I don't know man, finishing an I/I run on the xcom reboot was the most fun I've had with a tactics/strat game in decades. The original xcom is hard to compare to, but I enjoyed XCOM EW really thoroughly after a lot of the EU bugs got patched. It has flaws, but there isn't all that much competition in the genre so it's easy to see why people are stoked.
XCOM 2
- Thread starter Xexx
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Furiously rubbing one out right now. As far as I'm concerned, EU (+EW) is the perfect strategy game.
khorum
Murder Apologist
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If you played Ironman or Hard/Impossible non-ironman I'd say just go straight to LW. Long War makes a lot of assumptions about the player's experience with the xcom resource management metagame.
At lot of the fun of Long War comes from the tension of committing finite resources for a long game and not really knowing how that strategy will play out till later. Like folks said you can lose a Long War game long before you've realized it whereas a vanilla Iron Man game you can pretty much tell if you're fucked by late April/early May.
At lot of the fun of Long War comes from the tension of committing finite resources for a long game and not really knowing how that strategy will play out till later. Like folks said you can lose a Long War game long before you've realized it whereas a vanilla Iron Man game you can pretty much tell if you're fucked by late April/early May.
Gavinmad
Mr. Poopybutthole
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You honestly might be ok to just dive right in to Long War. The things that EW adds to the base game (The Meld resource used for MEC troopers and Gene Mods and EXALT missions) are changed so dramatically in Long War that a familiarity with them from vanilla EW wouldn't really be helpful.
Just be aware that even on the LW equivalent of normal difficulty, you will lose your first campaign or two (or seven) until you settle into a good opening strategy.
*edit*
Found this on the XCom reddit from the Firaxis community manager.
So I mean it was implied by the teaser but still a bit ambiguous, this just confirms it. Props to them for taking it in a new direction instead of just redoing the plot from Terror from the Deep or Apocalypse. Not that a modern remake of TFTD wouldn't be awesome.
Also this
Johnny and Amineri must feel like they've gone to heaven. At least Firaxis learned some kind of lesson from Long War.
Gavinmad
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Actually doing some reading and pondering, I think that victory in the first game is still canon, you win the battle but the Aliens return in larger numbers and you lose the war.
My evidence for this is that one of the developers posted on reddit several months ago that the volunteer absolutely survives blowing up the Temple Ship, but you never assault the Temple Ship if you lose the game. If the dev made a point of mentioning that the volunteer is still alive, that suggests he has some sort of part to play in XCom 2. Maybe he shows up in some dramatic fashion to help you out, or maybe he is the one who ended up betraying humanity to the Aliens. Hell, maybe after taking out the boss ethereal and blowing up the temple ship, the volunteer becomes the new overlord of the Aliens and he is the main bad guy of XCom 2.
Circumstantially, in the 'you lose' endings of XCom, the shadowy council representative now being voiced by Optimus gets mind controlled, so they'd sorta have to forget about that if he's still involved in the XCom project 20 years later.
My evidence for this is that one of the developers posted on reddit several months ago that the volunteer absolutely survives blowing up the Temple Ship, but you never assault the Temple Ship if you lose the game. If the dev made a point of mentioning that the volunteer is still alive, that suggests he has some sort of part to play in XCom 2. Maybe he shows up in some dramatic fashion to help you out, or maybe he is the one who ended up betraying humanity to the Aliens. Hell, maybe after taking out the boss ethereal and blowing up the temple ship, the volunteer becomes the new overlord of the Aliens and he is the main bad guy of XCom 2.
Circumstantially, in the 'you lose' endings of XCom, the shadowy council representative now being voiced by Optimus gets mind controlled, so they'd sorta have to forget about that if he's still involved in the XCom project 20 years later.
Mist
REEEEeyore
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It's a PC exclusive, they've already said. It has full Steam Workshop integration as well.
PS: This mod is balls.
Gavinmad
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Learn to flank nub.
But yeah the opening few missions are pretty rough. I would turn cinematic mode on but not jack up the difficulty if you're having trouble. Hell, I still play on cinematic mode my first new game after a major update to the beta.
It's not that your accuracy sucks (although it does) it's that cover is worth a lot more defense than it was in the normal game. But the aliens should have the same trouble hitting your guys.
What's funny is it sure won't feel like they have the same trouble hitting your team. Watching live streams of this (at least a while back so not a current version) it was funny how often one the first couple maps they'd make a wrong move and lose their entire team in one turn after each alien landed a crit
Gavinmad
Mr. Poopybutthole
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The country is randomly picked, but yes, it is normal. Base assaults are tied to countries now (instead of there just being one alien base in the middle of nowhere). Since it is theoretically possible to play through without ever losing a country, it would be impossible to beat the game because at least one base assault is required for the critical path.
The plus side being that it's now possible to retake lost countries.