X-COM Firaxis - XCOM: Enemy Unknown + Enemy Within Expansion

[Heresiarch]

Don't forget in UFOD/TFTD, a soldier with 80 TU can move 20 tiles. Which is the same as his view distance. While in EU, soldiers with Ghost Armor AND Sprinter, can dash only for 24 tiles, compared to the view distance of 27. In other words, EU's unit view distance is way further than the originals and you actually spend MORE time positioning your soldiers in EU. In conclusion, try bring up facts and statistics and math to arguments.

 

[Angthoron]

Also, while I still hate packs + first move mechanic, looks like ghost armor circumvents it to a point. The mechanic is still fucking retarded though.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Eh, tension as you move forward? As in the original?



oh

Anyways, without the limited range of vision in stuff like X-COM and Xenonauts the whole thing would be just plain ol' tactical combat, not this tense, ball-wrecking experience where you are afraid to take each step.

That's what terrain is for. And realistic line of sight increases the importance of using covered approaches.

 

[PosledniKovboj]

Guess I ll stick with UFO:AI then. Meh.

 

[Eyeball]

Enemies being obscured by quite obvious hillocks and buildings isn't halfway as spooky as X-Com's trademark Dark Shadowy Visual Border Of Doom that you're sure is just crawling with aliens waiting to oneshot your dudes without you even seeing them. The DSVBOD is one of the things that made the original X-Com one of the spookiest games I ever played and it also works for gameplay balance reasons.

Why complain about it?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Enemies being obscured by quite obvious hillocks and buildings isn't halfway as spooky as X-Com's trademark Dark Shadowy Visual Border Of Doom that you're sure is just crawling with aliens waiting to oneshot your dudes without you even seeing them. The DSVBOD is one of the things that made the original X-Com one of the spookiest games I ever played and it also works for gameplay balance reasons.

I never found it to be particularly spooky. I'd have to test it with greater visual range to say what influence it has on gameplay. But longer visual range should force people to use cover as aliens can have higher reaction and accuracy than humans.

 

[cutterjohn]

[EDIT]
Strike that... intkeys looks shady...
[/EDIT]

They're shady in that they're selling foreign (Probably Russian) gray market keys. They're not shady in that I know multiple bros who've ordered from them without issue and and Valve 99.99% won't crack down on you for it.

So is it like that they bought the keys in countries that Steam stuff are cheap, and sell them to other regions that Steam stuff are expensive? You know, $49 is around 15% cheaper than €49...and as someone who lives in Europe I definitely prefer the former price.

No. From what I've read it's you're LUCKY to actually get a working key which implies to me that they're just taking moniez and RANDOMLY generating keys, or at least attempting to do so w/o paying steam, so fuck them.

And yes, I had the distinct impression that they're from the backsliding Russia with their KGB(former, and now whatever they call it these days present) leader.

[EDIT]
I'll just loiter for a decent retail and/or steam sale, as although it looks interesting it just DOESN'T look $50 interesting to me... i.e. I'm not a consoletard...
[/EDIT]

[EDIT2]
20h for a playthrough, fuckign $10-20 game TOPS to me.. gonna wait for the steam firesale now, given xenonauts is MUCH truer to the original than this consoletard shit...
[/EDIT2]

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

No. From what I've read it's you're LUCKY to actually get a working key which implies to me that they're just taking moniez and RANDOMLY generating keys, or at least attempting to do so w/o paying steam, so fuck them.

Dunno where you're getting that from but I've never heard of a key from a "Reputable" place like Intkeys not working. Intkeys, G2play, and CDkeyshere are all on the reasonably up and up. Couldn't vouch for others.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i wanted to uninstall this as soon as possible but also i wanted to be shielded from the hail of "if you haven't finished it you don't know how good it is when x happens" which lots of retards throw around trying to justify themselves.
well... how many mandatory missions are there? 5? 6? damn, this game IS short.
luckily. i couldn't have endured much longer.

 

[Gord]

Have played a couple of hours since saturday.
Game isn't bad, imho, but the "board-game" approach sure isn't to everyones taste.
If you can accept that it's somewhat more limited than the original, you can have some fun with it.
Difficulty/balancing isn't too bad (but then I only played on normal so far and probably suck at games), esp. the base-management layer is done quite well, as money and raw materials are fairly rare, forcing me to some austerity measures Chancellor Merkel would be proud of.
My biggest complaint with the combat are the two actions per turn thing and that enemies are always encountered in groups (or sometimes they encounter you), with the free run-for-cover turn, making it feel a somewhat contrived and formulaic. At least the special abilities soften up the two-actions-limit a bit eventually (and most seem somewhat well balanced, although unsurprisingly a few are better than others).

I don't regret buying it, but nevertheless I'm quite glad I didn't buy for 50 bucks. The 32 € I payed seem much more sensible.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

But if you finished it then you liked it!

Finished my normal campaign. Playing on normal almost entirely killed my enjoyment of the game, was so easy to get through missions without casualties (And rarely even wounded) it became a slog but I stuck with it anyway. Classic ironman was a hell of a lot better.
Anyway, story stuff was dumb. Would've been better if they didn't reveal (Even partially) the motivation for the aliens. The cutscenes were dorky but I liked how they used the character models of your soldiers. I almost wish they used that more with (Obviously) skippable cutscenes. Got a kick out of going "durrr that's the soldier i've been dragging around for hours hurrrrr".

 

[sser]

I think I'm more or less done playing this. Gameplay's enjoyable enough, if a bit popamole with the hard-to-decipher cover mechanic, but the "encounter" system is simply too fucking faggoty for me to put up with and seriously hampers the type of tactics you can use. I simply can't risk moving forwards most of the time for fear of triggering another multiple-muton spawn. What is this, a fucking MMO?

If it weren't for the shit encounter mechanism, the game would be excellent.

Yeah, it isn't the best of designs and "MMO" is very accurate in terms of "pulling mobs." One problem is that if you send a guy to scout ahead and he runs into something he will still finish his pathing route. Enemies will stand up and scatter, but your guy will still run right to his spot like a bowling ball. Aliens get a free reaction move when they explore and you don't... in turn, you have to game the system. Like you said, the biggest risk in the entire game is penetrating too much of the Fog of War too quickly. The game totally promotes moving in little pockets and eliminating small doses of enemies. Because of that reaction-move you never "find" enemies, it's more like they find you, even if you ran across them first. So if you scout on your last move you are asking to be destroyed. It really slows the game down -- and it isn't the procedural, scared pace of the original. It's more like, whelp, I got too much on my hands to go bug hunting for more. The feeling is very uneven. Too black and white. In the original, it felt as if both sides had reasons to turtle or to attack, and the battlefield had a sort of flow to it, but that just doesn't happen here. There are no individuals running around taking pot shots out of windows at you, for example. And being completely unable to "catch" enemies, it is the aggressor who is pretty much always disadvantaged.

 

[Gord]

Like you said, the biggest risk in the entire game is penetrating too much of the Fog of War too quickly. [...] There are no individuals running around taking pot shots out of windows at you, for example. And being completely unable to "catch" enemies, it is the aggressor who is pretty much always disadvantaged.

Yeah, indeed. Enemies seem strangely passive, given that most groups are inactive until you encounter them.
Move ahead too fast, though, and you are outnumbered and likely dead. So you have too advance slowly and try to dispatch each group seperately before continuing.
Luckily it does happen occasionally that an enemy patrol spots you, too, I had several muton patrols in recent missions coming in my direction and attacking me relatively intelligently, using grenades and supression fire.
In one of those missions a (previously discovered) Floater then flanked me and killed one of my rookies (with a potshot through a window, btw).
So to me it seems, that the AI potentially is quite competent, but given the strange setup of the game, it can't really show it most of the time.

 

[Marsal]

And being completely unable to "catch" enemies, it is the aggressor who is pretty much always disadvantaged.

Not true. You can detect aliens (and shoot first) without getting spotted and "giving" them a free move. It's still a shitty mechanic, though.

 

[circ]

And being completely unable to "catch" enemies, it is the aggressor who is pretty much always disadvantaged.

Not true. You can detect aliens (and shoot first) without getting spotted and "giving" them a free move. It's still a shitty mechanic, though.

Yeah. Except that's because of one of the many bugs. Like the action point movement limit lines disappearing at random, multiple level levels being hellish to navigate through, and so on.

 

[Angthoron]

multiple level levels being hellish to navigate through, and so on.

Oh yeah, that was fucking fun.

 

[Marsal]

Not true. You can detect aliens (and shoot first) without getting spotted and "giving" them a free move. It's still a shitty mechanic, though.

Yeah. Except that's because of one of the many bugs.

Why would spotting the aliens with the poke ball or while cloaked and them not getting a free move be a bug?

 

[circ]

Because everything else is.

 

[cutterjohn]

So, sorry to be a repeat but back to my original question as an original XCOM fan (through Apocalypse) and UFO series + extraterrestrials is this worth FULL price? i.e. is gameplay even though dumbed down good enough to be as engaging as the original series?

[EDIT]
I watched the vids, and IIRC followed a beta/alpha playthrough for a while, but... grognards speak up please...
[/EDIT]

 

[circ]

I can't recommend it even at a reduced bargain bin price. But apparently some people in the thread have no such problems.

 

[sea]

So, sorry to be a repeat but back to my original question as an original XCOM fan (through Apocalypse) and UFO series + extraterrestrials is this worth FULL price? i.e. is gameplay even though dumbed down good enough to be as engaging as the original series?

[EDIT]
I watched the vids, and IIRC followed a beta/alpha playthrough for a while, but... grognards speak up please...
[/EDIT]

If you are an original X-COM fan and want something like that but with prettier graphics, more features and modern interface, you won't get it.

If you want a solid strategy game with fun tactical combat in the spirit of X-COM, but not exactly the same thing, it's an excellent game outside of a few silly design decisions.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

fun tactical combat

hide behind crate, overwatch, overwatch, overwatch, overwatch, wait, hide behind crate, overwatch, overwatch, overwatch, wait, hide behind crate, shoot, overwatch, overwatch...
yeah, truly fun.

 

[Grunker]

fun tactical combat

hide behind crate, overwatch, overwatch, overwatch, overwatch, wait, hide behind crate, overwatch, overwatch, overwatch, wait, hide behind crate, shoot, overwatch, overwatch...
yeah, truly fun.

argumentum ad reducto is very popular here at the 'dex

be like the cool kids, reduce!

 

[circ]

Are you saying that's not pretty much what the so called tactical combat consists of?

 

[Gord]

If you play it like that you are doing it wrong.