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Six month later - thoughts on XCOM 2?

Alien King turn advantage, timed missions, finicky flanking and alien critcals are pure salty BS. Also the modest graphics belie the spec requirement.
 
Hate it, the fact that after 6 months the game still runs like hot ass even on a new 1070 card makes it even worse, yeah I know turn based, but that shouldn't be an excuse for the horrible performance.
The game itself is also dissapointing the turn limits makes up for an aggresive approach which mostly spells doom for the whole squad if you happen to trigger a reaction, the flying base geocom mechanic is also very shallow, liked the old build bases around the world better.

That's surprising, it's running fine on my GTX970 these days. Maybe the game is more CPU heavy? I7-6700k here.

As for the game, love it. Absolutely worth playing. Agree some of the DLC isn't so hot but love Shen's, and love the extra (story) voice pack it adds for the Mech xD (on top of the standard ones it adds for the mechs of course)
 
Still waiting for controller support. They shouldn't have had it in the first one if they didn't plan to continue support. Don't want console version because no mods.
 
That's surprising, it's running fine on my GTX970 these days. Maybe the game is more CPU heavy? I7-6700k here.

Apparently performance is somewhat random? Though I want to blame some of this on user error. On my i5 3570k and Geforce GTX 670 I get around 30-50 fps with graphics around medium (some things set to high) at 1080p. For this type of turn-based game, that's perfectly fine.

I like Xcom 2 a lot. Maybe not quite as much as Xcom 1 and the expansion, but it's up there. I'm afraid all the mods I installed made it a little too easy...
 
I plan on picking this up later this year. Not only do I want to get it on sale, but I'd also rather wait to play it after the bulk of the optimization and balance changes have been made.
 
As a PS4-only guy, I am eagerly looking forward to the console release. This is a must-buy for me.

Edit: Holy shit I just googled it and realized that XCOM and Darkest Dungeon launch on the same day for PS4. Sorry, but I gotta go with Darkest Dungeon first.
 
Amazing game with some amazing performance issues early on. I believe they patched it. But they were bad enough to make me stop playing a game I absolutely loved :(
 
My Game of the Year 2016, still... and I've played a ton of stuff this year. I have a very good rig so even pre-patches I didn't have performance issues.
 
It's been pretty awesome. Performance is fine for me, but it certainly seems that you need a bit more high end a system than you should. It was shit on a gtx 560, and excellent on both the gtx 960 and gtx 1060, all of them with an i5-6600k and 16gb ram. Seems the video card at the low end really struggles but everything else has been fine
 
The fact that it apparently has serious performance issues on PC added to the fact that the PS3 port didn't run so smooth has me more than a bit concerned about the PS4 port.

I'm really hoping it turns out OK. Consoles are in dire need of this type of game.
 
I was super SUPER hyped about it but decided to hold off when I started reading about performance issues and bugs (I don't preorder games so I always read reviews/impressions before buying). From what I remember reading the game was very good.

As others have said, it'll probably have a bit of a forum renaissance once the console versions come out.
As a big XCOM fan, I quickly fell off from this one. Forced aggressive play kind of killed the game for me.
Oh, I remember reading about this as well and it being a HUGE turn off. I can understand a few time-critical missions forcing a more aggressive strategy but if that's truly the case for the majority of missions I don't know that I feel good about that.

It could be given some context due to story but... I don't know, it's a strategy game; I'd rather take my time planning and then executing.
 
Really, really good. I did have some performance issues, but that's not a dealbreaker for a turn based game. Loved the increased emphasis on destructibility, nothing like escaping through a hole in the wall you made with a rocket launcher.
 
Had the Deluxe Edition pre-ordered and was hyped as hell. (LOVED EU/EW)

Then I loaded it up on Day One and it barely ran on my machine.

Said to myself that I'd fire it back up once they clean up the performance issues.

Still waiting.
 
I have the same opinion as when I finished it.
Horribly unbalanced and incoherent mess.
Very disappointing after Enemy Unknown.
 
Loved it, but it did have some issues at launch and there were some holdover issues from the 1st game that were not adressed. The lack of chatter is probably due to the somewhat underwhelming sales numbers, which is quite unfortunate as I don't expect that the console release will help much.
 
Unfortunately this wasn't going up against Enemy Unknown/Within for me. If it was, X-Com 2 would hands down win. The Long War spoiled me so much that I couldn't help but think of everything that's missing on a strategic level.

I heard The Long War people are making mods for it. When they release a full long war conversion, i'll give it another shot.
 
I put around 50 hours into it at launch, and put another 4 or so last month for the last DLC. While I love the game I'm not so sure it's GOTY material with so many releases this year, and some releases are hyped beyond all measure, NMS and BF1 come to mind...

In contrast with other 2016 released games I played:
I put in around 450 hours into the Division despite all the salt I had with the game before finally putting it down. 20 hours into Hearts of Iron and 20 hours into Total War: Warhammer, and 15 hours into Stardew Valley.

Personally, I'm still waiting on both Battlefield 1 and Civ 6 - probably need to take a couple days off work to play them as they release on the same day.

So, I'd say if you haven't gotten XCom2 yet its probably worth it. You'll get your money's worth if you're into tactical games. I liked the basebuilding and world management aspect of XCOM 1 far better than the Avenger systems in XCOM 2. But I liked the units in the latter better.

While people say it's harder than the first, I actually found it much easier... maybe because I went into it already knowing what to expect and how I'd play it most effectively.
 
Still my current GOTY for 2016, and easily an improvement over XCOM: EU and EW.

  1. Timers put actual urgency to the missions that the plot always tried to convey, and prevents the move slightly forward + put everyone on overwatch turtle-ing method that lets you coast by in the last game.
  2. Stealth allows the early game to shine more where you can coordinate a strike, and eliminates the BS aliens just notice you + get a free turn that was my biggest gripe in the last game.
  3. XCOM2 adds more mission variety, and more tileset variety with more factors in how you position and use abilities.
  4. Soldiers get more visual/audio customization to really make them your own. Mods just make this even more fantastic.
  5. Soldiers get more ability variety, with less useless ones to ignore, and present some actual tough choices of what badass thing to get next.
  6. Base progression was less slow because you had more to unlock, and more ways as the game goes on to reduce build times. Also like the amount of added risk/reward to the game map for how you decide to spend your time.
  7. Enemy variety is off the charts better, with so much more frequent introductions to new units to prevent repetition from setting in as fast, and the new enemies ask for more varied tactics to eliminate effectively.
Other than the early game being tougher, and enough other people (I'm lucky I guess) having performance problems, I can't think of any major weaknesses. I guess better DLC would be nice, but the last one filled in for the missing mechs from Enemy Within. I'm hoping Firaxis goes with their tradition of at least one expansion.

Also, I hope they keep ironing out existing performance issues, because that stuff just hurts an otherwise amazing game imo.
 
Loved it. Easily on par or better than Enemy Unknown, although by the end I was wishing for some more variety in the music. And the performance could have been better.

Oh and that last mission sucks hard. Such a huge difficulty spike.
 
It's alright, the formula got a little old by the end of XCOM so I lost interest quickly. I also expected more from mods. Nothing really specific, just more.
 
its an amazing game easily better than the first (to me), very easy to mod, the campaing pacing feels great to me and i liked every new gameplay aspec, even the timers which at first i was not a fan of, dark events are awesome and not to mention the Avenger and world map, also the last two DLCs have been very good imo, unless your hardware can't take it you should play it, i have over 255 hours and the only reason i am not over 1000h is because of university and family, as soon as december is around and the semester is over(i hope i will be approved on every class) i will go back to playing and checking out more mods,
 
I prefer it over the original as the base building is more streamlined and accessible and it's a lot more replayable thanks to the proceduraly generated content. The game is still very unbalanced though.

Early game can be extremely punishing even in the lower difficulty levels. Midgame is just right and late game becomes trivial even on legendary as you start snowballing everything once you unlock the final tier of weapon/armor and have max level soldiers on your team. The two gameplay related DLCs did a good job at balancing the early and midgame a bit but I am personally hoping for a huge EW sized expansion to overhaul the game, and according to some leaks we may be getting that.

Still my personal GOTY though. Modding support is awesome as well, can't imagine getting into the console versions after being spoiled with so many mods.
 
Just noticed that it's 45% off right now if anyone's interested. All the season pass DLC is out, shitloads of mods around, and the performance issues have been whittled down quite a bit.
 
Great game, very, very difficult, I finished it on Ironman and just bought the DLC earlier for cheap
 
Just noticed that it's 45% off right now if anyone's interested. All the season pass DLC is out, shitloads of mods around, and the performance issues have been whittled down quite a bit.

Damn, perfect timing for me. I was just going to take another look this weekend.
 
I bought it at launch but it ran like crap on my laptop so I got a refund. I'm there day 1 for the PS4 version. I loved XCOM:EU, so I can't wait.
 
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