XCOM 2 Reviewed at RPS

[Great Ajax]

The game is definitely harder at the beginning but once your troops start getting skilled, they become crazy killers.  The mod support is simply amazing and I think I'm running about a dozen very nice mods at the moment.  The ability to create character pools so you can customize and name soldiers that may show up on your in-game roster is a really nice feature.  I'm thinking of playing a whole new campaign just so I can play with the GI Joe roster mod.

Trey

[JasonPratt]

Has anyone else found their copy of XCOM2 automatically uninstalled recently?

I haven't played it in about a week, and while I was looking around for something low-key to play while I'm sick this afternoon (not this), I suddenly noticed it was listing in my library as uninstalled.

Steam is busy "discovering existing files" for XC2 now.

[PanzersEast]

     HUMAN INSURGANCY

I'm going in!


PE

[Windigo]

     HUMAN INSURGANCY

I'm going in!


PE

Good luck Commander

[ghostryder]

I've had no problems but I'm not too compelled to play it like i was the First game. It's a mix of bad and good- half steps forwards and two steps back in some cases.

My Review
I think I have enough time in to give a decent review--although I will mention as more mods released I found myself restarting the game multiple times. Most mods as of yet are relatively simple---guns, armor, more classes, longer timers, no timers, no alien move when spotted, etc etc. The modding abilities in the game would allow complete reworks well beyond what Long War managed and all we need here is time--but as of now there's not really much in the way of reworking the game and gameplay. For this review about all I've ended up using is timer tweaks and some gun and armor mods for more customization. Cheat mods are out and availabile-but quite frankly I see little use for them because compared to EW the A.I. is rather simple --In EW when you upped the difficulty that included extra A.I. routines to both tactics and patrol, as well as aim, hitpoint and other bonus's. Here I've seen nothing A.I. wise on the most difficult level--and I'm actually pretty close to finishing the game on that difficulty and have yet suffered a squaddie death other than the two canned deaths in the tutorial.
In fact the A.I. is a disapointment in every regards. Why reviews don't mention this is beyond me. Here's an example:

In Angry Joe's review here at the 6:30 mark you see him googles over his sniper killing a snakeman---he's SOOOOOO google over it he fails to notice what a bonehead move that is for the A.I. in the first place. It can spit poison or grabble from a distance and from behind cover-and even through walls thanks to the game's broken physics- yet it's running out (for what logical reason? It's not a melee unit) happily allowing you to easily murder it. In fact-overall this is the A.I.'s tactic---run into Turkey shoots you set up.

the over the top Alien abilities can throw a curve the first time you experience them--but there's no mystery in what you need to research to counteract them. Lizardmen giving you trouble-just research a dead one--the counter is ALWAYS tied to the exact alien- then equip your troops with whatever tech you discovered.-and most times you can deal with them easily enough without it with some brains.

The two most troublsome Aliens are the Codex and the Avatar--the rest is usually just HP buffed in some way. Your first see a Codex when you use a Skulljack on an Advent Officer---this is a Story trigger so has to be done and can't be avoided--but there's no reason to ever use a Skulljack on an officer again. Doesn't matter because the Codex will be popping up in later missions.

The problem with them is they teleport every turn. And if you attack them and don't kill them they create a clone with half the hitpoints of the original. You can soon have 4 or six of these if you just graze them---which happens quite a lot because of the dodge ability. They are a pain because the Codex has an ability to cast a psionic rift that covers a large area of effect, which will disable the use of any primary weapons inside it, resulting in the weapons being emptied of ammunition and thus forcing players to reload to use them again.

However secondary weapons like swords and pistols are unaffected. And they easy enough to take out with the right tactics. the Ranger's high crit chance, or one with the Conceal and Shadowstrike skills, is ideal for this.Bluescreen Rounds (particularly if they are combined with high impact weapons such as shotguns or sniper rifles) and other abilities specialized for mechanical units are highly effective against Codex units as well. You can prevent Cloning by disorienting the codex first, Usually done via flashbang. Another ideal tactic is to first destroy the Codex's cover without damaging it by using a well-placed grenade or one of the Grenadier's abilities, and then hitting it with a single powerful shot, like the Sharpshooter's deadeye -so there's lots of options.

The Avatar appears after you Skulljack a Codex---this is a late game enemy and probably is by far the strongest enemy in the game. It has very good Mind control abilities. The Avatar can take the control of multiple units not immune to psi abilities. A single enemy Avatar can have multiple units under mind control at the same time. I've had this happen dispite everyone being equiped with mind shields. The Avatar can teleport for the cost of 1 action, which means he can use an ability or fire right after. The Avatar uses this ability as a reaction to every damage received. However, it teleports only after his movement is finished. Therefore, you can kill him with multiple Overwatch shots before he can teleport.  The Avatar can target a massive area for a powerful AOE attack, damaging all units inside of the Dimensional Rift. At the end of the enemies' next turn, the Dimensional Rift will collapse, dealing additional damage to all units within. Null Lance: The Avatar fires a beam of energy in a line in any direction, dealing a large amount of damage to any units within the beam's path, bypassing any obstacles in its way. Avatars will regenerate 5 HP every turn, so, if possible, dispose of the Avatar in a single turn. It's immune to mind control , Insanity and such but not the AOE or Null lance of your own PSI soldiers.

Therefore you need to gang up on the sucker with you full squad--which should be pretty well equiped when you run across him. Killing one reduces the Avator DOOM timer by 3 as well- so there's a huge benefit in taking them out--but if you fail to THINK they can wipe you. But that's about as tough as it gets and that's a scripted ability and doesn't really tie in to A.I. at all. When the game depends on A.I. to get the job done it generally just can't. The First game had much better A.I. and with Long War that's about the only way to be challenged by these Firaxis's XCOMS.

Terror missions are replaced by Retaliation missions, and again don't really offer much challenge once you realize once the enemy spots you it ignores cilvilians 99% of the time. So the tactic for these missions is rather simple: Use a squaddie with lots of mobility-run out get exposed and lead the aliens to your turkey shoot. The only time cilvilians are lost is during the aliens first and sometimes second turn if all of them don't see you yet.

There are 2 A.I. mods in the Workshop--A.I. improvment mod 1.42 and some changes in the Longwar studio mods-though they are not called anything A.I. wise--An important thing to note is that if you have Long War Studios mods enabled, you must disable them and  enabled improved A.I. first, before reenabling Long War Studio's stuff. They extend the ai.ini for their new files which will prevent improved A.I. from working properly unless theirs are enabled after.

What the mod basically does is nuke any advancment routines and makes the enemy stay back. Unfortunately it doesn't do anything to get the A.I. to flank or patrol in a logical way--it's main purpose as the discription says "The AI will entrench instead of running through your overwatches all the time, as silly as that was"

The problem of course is it's on steam workshop- so if the mod is ever taken down for an update your save game won't load---this has happened to me enough I now only use mods off of Xcom2 nexus-



The setting
By now most know this sequel's overall story starts with the Alien's win, man's agreement with/for Advent and your basically an underground resistance group. We have to assume here somewhere after the first game's completion and this game there was another wave incoming the 1st game was unaware of. I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept that basic premise but unfortunately Firaxis fails to carry this to logical conclusions. I can't expand on this without going into spoilers so be prepared for them--because this needs to be said ---as STORY is a huge part driving the game.

At first I liked the idea. XCOM was conquered, the council wanted to surrender. The aliens had total ground and air superiority. And here you are--Mr. French resistance trying to fight back, expose the real truth (Matrix style), and defeat the BIG LIE and Advent. But as the story goes on and more is learned about the Aliens real motivations you simply left scratching your head.

Dispite all the extra cutscenes there's not much story or drama at all. You get during the tutorial one cut scene where Advent complains about your terrorist actions and then it goes nowhere and is ignored the whole game. This propaganda battle could have been a whole new strategic layer.

Furthermore the basic premise has more holes than swiss cheese. Again-the tutorial introduces aliens being hidden behind specially constructed helments---but then the next mission has a snakeman strolling down main street in the wide open---and no cilvilians at all reacting to it. What was the purpose of those helmets again?

Actually-what's the purpose of advent? Seems a huge expense to go to concidering humanity is already conquered. Collect your DNA juice however you want. Which means there should have been a whole different premise here all along. Have advent actually somewhat committed to their promise while the Avatar project really does exist secretly--covertly by the Elders seperatly from the powers in advent. This way you can keep you Aliens restricted to the black sites rather than wandering around on main street for everyone to see, which would make the helments make sense and add another layer to the propaganda battle that doesn't never got put in.

Plus- the only characters that are interesting is the ones you create. Bradford looks cool but goes unused outside of the Tutorial. The scientist and Engineer are as interesting as watching pain dry. Unlike the first game-you get no interesting characters on recues. Where's Zhang and Annette? No missions at all in these regards.

The missions

Dispite the better maps mission choices suffer. The One base attack in EW at least was something. Here it's a huge letdown. It's basically a Destroy item and return--outside your base no less- like 1/3 of all missions. Or it's a capture person mission or hack/destroy. Gone are the interesting Saucer missions and the challenging Terror missions. Terror missions are replaced with retaliation missions but sadly again I say the weak A.I. wants to normally ignore the cilvilians once it spots you. Timers are hugely overused- sure-they can mask the weak A.I. for a bit- and the game gets stupidly easy if you mod them.

briefings rarely justify the timers and the overall DOOM advent timer rushes one through the game. Easily modded out but as it stands this was just a horrible idea. If you think it ADDS hard choices, your just nuts. It ADDS nothing. Timers or not all --missions are the same--with or without. It does take away quite a bit -and a lot more than simply turtling on overwatch. You lack the time to strategically move your team where you might want them to come into the target. All in all your one and only choice is to get the job done before said timer expires or stop said timer-and there's just one strategy for that. Straight out of tinkertown web gaming or The land of Concoles to use these designs in a game like this is like removing the cheese from a cheesburger. The person who thought them up can't be slapped enough, and if he goes down a couple more kicks is highly warranted.

And boy do I miss those saucer missions from EW---the sameness of all missions in this game quickly wears thin.

The Geoscape of Interruption
That's it's new name and it's perfectly fitting. First, the whole idea of having to scan everything to get something done is fine in itself--though logically it's just a gamey way for replacing scanning for alien ships in EU-and that's pretty much it--you Scan to get things done, be it make contact, get supplies, get recruits and of course get a headache---because each and every scan--be it 3 days or 6 days, will get interrupted multiple times. Research is complete, item manufactures, room buult, scientist farted, whatever--the flow of this is about as disconcerting and jolting as it can be, and even with nearly 70 hrs in I just can't get used to it. There needs to be a mod addressing the flow here so things go much more fluid and logically. Hell, illogically as long as the interruptions stop. Worse you can't get an overall view because the damn Geoscape does not zoom out to where you can see the whole globe--dispite it looking just like that in the control room.

Mighty Morphing Power Ranger Music
You hear it going into and exiting missions...and it just does not fit the XCOM universe. The original played like a horror game--with music that fit the ANTISIPATION of what might pop out next. Even EU had better. Now, once on the mission there's a nice ambient thump thump thump background music ---I like that--but any mod that does away with the Jackie Chan crap is being immediately downloaded by me.

The Bugs

A month in and no fixes. Memory leaks are the cause of uncleared variables once used and lag is caused by incorrectly calling functions from the engine. These should be easily narrowed and fixed----and should have been ages ago--which makes me wonder what type of incompetent programmers work for them?

In Need of Balancing
Swords are neat...early. They're useless later. You will find armor, weapons and soldier perks are not very well balanced at all. Mods to the rescue but in the end we need some serious A.I. fixes to bring more challenge to the game.

There are plus's of course. The random blocks on maps are superior to the canned maps in EW.

Modding is finally supported and the possabilities are large. Although having such a linear story kills quite a lot of possabilities.

Character customization along with the new character pool are great additions.

The streamlined soldier classes are better in the sense of each class is different- however the mechanics are hampered by a lack of real world physics- LOS, being seen/shot through Walls and Floors, whole team exposed when one is spotted--can move and shoot but can't shoot and move--these unrealistic and gamey additions restrict expanding classes to their full potential-not to mention killing the emersion.

Overall a bit dissapointed-but the game is still fun---but falls apart so much in so many areas I'd rate it near 70%

[Jarhead0331]

It's good to see ghostryder. Nice review. I agree with much of it.

[undercovergeek]

That's because it's kicking your ass  :P

[FarAway Sooner]

Damn, ghost, haven't seen you around in a while!  Appreciate the write-up.   O0

[JasonPratt]

Hi Ghosty!  8)

Frankly I think taking a fast runner around Retaliation missions to try to troll the enemies back to an ambush site, is a good way to get the runner killed. Maybe late game that might work, once the Ranger rangers up -- but even then, the maps are large enough that I couldn't see how to ensure all the clusters aggro'd sufficiently by turn 2 to ignore the civvies. I mean, if it worked for you early or even late game (and on high difficulty apparently) then it worked, I guess. I'm just hugely surprised.

Re the plot: the tutorial missions show pretty clearly that the player lost the first game due to an early base raid. XCOM didn't get far.

Re the snakemen: they're snakewomen. ;)

Re the snakewoman running instead of globbing or tonguing -- those abilities have cooldowns. I know what sequence you're talking about in the Angry Joe review, and it looks obvious to me that the snake is trying to get to cover and/or flanking before taking a high-percent shot (with her basic gun) and can see no one on overwatch, but a late game gunslinger ability messes up that plan. Presumably she'd already used her special weapons early, although I'd have to watch Joe's gamestream (rather than the review) to be sure. I have never seen a snake do anything other than tongue or glob off the bat, or both given a chance, assuming she survives reaction fire on the initial scatter.


Re giving your troops tech to counter whatever threat: here I have to credit (though I hate to do so) the ultra-silly inability to carry more than one special item, until very late in the game, and even then multiples types are very limited. One soldier holding one counter item doesn't go far countering snakemen or anything else. I made a choice early on to equip all troops with mind shields, which prevent problems from sectoids and also general morale problems (although the mindshield shouldn't really prevent those, that's just overly convenient programming.) Like you said, other problems can be handled by smart play. (And save scumming. ;) )


Re the helmets: it isn't like the people didn't know about aliens being aliens (although I agree that overt aliens like the snakewomen ought to be causing more problems with civvies.) But the Advent helmets weren't there to hide "aliens among us", they were there because the Advent troops were supposed to be humans faithfully collaborating with the Elders -- and not genetically modified half-aliens! The genetic modification of humans is being kept secret.


Personally I liked the mix of more exciting music to pump up the troops' (or audiences') morale for revengance asskicking. But I understand why that doesn't fit the mood of the original game. Neither does action-movie semi-cutscenes from this or the earlier remake, strictly speaking. But they're awesome, so I like them anyway.


Otherwise I agree with the review's criticisms. :) I think I have more appreciation for what the game does right than you do, so I'd call it more like 85%. But there are definite problems endemic to the remake engine / design, and while XC2 features enough differences to make it a valid alternative rather than a replacement for XC:EW (or even EU), I feel like EW had more things going on for options to play with so that's a big step backward (if understandable for the new setting.)

"XCOM2: as interesting as watching pain dry!" Ghostryder at Grogheads  >:D

[ghostryder]

Good post.

I'll certainly have a higher score once the bugs are squashed and some meaningful mods come out--because underneath the core play remains fun. And lets not forget EU was kinda meh and then the expansion came out and really brought the game up in all better ways--so here I expect a DLC or expansion to utilize the propaganda angle I noted missing-and more to add to maps and missions and add some plot--

[JasonPratt]

Yahtzee feels your pain.

[Windigo]

Good post.

I'll certainly have a higher score once the bugs are squashed and some meaningful mods come out--because underneath the core play remains fun. And lets not forget EU was kinda meh and then the expansion came out and really brought the game up in all better ways--so here I expect a DLC or expansion to utilize the propaganda angle I noted missing-and more to add to maps and missions and add some plot--

Hey ghostie.... welcome back. Play the longwar mod for EW

[ghostryder]

Wendy!

I played it....twice. Finally won it.

Which is another reason I was disappointed in XCOM2. I can go along with the new premise--but i think to properly do that new premise you needed new designs in the game instead of practically porting over the designs of the first and rebranding them.

Take the Geoscape of interrupting or the FLYING BUILDING you fly around in as a covert operation. The later is just a stripped down version of the base in EU- and it's just plain silly logically that this is how the resistance of a successful Alien invasion should go about it. Why not go back to the original roots of XCOM or how this would happen in reality? SPIES! SPIES! SPIES!...that's how you locate the resistance. And once located you get access to THIER BASE. Or in other words-just like the original you get multiple bases across the globe so you can conduct covert operations via the Skyranger from the different bases. The Spy game could be designed as a whole new strategic layer- with risks of capture and death. To pass time, like in the original you scan when your ready--to wait for news from your spies.

And you redesign the whole geoscape thing--sense just rebranding it makes no sense in this game---as an example--you need supplies. Well, there's a supply mission available in where you raid a train..but illogically you have to scan 7 days?! If you know about the train and you know about the supplies just do the damn mission already. Then you got to scan to get recruits? It makes far more sense new recruits should come from the new resistance sector you just located. Missions involving hacking intel should be brought to you by your spies--and there DOES NEED TO BE missions as in the first where you get a special named recruit on certain missions your spies locate. You can still have the world map for the different countries but to be buzzing around in your enormous skyscraper base ship is just plain dumb. Your an underground orginazations and boy it would have been great if we had those different bases that all had the risk of being located and attacked by the enemy---but the plain truth is Firaxis just got lazy--and carried over the same designs they used in the first game- even if it totally screwed up the new premise.

And man is that base/ship attack dissapointing. Hell, there's not even a need to leave the platform and wander out into the map---when a good sniper can destroy the beacon from the platform and have it explode-leveling the forest and enemy aliens. The whole honeycomb base thing of the first that prevented those great base defense missions need to be totally scraped---not lazily reused.

We could have had a game that made logical sense. We could have got those great base defense missions that we all enjoyed in the original. We could have got a whole new strategic layer with spies, we could have got a whole new strategic layer with the propaganda war with Advent--and missions where you needed to hack into public media to expose the aliens true intent.

It really was half-axx'd--plain and simple.

[JasonPratt]

My only disagreement with those critiques is that offensive supply recovery missions don't require scanning. They tend to INTERRUPT scanning, but if you try to scan or do much of anything afterward you'll lose access to them permanently as they're super-temporary.

In other words, while you were busy scanning for contacting resistance fighters or picking up scattered supplies over here, the resistance somewhere else blows a train track but for whatever reason can't secure the supplies in time so they send the lead to you. You can break off what you're doing and fly the base over to the new region to send out the Skyranger to finish the train raid, or keep doing what you're doing and let the mission pass by permanently (because obviously Advent secures the train supplies soon).

Flying the giant base around, however, gets back to your other points which are quite valid. This game needed the secret underground bases from the original UFO/X-Com 90s game.

[ghostryder]

Frankly I think taking a fast runner around Retaliation missions to try to troll the enemies back to an ambush site, is a good way to get the runner killed. Maybe late game that might work, once the Ranger rangers up -- but even then, the maps are large enough that I couldn't see how to ensure all the clusters aggro'd sufficiently by turn 2 to ignore the civvies. I mean, if it worked for you early or even late game (and on high difficulty apparently) then it worked, I guess. I'm just hugely surprised.

You advance the turkey shooters as well as the ranger. As stated-restarts included and I'm late game-I've not lost a single squadie--and I have never lost more than 2 cilvilians using this tactic on retaliation missions dispite the game always placing most aliens on the far side of the map making me run my squad to them. The idea is to get spotted--once that's done all attention is spent chasing you---so dashing back in full cover is no problem--the A.I. will chase you using no defensive thought whatsoever. In fact I am convinced the exact same A.I. routines apply to each alien dispite their different abilities--it's just coded "use special ability A, B or C. Because dispite unit type all have the same suicidal behavior to run out to be murdered by your over-watching squaddies-  As mentioned-because you can comment out A.I. routines in the AI.ini file you can stop the suicides and up difficulty--but imagine what that statement is really say? The A.I. is so bad it's better to prevent it from executing than let it do it's thing. And that's exactly what the A.I. improvement mod does- it kills A.I. routines that do dumb stuff. Who programmed that crap? He actually got paid to do that--I find that amazing!