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

[mediocrepoet]

Normal difficulty is well and truly easy enough as is. Don't know why they'd bother making easy difficulty even easier.. Hope they rename it to "toddler difficulty".

Pretty much. I lost two campaigns on classic ironman, then played and won a normal ironman campaign and normal ironman was so easy it was a slog to get myself to finish it. Haven't started a new game since finishing that, which is a damn shame because I actually really enjoyed my two attempts at classic.

I'll probably get back to classic ironman at some point and hopefully it'll reignite my alien killing boner. Blows my mind when I hear people talking about playing on normal and savescumming, much less normal, savescumming, and finding it hard. I guess it shouldn't freak me out, but it does.

Exactly this. I've heard people talking about how hard it is on normal and congratulating eachother about holy hell, you beat it on normal ironman!?

Normal is mindnumbingly boring it's so easy, I was playing on normal ironman and just abandoned the game for that reason. I don't mind playing on classic ironman and can have a good time, but seeing too much of it on normal revealed just how shallow the game is. It really killed it for me.

 

[Gord]

I started playing on normal when I got the game, but normal is only really fun in the few missions where you have some bad luck and get into a bit of trouble.
Otherwise it's smooth going: early-game enemies are push-overs due to low HP and hand-cuffed AI and late game your troops anyway are pretty over-powered.
Because I'm a sissy I'm not playing Ironman, though. My only concession is saving only once at the start of the mission.

 

[spectre]

Gord actually, it's not sissydom. You can genuinely lose a mission due to the atrocious UI and bugs, e.g. when you move a guy to an uninteded location because the elevation was borked, or when you fire at the wrong target because you couldn't see which alien exactly you were aiming at, or when you misplace a grenade throw because freeaim mode suddenly starts acting up you, or when the aliens magically see you through a glitch in the wall, or when you don't see them from a good position in because of a different glitch.
Classic is not that hard, but it punishes all sorts of silly mistakes like that immediately.
In my opinion, until anybody shows any kind of intention of fixing these, ironman on classic and above makes little sense, and in fact your approach seems the most sensible - save at the start of a mission, reload the whole thing if you fucked up due to something else than your own stupidity. It's actually pretty enjoyable this way, because you will get losses, face tough situations, you'r guys' will gets damaged and they will panic a lot, you can even lose missions and it's up to you to man up and accept the consequences.
Of course, the end game is still a pushover, but getting there could also be quite fun.

 

[Gord]

True. E.g. borked elevation/UI interaction screwed the base assault mission for me, as it made my sniper run out into the open instead for cover.
And things like grenades landing somewhere else because the game decides to move the camera around right in the moment I'm clicking to confirm the throw happened a few times as well.
Otherwise I can usually avoid losing a mission, although it's common that about half the team will be hospitalized afterwards and a few suffer from PTSD by now. And while I don't care too much about losing squadies or rookies, occasionally losing some higher-ranked soldier can hurt. Like that one time when I decided that my flanked sniper will shoot the floater instead of running for cover. She hit, but did the lowest possible amount of damage. Of course the shot by my back-up missed the floater and one round later my sniper was no more. Poor girl. Seems I have some back luck with my snipers.

 

[Grunker]

Playing on Ironman is the only way to play this game. I have no idea why anyone would play it otherwise. I never had any problems with it.

 

[spectre]

Like that one time when I decided that my flanked sniper will shoot the floater instead of running for cover. She hit, but did the lowest possible amount of damage. Of course the shot by my back-up missed the floater and one round later my sniper was no more. Poor girl.

Fair kill by the AI. You took the gamble and failed.
Not so fair when you encounter the infamous invisible Sectopod bug - you an only see it from a specific angle, despite no clear los obstruction, and it can see all your guys, including free overwatch fire whenevery you decide to move anywhere.

 

[Gord]

Didn't complain. I took the risk, and lost.
Never encountered that Sectopod bug, luckily. Although I had some issues with rockets not hitting them although they were clearly in the target area.
Probably another elevation/UI screw-up, as it happened in one of the UFOs prone to it.

 

[sser]

Trying another run on Impossible Ironman, have a good month going (two sats will be up by the end of the first month + 1 casualty + officer-school-ready), but then the game got patched today. Don't even know what it patched or if it will affect saves.

 

[Kitako]

I'm enjoying a freshly started run, classic ironman, with the Terror From Space mod. More emphasis on playing good (soldiers are hard to replace), less on first months panic rush. Tech develpment is slower, but it feels well balanced for it.

 

[Gord]

Just had a Terror Mission consisting entirely of Crysalids. Never moved more than a few squares from the starting position.
Didn't lose any men, but only because the AI kept retreating when they spotted more than ~3 soldiers at once.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

NPD-XCOM 114K


Le neutron bomb.

 

[bonescraper]

USA is the biggest console market, so the game sold around 200k total on consoles.

 

[Notorious]

I wouldn't really recommend playing this game on classic ironman. I did manage to finally beat it, but it was not a fun experience (And the last battle was pure luck I could have easily lost there)

The problem is that it's completely unbalanced. The first 2 hours are the hardest about it (Until the last 10% of the game). Basically if anyone of your main characters die, which you need to level up you can restart. I started a new game once 2 of my main characters died because it was pretty much impossible from there (You just start loosing more and more guys). And remember in the beginning you only have 4 guys.

Then it just becomes tedious. You play missions super carefully inching forward your soldiers and waiting for turns just to make sure no enemy moves forward. You research everything, get a healthy group of people and build everything you need. There is absolutely no pressure what so ever for all of the game. Missions become repetitive very quickly.

Enemy variety is ok but they could have done 1 or 2 more, would've mixed things a little up. (But then again there were not more in the original I think)

Overall an ok game. Doesn't come close to X-Com and Apocalypse, but I think it tried to achive something different. Like being faster and more accessible.

So we have jet another bastard game on our hands which tries to please everyone but pleases no one. I guess that's just the times we live in...

 

[sser]

Just had a soul-crushing loss on a map. Month two terror mission, impossible/ironman as always, with 6-soldiers. Carapace armor, no lasers. Civilians were about a mile away holed up in some warehouse. Too far for the pace of impossible. I accept my losses -- only one civilian is actually rescued. I clear the entire map of the subsequent zombie horde -- that would be 29 enemies total -- taking zero damage. At the end, though, I opened a door into the warehouse and three chrysallids ran out and surrounded my best soldier (been there since the start). Holy shit that's bad. But I manage to kill two with the last one at 4hp. I run my second assault man up -- with a shotgun -- and fire at pointblank. Three damage. No crit. 1hp, 29th and last enemy on the map, one-shots my elite-tier assault trooper.

Blimey:

After thinking about getting this man killed for awhile I realized I -- depending on how the AI acted -- could have spared him by moving someone else closer, killing two enemies, and then moving him out. These are the sort of "knife edge" moments that make or break Imp/Iron games.

 

[Zewp]

I started playing today. Does this whole 'cinematic story' thing go on all the way through the game? I just want to be left to my own devices without some random asshole telling me what I should be doing next or what a great job I'm doing.

 

[Kitako]

I started playing today. Does this whole 'cinematic story' thing go on all the way through the game? I just want to be left to my own devices without some random asshole telling me what I should be doing next or what a great job I'm doing.

Yeah, they keep coming, you can just ESC your way through the DURRRR cinematics.

Little advice, if you want to enjoy the campaign with your own pace.
Stop researching the ***PRIORITY*** stuff after you get the setup to capture aliens (arc thrower and chamber). That give you time to build up your soldiers and technologies before the story throws at you the worse.

Just had a soul-crushing loss on a map. Month two terror mission, impossible/ironman as always, with 6-soldiers. Carapace armor, no lasers. Civilians were about a mile away holed up in some warehouse. Too far for the pace of impossible. I accept my losses -- only one civilian is actually rescued. I clear the entire map of the subsequent zombie horde -- that would be 29 enemies total -- taking zero damage. At the end, though, I opened a door into the warehouse and three chrysallids ran out and surrounded my best soldier (been there since the start). Holy shit that's bad. But I manage to kill two with the last one at 4hp. I run my second assault man up -- with a shotgun -- and fire at pointblank. Three damage. No crit. 1hp, 29th and last enemy on the map, one-shots my elite-tier assault trooper.

Blimey:

After thinking about getting this man killed for awhile I realized I -- depending on how the AI acted -- could have spared him by moving someone else closer, killing two enemies, and then moving him out. These are the sort of "knife edge" moments that make or break Imp/Iron games.

I feel your pain bro. The first terror missions are really a pain.

 

[Surf Solar]

Stop researching the ***PRIORITY*** stuff after you get the setup to capture aliens (arc thrower and chamber). That give you time to build up your soldiers and technologies before the story throws at you the worse.

I did this on my first playthrough too, but the game still progresses and throws worse and worse enemies at you. It doesn't scale to the priority researches, which resulted in me having a hard time capturing normal sectoids because they just didn't appear anymore.. There are only 2 enemies I know off that get triggered by story events.

 

[Gord]

I started playing today. Does this whole 'cinematic story' thing go on all the way through the game? I just want to be left to my own devices without some random asshole telling me what I should be doing next or what a great job I'm doing.

Yes and no.
After the tutorial (first 3-5 missions) you won't really get any advisor interference during the missions anymore (they give some flavor text occasionally, like when meeting a new alien, or discovering some new technology the first time).
To finish the game you have to follow the story as provided by the game, meaning you do some things in a certain order. The number of "story" missions (or story cutscenes) isn't very large, though, and some objectives (like capturing certain live aliens) can be completed in standard missions. In a way it's similar to the original, only in a very obvious "in your face" way.
OTOH, you are free to choose when to do the next step and there's no direct detrimental effect to ignoring your next objective for some time. I'd say that it is even necessary in order to make sure you can build your equipment and squad a bit.

 

[Kitako]

I did this on my first playthrough too, but the game still progresses and throws worse and worse enemies at you. It doesn't scale to the priority researches, which resulted in me having a hard time capturing normal sectoids because they just didn't appear anymore.. There are only 2 enemies I know off that get triggered by story events.

Yeah, the aliens progression is not tied to the story and goes on anyway, that's why I prefer to skip the story for a while (that's all research time you waste) to get up the key base technology, beams and skeleton suit.
Also, on classic or impossible it's a pain to get to the first real story mission (alien base) with balistic weapons and base armor.

Also, metagaming.

Spoiler

Doing the alien base decrease panic worldwide by 2, I keep the mission ready for when I really need the panic reduction in the first caotic months. If I know the day before council report I'm going to lose some nations, I play the alien base card

 

[Zewp]

I absolutely hate hate hate hate hate hat HATE that everything seems to be driven by a story. Would it have killed them to add a freeplay mode where you get plopped into the game and then be left to your own devices? I know that the story only follows a few missions, but I don't want the cinematic story at all. It takes away a lot of the atmosphere that I loved in the first game.

I'm not averse to having a tutorial for those who want it, but what I loved about the original game was you got plopped down then had to figure out what you were supposed to do yourself. There were no cinematic story bits or DRAMA! involved. Just you, your base, limited resources and an increasingly overwhelming alien threat.

Now I understand some people might like the story (mostly the console popamoles who can't play anything without looking at shiny cinematics), which is why I'm suggesting an optional freeplay mode not tied to any campaign or story. Luckily the modding scene seems pretty active, so I guess there's always the hope that someone might make a mod for this.

 

[Gord]

Then ignore the story mission if you don't feel like it and voilà, free-form play.
Although it might be necessary to do 1 or 2 in order to get some of the techs.
But it's the closest you will get to it until someone mods away the story.

 

[Zewp]

Well, this is just bullshit. I just pretty much got a giant setback due to what I hope is a bug. Lost three veterans on a mission where after my first turn 2 groups of sectoids and 2 groups of thinmen spawned right in front of my soldiers. They literally spawned three blocks away and proceeded to wipe the entire team out.

Buggy game is buggy.

 

[JrK]

That is a known bug. In some maps enemies teleport sometimes instead of actually moving, but only when they are out of sight for a round or two.

 

[sser]

Happened to me on my last run. They were floaters. Just appeared within one-two squares of people, and then spread out. I was like... the fuck. And there was nowhere to hide whatsoever so I ended up losing a soldier.

Anyway. For some reason I just thought the game would pause before the end of the month, letting me send out my satellites. Well, it didn't. And I lost. Couldn't reload, Ironman and all. I'm still having problems keeping countries onboard in Impossible.

 

[Gozma]

There are like 4-5 kinds of teleport bug. From least to most serious:

1) If you can see enemies that aren't "alerted" to your presence (e.g. by battle scanner) you can see them teleport to the next step of their patrol instead of walking. Low level jank bug

2) Enemies that are patrolling are supposed to check if you can see them before they teleport to the next step of the path instead of walk. Sometimes they don't do it and just appear randomly in your field of view, then do the alert cutscene and get their free move.

3) More serious version of 2: enemies teleport in the midst of your squad. This is still usually harmless because it's not too bad to have some enemies at very short range when you have your whole turn to work with.

4) Extremely serious version: an out-of-sight previously alerted enemy teleports directly into the midst of your squad at the start of his turn; this will 9/10 times get someone killed by a flank crit. Happened to me with a muton killing a colonel sniper in skeleton armor and teeth were gnashed - and there was no question about it, he teleported from the back of one of those cargo bays on an abductor to the sniper a good 40 tiles away. If a whole squad teleported instead of a single it could easily kill a game with a panic cascade.

Also having a ton of groups teleport right on top of you at the start of a mission is usually a spawning bug with the "grand graveyard" map, which happened to be the first map I ever got trying impossible lol. Also happens less egregiously with one version of the alien base sometimes.

I confess I never actually beat Impossible Ironman before not playing the game anymore. I'd fuck around with impossible learning how to beat more maps with 4 rookies but by the time I had a reasonable chance of getting through an I/I first month without running into a shit map like grand graveyard or just a map I hadn't hammered a plan out on the luck factor seemed too irritating. I was getting the phenomena where you start sucking at a roguelike after playing it too much because you try to rush the boring stuff.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

I really don't understand the world ranking thing. What is it? What does it represent? It was filled out (with goddamn weird stats) on my pirated version, so it's not like it's even collecting from home or anything.