. Just be warned that the tactical gameplay takes time to get used to and the interface is *still* clunky, though much better than in Aftermath. The only thing I miss from aftermath is that you could rotate the camera by holding CTRL.
Now I'm going to try Afterlight, and wanted to ask your opinion on the third game. Is it an improvement? I honestly don't give an utter toss about the graphics style, I'm interested in pure gameplay.
Aftermath was completely underwhelming. The global map was mostly useless, missions were repetitive, gameplay was clunky, enemy design was horrible both in terms of mechanics and in terms of aesthetics. Honestly, I don't know how did it happen that the devs managed to scrape up a sequel after that - perhaps it was due to starving X-COM fans who would gobble up whatever seemed to be relatively similar. It did happen though, and Aftershock was a rather large improvement over the first game in multiple aspects - however there's some severe pacing issues there.
I've been playing on Veteran. Start of the game is pretty nice. You face mutants or reticulans, but your weaponry is completely shit and you need to conserve ammo to boot, so you have to consider carefully whether burst fire is a viable option. Each new base and new research is important and opens up new options, and manufacturing first decent weapons is helluva fun.
The problems start mid-game. At some point you research ARs, sniper rifles and machineguns, and at that point mutants and reticulans are just incredibly boring enemies that cannot be any sort of threat. The cultists can, yes, and I imagine that they're supposed to be the mid-game enemy (mid-game being the 14 days until the alien ship arrives). Trouble is that 80% of your game is still going to be fighting mutants and reticulans, and you feel like you're wasting time. The way cultists expand is way too slow.
I think the best way to fix this would be to introduce two more hostile factions, each with its own agenda and preferred weaponry, so that they'd need different tactics to cope with. That'd increase enemy variety a lot, would help the AI with map-painting so that in mid-game you're mostly fighting the three factions instead of mutants and would make the game enjoyable for me to finish it probably. Also, I've no idea why did they scrap the Aftermath's idea of being able to delegate missions. It would spare you the tedium of conquering most of the mutant provinces and give you an incentive to actually build military buildings (as it is now they're completely useless and a waste of space).
Also, the only research that gives you that "OMG important" feeling is the first firearm research. From that point most of the stuff you're going to research you can easily do without - like, say, the whole medical branch of research. Autopsies are completely useless, and since medkits magically replenish after each mission the three basic ones you start with are completely sufficient; later on you scavenge enough advanced ones from the cultists so there's no need to manufacture any.
Another problem is that they seem to have fucked up the faction interplay. It seems to me that their original idea was that you could easily build enmity with one of the three factions. It would be infinitely better for the game if doing a mission for one faction would lower your relations with two other factions. The penalties would diminish along with the upper research tiers, and earlier on if you would opt for peaceful annexation of all the three factions you would have to bribe them with surplus resources. It would slow down the pace of the game while increasing the challenge, as a faction you've made enemies with would attack you and it'd be harder to appease them and it'd limit your recruit pool...
... which is an another issue altogether. I can't imagine getting fucked in this game, ie. losing. When you build up enough rep with a faction you can hire lvl 10 recruits from the get go; lvl 4 recruits are easily available, plentiful and are enough to handle most of the missions. This means that unless you're mentally handicapped you don't have to ever worry about losses, since everyone's easily replaceable.
So: Aftermath was shit, and Aftershock had a couple of decent ideas, but the game's execution is ultimately flawed. I think I'd still recommend it though, just play it on veteran instead of normal. Contrary to what Azira said in his(hers?) LP it doesn't increase the rate of attacks on your bases (and thus the tedium). Au contraire, veteran is the way it's meant to be played as on "normal" the enemies receive a penalty to damage dealt. Just be warned that the tactical gameplay takes time to get used to and the interface is *still* clunky, though much better than in Aftermath. The only thing I miss from aftermath is that you could rotate the camera by holding CTRL.
Now I'm going to try Afterlight, and wanted to ask your opinion on the third game. Is it an improvement? I honestly don't give an utter toss about the graphics style, I'm interested in pure gameplay.
