Sentenza
Member
I just finished another run with the game yesterday. Legendary difficulty, few cosmetic and quality of life mods, no gameplay modifications.
This has to be the 19th or 20th I complete at this point, and I'm not even exaggerating (the game save files tell me it's my 25th campaign in total, but I left a bunch of them before reaching the final mission because I was distracted by other stuff at the time).
Why am I suddenly talking about my habits with an old ass game released in 2016? Well, for two reasons: because I just want to and to offer a bit of perspective on where I'm coming from here.
To be honest, I started rather lukewarm to the Firaxis reboot of this franchise.
I enjoyed the first game to a fair extent, but I had some criticism about how they managed some parts of the game (like the over-simplified strategic layer) and having a closed number of fixed missions severely limited the enjoyment after a first playthrough. "Limited replayability", as they say.
I also wasn't exactly fond about how they changed the "action point" system of the original UFO Enemy Unknown with a "two moves per turn" one.
Fast forward few years, XCOM 2 came and improved the formula in several areas, while introducing few minor annoyances here and there plus a questionable (but not necessarily bad) shift in tone/setting.
THEN it was the turn of War of the Chosen, and despise the cheesiness of these overly-chatty megavillains acting as the player's nemesis, the amount of improvements it introduced was simply too large to ignore on a mechanical level.
Way more variety, way more mission types, a lot of side activities like the covert missions, a mechanic of "tiredness" that cleverly forced the player to rotate his soldiers way more often, more scientific achievements to make use of, etc, etc.
At some point in the past year the realization dawned on me: this is not a game I'm barely "enjoying" anymore. I think I'm officially in love with the game. The more I play it, the more I realize that I may actually like this even more than the original grandfather of the franchise, which is something I could never imagined I could hear myself saying few years ago. No matter how nostalgic of the original UFO I can feel, I get the distinct feeling that at NO point I ever found its tactical battles as frantic and exhilarating as when I'm pulling off some broken combo in War of the Chosen.
I never seem to grow tired of finding myself against what may seem at first overwhelmingly unfavorable odds, only to exploiting every trick I know about the game to turn these engagements into curb-stomp victories for my team of super soldiers.
You occasionally hear people complaining that there's too much RNG, "too much left to chances", that "you constantly miss 99% shots", but the more you get familiar with the mechanics, the more you'll realize that's mostly untrue, especially past the early rookie phase.
There's plenty you can do to *guarantee* yourself a victory instead of relying on "rolling dices" and crossing fingers hoping you'll land unlikely shots.
Sure-damage abilities, crown control, instant free actions that don't end your turn, etc.
As a gratuitous bonus, here's a random ass mission I recorded the other day:
P.S. On a side note the game is in super-sale at 4 dollah on Steam right now. But everyone considering giving it a chance shouldn't ignore the WotC expansion.
This has to be the 19th or 20th I complete at this point, and I'm not even exaggerating (the game save files tell me it's my 25th campaign in total, but I left a bunch of them before reaching the final mission because I was distracted by other stuff at the time).
Why am I suddenly talking about my habits with an old ass game released in 2016? Well, for two reasons: because I just want to and to offer a bit of perspective on where I'm coming from here.
To be honest, I started rather lukewarm to the Firaxis reboot of this franchise.
I enjoyed the first game to a fair extent, but I had some criticism about how they managed some parts of the game (like the over-simplified strategic layer) and having a closed number of fixed missions severely limited the enjoyment after a first playthrough. "Limited replayability", as they say.
I also wasn't exactly fond about how they changed the "action point" system of the original UFO Enemy Unknown with a "two moves per turn" one.
Fast forward few years, XCOM 2 came and improved the formula in several areas, while introducing few minor annoyances here and there plus a questionable (but not necessarily bad) shift in tone/setting.
THEN it was the turn of War of the Chosen, and despise the cheesiness of these overly-chatty megavillains acting as the player's nemesis, the amount of improvements it introduced was simply too large to ignore on a mechanical level.
Way more variety, way more mission types, a lot of side activities like the covert missions, a mechanic of "tiredness" that cleverly forced the player to rotate his soldiers way more often, more scientific achievements to make use of, etc, etc.
At some point in the past year the realization dawned on me: this is not a game I'm barely "enjoying" anymore. I think I'm officially in love with the game. The more I play it, the more I realize that I may actually like this even more than the original grandfather of the franchise, which is something I could never imagined I could hear myself saying few years ago. No matter how nostalgic of the original UFO I can feel, I get the distinct feeling that at NO point I ever found its tactical battles as frantic and exhilarating as when I'm pulling off some broken combo in War of the Chosen.
I never seem to grow tired of finding myself against what may seem at first overwhelmingly unfavorable odds, only to exploiting every trick I know about the game to turn these engagements into curb-stomp victories for my team of super soldiers.
You occasionally hear people complaining that there's too much RNG, "too much left to chances", that "you constantly miss 99% shots", but the more you get familiar with the mechanics, the more you'll realize that's mostly untrue, especially past the early rookie phase.
There's plenty you can do to *guarantee* yourself a victory instead of relying on "rolling dices" and crossing fingers hoping you'll land unlikely shots.
Sure-damage abilities, crown control, instant free actions that don't end your turn, etc.
As a gratuitous bonus, here's a random ass mission I recorded the other day:
P.S. On a side note the game is in super-sale at 4 dollah on Steam right now. But everyone considering giving it a chance shouldn't ignore the WotC expansion.
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