So, my second full Classic playthrough slowly draws to a conclusion. I tried to do a proper ironman this time, but had to ditch it because I've been proven not man enough.
Seriously though, it wasn't the actual difficulty, but the bugs and UI that lead me to this. To give the game the credit, the rng had its moments of favoring the "x-rays" (seriously, who the fuck came up woth that one) and xcom, sometimes my guys failed to connect 3x 85% shots in a row, other times the aliens missed a clear flank shot. On the whole, most of the time I got my ass handed to me, I knew where and when I screwed it up. Felt a bit like chess in this regard.
But, seeing how punishing mistakes can get in this game, it's pretty unsufferable when you get kicked in the balls by an obvious bug, like units "miraculously" not taking any damage despite being clearly in the blast radius, soldiers moving to a bad spot because the view in the ufo glitched, or my favourite - aliens seeing you through a glitch in the level, spawning and shooting your ass off. At one point I even found a stealthed sectopod standing on the stairs that could take potshots at me, while I had to move down the stairs and get close to shoot, despite having the high ground. Also, don't get me started on sometimes not being able to see what you're actually aiming at in aim mode when the aliens are tightly packed.
I think I said it already, but for a game in which iron man is pretty much marketed as one of the main features, the game's QA fails to live up to that.
That said, I've had a pretty good playthrough on semi-ironman, saving only at teh beginning of the mission and reloading only if I fucked up to something else than my own stupidity.
It felt pretty refreshing, actually. I now had to use every trick in the book, had to accept losses, had to revive soldiers, damaging their Will, which meant they would sometimes shit their pants at the mere grazing of a plasma pistol. It added quite a bit of drama and I would say the casualty rate got comparable (in % values) to the original game. (I usually don't use suicide rookies in the original game, so obviously the mileage varies in this regard).
Unfortunately, what I've seen is that once the mid to endgame kick in, the game tends to devolve and gets pretty similar to my previous playthroughs. Early game felt the most challenging and full of opportunities, especially when you have little cash to go round, every bit of research counts, and the rng can really give you lemons in terms of, say, an all-sniper team. It felt refreshing to try and explore the strenghts and weaknesses of each class when, say, all you had was supports and assaults, snipers needed lots of pampering and careful positioning until they finally started to pull their weight and each heavy you tried to promote got eaten up by a random critical hit by a thin man sniper.
I agree with you guys that more roguelike feel would really add a lot to the game, as it is now, it feels pretty railroaded. Wouldn't it be fun to have an opportunity to find a random sectoid commander on a large scout within the first month? How about not seeing any floaters in a current game, ever. Exclusive, branching choices in the tech tree for aliens and xcom? Well, one can dream.
