I love XCOM, I really really do. Unless I'm forgetting one, I own every single XCOM game, even the godawful game "The Bureau: XCOM Declassified". I play XCOM:EW with Long War on Iron Man Hard Mode for fun, But this game pissed me off to no end.
I've tried extremely hard to like this game, I've sunk a solid 50+ hours into it, but almost every playthrough ends with me alt-f4'ing out of the game in rage, something I have NEVER done with any other game.
So what don't I like about it?
Well, its just bullshit 24/7.
Bullshit is a part of every XCOM game, BUT in the end it is your own skill as the commander which 99% of the time is the final say of if your soldiers live or die.
In XCOM 2, I didn't feel the latter at all, it only felt like bullshit.
It felt like most of the game was made to be as frustrating as possible because XCOM veterans in QA testing were having a bit too easy of a time.
There's so much that I take issue with in this game that I'm going to go through a list point by point.
1. Turn Limits:
Turn Limits are fine, most strategy games have them, other XCOM games have them, but the ones in XCOM 2 feel way too tight.
any mission with an "Evac" timer essentially requires you to just ignore all of the aliens and hope that you don't get shot by their overwatch, good luck!
I never completed an Evac mission where all of my units Evac'd. Most of the time, they either died getting the VIP to the Evac zone (which is fine!) or were left behind, usually by 1 or 2 turns.
You could argue this is just me being bad, and its possible, but the fact that I never once had one of these missions that i'd consider "successful" is pretty telling.
2. Advent Stun Troopers
Melee units with extremely long move distance who when they hit essentially have a 99% chance to render your unit unconcious. unconcious essentially means dead, except if you win the mission they come back to life. their health doesn't matter, they will get knocked unconcious.
These motherfuckers can run across the map and essentially instakill any human unit, but sure.
3. Vipers
These ex-thinmen may no longer explode into poison when they die, but instead can grab you from across the map and strangle you. The poison spit has always been kinda annoying but its also always been kinda a non-issue. Also if the grab fails that doesn't end their turn for some reason.
4. Poison
Hey look! Poison gets its own point even though I just said it was a non-issue! This is kind of stretching a bit, since I don't consider the poison spit attack an issue, I consider the status effect itself annoying.
In XCOM:EU/EW, you took poison damage whenever you took an action, which meant you could strategically sacrifice some health to do something, or hold still and hope that your dude would be ok for a bit until you could heal them.
In XCOM 2 however, it just damages you at the start of your turn, meaning that early game if you get poisoned you're essentially dead, and later in the game its just annoying because you essentially just have a ticking death clock.
5. fuCKING RULERS
The Rulers are essentially mini-bosses which show up from time to time, they sport a hefty health pool, pretty high damage and stats, and have the unique mechanic that they can leave to fight another day, but won't heal their health ever, so you can slowly whittle them down over several missions until finally taking them down.
it sounds great until...
RULER REACTION
every time you take an action, the ruler also gets an action. With that hefty damage they have, they can essentially wipe an entire squad just because you moved them
They're hard enough without anyone else to back them up, but if there are other aliens around, just fucking leave, its not worth it. You just failed a mission because the game randomly chose to spawn one of these fuckers.
Tactically evacuating has always been a part of XCOM, but usually you do it if the situation looks bad, and you know that you can't win, usually because of your own mistakes, rather than a singular coinflip (not even a bunch of 99% misses!)
Overall, these are kind of gripes, and I know that the game is supposed to be you against a stronger alien threat, especially now that they're in complete control, but the least they could do is give the players a fucking chance.
Of course, the game isn't all bad, there's quite a bit that I like about it!
The new classes are an interesting more "futuristic" take on the old ones, although I think the ranger's sword kind of renders the shotgun obsolete, just run the rifle so you have longer range.
The armor system brings about a lot of interesting tactics, either with you trying to get your soldiers in position to shred enemy armor, or putting your soldiers in a bit more riskier positions since with their armor they can tank it.
The game looks phenomenal and the designs for the aliens are amazing, I'd say Advent's armor is 100x cooler than anything in XCOM:EU/EW.
I really hate that I don't like this game, but I can't keep torturing myself by reinstalling it every now and again to see if I do better, I have to stop myself once and for all.
Overall, If you like XCOM or would like to try XCOM for the first time, you can still pick this game up! its possible you will enjoy it, but for me, I'll stick to Enemy Within.
Oh yeah and the game doesn't run super well, but it'd have to be really bad for me to mark a game's score down for that, especially a turn based one.
I've tried extremely hard to like this game, I've sunk a solid 50+ hours into it, but almost every playthrough ends with me alt-f4'ing out of the game in rage, something I have NEVER done with any other game.
So what don't I like about it?
Well, its just bullshit 24/7.
Bullshit is a part of every XCOM game, BUT in the end it is your own skill as the commander which 99% of the time is the final say of if your soldiers live or die.
In XCOM 2, I didn't feel the latter at all, it only felt like bullshit.
It felt like most of the game was made to be as frustrating as possible because XCOM veterans in QA testing were having a bit too easy of a time.
There's so much that I take issue with in this game that I'm going to go through a list point by point.
1. Turn Limits:
Turn Limits are fine, most strategy games have them, other XCOM games have them, but the ones in XCOM 2 feel way too tight.
any mission with an "Evac" timer essentially requires you to just ignore all of the aliens and hope that you don't get shot by their overwatch, good luck!
I never completed an Evac mission where all of my units Evac'd. Most of the time, they either died getting the VIP to the Evac zone (which is fine!) or were left behind, usually by 1 or 2 turns.
You could argue this is just me being bad, and its possible, but the fact that I never once had one of these missions that i'd consider "successful" is pretty telling.
2. Advent Stun Troopers
Melee units with extremely long move distance who when they hit essentially have a 99% chance to render your unit unconcious. unconcious essentially means dead, except if you win the mission they come back to life. their health doesn't matter, they will get knocked unconcious.
These motherfuckers can run across the map and essentially instakill any human unit, but sure.
3. Vipers
These ex-thinmen may no longer explode into poison when they die, but instead can grab you from across the map and strangle you. The poison spit has always been kinda annoying but its also always been kinda a non-issue. Also if the grab fails that doesn't end their turn for some reason.
4. Poison
Hey look! Poison gets its own point even though I just said it was a non-issue! This is kind of stretching a bit, since I don't consider the poison spit attack an issue, I consider the status effect itself annoying.
In XCOM:EU/EW, you took poison damage whenever you took an action, which meant you could strategically sacrifice some health to do something, or hold still and hope that your dude would be ok for a bit until you could heal them.
In XCOM 2 however, it just damages you at the start of your turn, meaning that early game if you get poisoned you're essentially dead, and later in the game its just annoying because you essentially just have a ticking death clock.
5. fuCKING RULERS
The Rulers are essentially mini-bosses which show up from time to time, they sport a hefty health pool, pretty high damage and stats, and have the unique mechanic that they can leave to fight another day, but won't heal their health ever, so you can slowly whittle them down over several missions until finally taking them down.
it sounds great until...
RULER REACTION
every time you take an action, the ruler also gets an action. With that hefty damage they have, they can essentially wipe an entire squad just because you moved them
They're hard enough without anyone else to back them up, but if there are other aliens around, just fucking leave, its not worth it. You just failed a mission because the game randomly chose to spawn one of these fuckers.
Tactically evacuating has always been a part of XCOM, but usually you do it if the situation looks bad, and you know that you can't win, usually because of your own mistakes, rather than a singular coinflip (not even a bunch of 99% misses!)
Overall, these are kind of gripes, and I know that the game is supposed to be you against a stronger alien threat, especially now that they're in complete control, but the least they could do is give the players a fucking chance.
Of course, the game isn't all bad, there's quite a bit that I like about it!
The new classes are an interesting more "futuristic" take on the old ones, although I think the ranger's sword kind of renders the shotgun obsolete, just run the rifle so you have longer range.
The armor system brings about a lot of interesting tactics, either with you trying to get your soldiers in position to shred enemy armor, or putting your soldiers in a bit more riskier positions since with their armor they can tank it.
The game looks phenomenal and the designs for the aliens are amazing, I'd say Advent's armor is 100x cooler than anything in XCOM:EU/EW.
I really hate that I don't like this game, but I can't keep torturing myself by reinstalling it every now and again to see if I do better, I have to stop myself once and for all.
Overall, If you like XCOM or would like to try XCOM for the first time, you can still pick this game up! its possible you will enjoy it, but for me, I'll stick to Enemy Within.
Oh yeah and the game doesn't run super well, but it'd have to be really bad for me to mark a game's score down for that, especially a turn based one.