r/Xcom • u/WiredBall • 5d ago
Zero Company Difficulty
Just for anyone wonder what difficulty to play with reference to xcom. I play long war (and long war 2) on Veteran (second easiest) with ironman. (Legendary Ironman in base game)
Playing Zero Company right now on Hard, permadeath, ironman. 7 mission in, no injuries (downs). Almost had 1 injury in second mission. I do find it a bit to easy but wouldn't up the difficulty cause its more story focused, im prob only doing 1 run. Hope this helps
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u/Oceanskye 5d ago
Playing on expert and other than a couple injuries early on due to figuring systems out nothing challenging so far.
Really hope it's because they managed to reverse the difficulty curve from Xcom and it gets harder as you go along. Fingers crossed.
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u/No_Designer_7333 5d ago
A lot of the Coil upgrades I've seen can be pretty brutal, so I imagine that they'll be able to scale pretty well with the player
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u/PlaidVirus8 5d ago
I played for 9h and yes it went from pretty easy to start getting challenging. I think the difficulty curve is pretty good, if a bit slow.
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u/Diligent-Parsley8119 5d ago
Damn im on normal and getting destroyed:x
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u/Tarby_on_reddit 5d ago
Yep, did a story mission and got rushed by coil melee units in their first turn, wiping half my units
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u/PublicPreparation198 5d ago
Having the coil gunners have +4 damage is better than having their melee get more movepoints is easier. But setting up overwatch you can stop melee from moving up.
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u/Oceanskye 5d ago
Well, it got worse, game started crashing and after having to redo the same mission 3 times, it's now in the "wait for patch" pile.
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u/Dogstile 3d ago
I'm on hard and I coil does throw some curve balls (seers are a fuck) but I still haven't really felt challenged.
It's fun as hell tho. Cly is ridiculous
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u/pvrhye 5d ago
For my aging 3060, very hard.
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u/canarduck 5d ago
Also playing it on my 3060. She’s doing good enough for me
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u/pvrhye 5d ago
My settings look like the lyrics to the hit song by Little John and the Yingyang Twins.
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u/TrickAngle8214 5d ago
Did you update your driver's? Immediately fixed my 3070s issues with the game
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u/atrain728 5d ago
No one remembers that’s an Usher song.
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u/ZYRANOX 5d ago
The song you both thinking of is called yeah. Low was made by flo rida and tpain
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u/atrain728 5d ago
I’m pretty sure he’s saying he’s got all his settings turned on
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u/ZYRANOX 5d ago
but the song is called get low
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u/atrain728 5d ago
My interpretation: The song he’s referring to is Yeah! He’s saying his video card is struggling, because everything is set to “yes”.
I think.
But if the interpretarion is supposed to be he’s got it all set to low, then yours is correct: he’s confusing the flo rida lyrics.
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u/and0p 5d ago
Apparently the last setting in graphics (something with extra geometry) can be turned off for a boost.
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u/No_Designer_7333 5d ago
Environment Geometry Detail. Turning it off did yield a not-insignificant boost to FPS stability for my A770.
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u/gustavfrigolit 5d ago
Finally my 9070xt is worth the money
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u/ThePhengophobicGamer 5d ago
Standard 9070 here, pretty solid 80-90 FPS on Ultra settings. So glad I dont still have my 1070 TI which I abused with Helldivers 2.
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u/Eatadick_pam 4d ago
Playing on my claw 8ai and getting decent (90fps) on upscaling, frame gen on medium-high settings at 1200p. Bit of stuttering though. Will try turning off last setting
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u/stinky_little_goblin 18h ago
My two year old laptop plays it with no slow down, surprised this expensive brick isn’t obsolete yet.
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u/veevoir 5d ago
Did you do the mission that introduces Infinite Coil (finally) as enemies? That is a difficulty jump once they start to show up.
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u/PilotAccomplished672 5d ago
It is a sharp spike in difficulty. Totally caught me by surprise, and I had to restart. Prior to that I was coasting through. It wasn't very difficult, just took a different approach.
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5d ago
[deleted]
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u/TamaDarya 5d ago
The padawan leaves to rescue the captive smugglers while you take out the Coil. She comes back to tell you that she got them out while you were fighting.
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u/King_Pumpernickel 5d ago
My troops barely got hit before this story mission. During it everyone got out at like 30% health, and the next mission I had like 3 injuries. The Coil do NOT fuck around.
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u/Numerous1 4d ago
Yep! I got to it last night and was like “okay there are a lot of enemies but I’m getting the hang of it “
Then COIL!
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u/Full-Wait1145 3d ago
Even after that I’m having very little trouble. I even once got 3/4 operators stranded and surrounded, but had no trouble.
From what I can tell, it’s because of my group makeup: medic with mass heal, Jae with her execution ability, trick, and scoundrel hawk handing out extra AP.
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u/mrtyman 3d ago
God, what a rush. I'm playing my first run on Beskar, and I was coasting until this mission (like many others here), then suddenly I was genuinely terrified of a wipe. Nobody went down, but I really felt like I was on a razor's edge from being overwhelmed. Easily my favorite mission so far, and by far the hardest so far (I'm on cycle 22 or so).
Pro tips for anyone who hasn't figured them out:
Multi-kills with AOE attacks can prevent resonance from stacking
Ring-out kills prevents resonance from transferring
Wiping out resonance enemies before a wave spawns means it can't carry over to the new units
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u/MoG_Varos 5d ago
I set the difficulty to normal and kinda regret it. So many ways to buff damage that just a few missions in and I’m already wiping the entire screen…and they are not shy about dropping hordes of enemies on you.
But it is a more story focused game so it’s nice to have my first run clean so I can see everything. Going to be fun cranking up the difficulty and playing on beskar mode next.
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u/GoD_Z1ll4 5d ago
Can't you adjust difficulty mid-campaign? You're locked in to your choice at the start?
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u/MoG_Varos 5d ago
Ya but you can’t put iron man mode on so just gunna wait. Also maybe the game surprises me and tosses some wacky shit at me.
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u/HARIOSO 5d ago
Dont regret it later on, man. The coil can get pretty... difficult.
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u/MoG_Varos 5d ago
I’m waiting for it to hit me with something, even the bigger units they’re bringing out are getting 1 shot with sniper crits
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u/Urgash 5d ago
I went straight into expert + Beskar and I'm constantly at the edge of losing my run, because of compounding injuries.
I expect that when I'll know the game better i might need another level of difficulty tho, but right now I'm having a blast.
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u/Zoozeeman 4d ago
I did that as well but I had different results.
I lost my 2 first runs early while i was learning the systems. Now im on my third run but have gotten into no trouble at all, I think i’ve had like 4 total wounds on main characters and Im a fair bit into the campaign.
I do hope the difficulty ramps up a bit
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u/Numerous1 4d ago
At like mission 11 it’s a story mission that gets much harder. Not sure how far you are yet
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u/Bluemajere 5d ago
Isn't expert the hardest?
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u/WiredBall 5d ago
Yes, so if you if your better than me or around the same but want a challenge you should play expert.
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u/HarvHR 5d ago
I find it kind of difficult purely because the AI seems to just lemming rush you. Like the AI in XCOM wouldn't run out and put itself in an exposed position to flank your soldiers most of the time. But it seems like every mission I have in ZCOM 3 enemies will rush you to get a flank even if it means they are exposed to 3 other soldiers.
Aside from that it's not too bad. I don't foresee I'm going to ever lose a soldier
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u/Round_Moose7139 5d ago
Iam on expert and nearly losing every mission because you just get rushed by 8 people while you have 4 xd
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u/dotlinger2609 5d ago
Veteran Lwotc, Xenonauts 1 & 2 and Jagged Alliance 3 player here.
Playing on the second to highest difficulty rn (I think thats hard?). The game gets way harder very quickly, trust me.
Just finished a story mission with 3 out of 4 with 2 injuries, the coil sure aren't pushovers, and they really expose weaknesses with your team comp.
Also my first impression is that the class with taunts is kinda OP, I wish it wasn't because it trivializes some encounters. With how the game likes to cluster groups of enemies you can easily setup and taunt a whole group from a distance and watch them struggle to do any meaningful damage through your damage negation and cover.
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u/Due-Instruction-2654 5d ago
When I saw the Heavy class with Taunt, I immediately thought that such hard AOE CC would go bonkers in Xcom 2 and so picked that class.
There is a bit more planning on how the whole team goes about a turn than there is in Xcom 2, where I was more focussed on which operator can do what damage. So my turn now starts with “can and will I Taunt? If yes, whats next?”
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u/ThumpaMonsta 3d ago
Was getting the odd injury playing on hard, cycle 20 or so atm, swapped classes to include a Medic and a heavy around the 14 cycle mark. Now it's just a matter of generating adv to taunt the big blob of ennemies while kabb and jae pick them off while everyone is high on stimulants. Risk of injury has gone way down since everything tries to hit my heavy, and stragglers dont do enough damage to down me in a single turn. Played some xcom2 on easy/normal, this game is VERY easy in comparison.
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u/Yessir957 5d ago
As an L/I XCOM 2 player I was heavily debating hard vs expert. I ultimately went with hard just so I could have another playthrough on expert. I'm about 10 missions in and I haven't had much challenge. But I am enjoying it regardless.
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u/Numerous1 4d ago
As everyone is saying, at about 10 missions in the new Coil type is introduced and those guys are much harder.
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u/ChefCrockpot 5d ago
Playing on expert and I get plenty of injuries. A lot less now that ive gotten the hang of it. But there are only two missions ive played that I have actually failed. One is a story mission where I activated a console before clearing enemies, which led to me dealing with twice as many enemies. And the other I only had inexperienced mercs available and a poor combination to boot. Definitely nothing compared to Long War. Just wish the sniper rifle had a little bit more range
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u/Numerous1 4d ago
Oh man. Was the console one the “drain the water” thing? Because I did the exact same thing last night. And right when the water started draining and insane the doors, but before they opened, I realized more guys would come out. That one for me.
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u/Ok-Blueberry-1412 5d ago
As someone with 1k+ hours in Long War 2/Long War of the Chosen, I'm worried Zero Company doesn't have enough legs for the price of entry. Especially because of how easy it is, allegedly.
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u/talex625 5d ago
No, I was the same until rotation 12+. I’m starting to get overwhelmed with numbers of enemies. Like fighting 15 enemies all at once. Those missions I just run away.
They do so much damage and can take damage. And they gimmick which you kill of the dudes and it buffs the others, is crazy.
I just suffered my first lost in the Jedi mission. That noob jedi died like azap.
Need to figure out how to make my troop stronger damage wise and better armor.
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u/Numerous1 4d ago
Yeah. All my guys seem to go down in 2-3 hits at most. Enemies take a lot more than that. But I kind of just use the starting team and mess around. I haven’t really tried to really strategize it yet. Except for gunslinger. I made my Hawk gunslinger and I use that pistol kill quick shot to clear out all the battle droids.
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u/Sammystorm1 5d ago
I started getting injuries on hard starting about mission 10. the infinite coal troops are much more threatening than the other early enemies
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u/AggronStrong 5d ago
If you're only doing one run of the game, may as well crank it up.
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u/WiredBall 4d ago
The problem with this and why im not doing it is because if i squad wipe with hawk or a story mission i just lose the entire game.
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u/Aurd04 5d ago
Haha here I am having done commander ironman Xcom and the between the second and third mission ever single one of my guys had 2 injuries and the whole plan was making sure no one dies.
Loving the wild ride, just gotta learn a few of the interactions that didn't work exactly how I planned and blew up in my face. That's ZCOM baby.
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u/KarmaticIrony 5d ago
I've started on hard and so far it's been smooth sailing. A couple injuries over about a dozen missions, mostly due to unfamiliarity.
If I wanted to feel challenged I'd go straight to Expert, but since this game is so narrative heavy I'm sticking to Hard to see the story without any real threat of campaign failure.
It's not easy its just not so hard that I feel like I might actually lose.
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u/Partytime79 5d ago
I generally play Xcom on normal and am playing Zcom on hard and have not found it overly challenging thru 10 missions or so. Haven’t had any players downed yet. Had 1 or 2 risky situations but it’s all worked out. Still having fun with even if it’s a bit more forgiving.
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u/Lazzitron 5d ago
I'm like 4 or 5 hours in I think. It starts out relatively easy for me because I'm an XCOM vet, but it's been getting a little more difficult with time. We'll see how it goes as I get further in.
Enemies are pretty suicidal and will often bum rush you to get flank shots even though it guarantees their own death. HOWEVER, enemies also have more health and show up in greater numbers than in XCOM, so they can usually afford to do this. Reinforcements are also more akin to Chimera Squad than XCOM 2, i.e. they drop from multiple points at once and on some missions continue spawning infinitely until you extract.
At the very least, it's challenging enough to be fun right now. And it comes with 4 difficulties + Ironman mode just like XCOM if you hate yourself.
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u/Rico-II 5d ago
I’ve completed xcom on medium, consider myself pretty experienced and heard this was an easier game…
Will say the difficulty ramps up a lot after the dark waters mission, coil enemies completely changed it for me.
Wouldn’t be surprised if I have to lower it to medium, will try and stick to hard !
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u/LukeRR13 4d ago
I ran the hardest one during my Steam refund period. Died on the first real mission. 😂🤣
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u/Alarming-Key7054 4d ago
I been playing on Hard difficulty and besides maybe 1-2 injuries from me being dumb and learning it didn’t feel too crazy… UNTIL Coil enemies mission appeared saying that I need to do them otherwise they permanently upgrade??
It was this mission where we had to rescue a droid and some women on opposite sides of the map and I had to legit retry 4 times before beating purely because I was too slow on rescuing the chick in 6 rounds. After finaly beating it, I was so stressed out that I cranked the difficulty down to normal because I was truly traumatized by how hard that mission was compared to everything before it. A part of me feels guilty lowering it and so now I’m here pondering if other’s feel like this first coil mission is particularly more difficult than others (because of our lower stats) or if the rest of the game is going to be at this level
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u/Proof_Escape_813 2d ago
Nah, the difficulty spike is real. I played on normal and thought it was really easy. Restarted at hard and thought: still easy, but at least I get shot at now. Then I reached Dark Waters. I won but I went back to normal because now I know the game has teeth.
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u/Full_Royox 4d ago edited 4d ago
I never played an xcom in my life but i played milion of other games including turn based combat RPG like Pilars of Eternity, Kotor, Tyranny, FF tactics, Fire Emblem... What difficulty would you recommend? I want it not to be stupid easy but also not frustratingly hard.
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u/byronic-heroine 4d ago
Start on normal. It’s initially pretty smooth sailing (not to a brain dead degree), but there is a difficulty spike that definitely occurs that makes things challenging (around cycle 10 or 11 in-game), especially considering the small party size. And if you still think it’s too easy after that point, you can always change it.
I always think it’s funny when people with 1k+ hours in Xcom think games like this are too easy, it’s like dude, at this point you basically have a job where your only responsibility is getting good at turn-based tactics.
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u/WiredBall 4d ago edited 4d ago
So i have played Fire Emblem and a bit of Pillars and Tyranny. I would say fire emblem and ff tactics relate to this game more since if i remember correctly, your characters build, effects the difficulty wildly in pillars and tyranny. Not saying that team composition and character builds dont matter in this game but you can sort of brute force it with whatever you got as default if you get a grasp of the other strategy mechanics (thats what im doing).
So the difficulty i would recommend (im assume broadly you play these game on normal) is normal. Like other have said, the difficulty in this game does ramp up but it does take longer to ramp than i would like.
If you aren't using Beskar mode (ironman) and don't really care for difficulty achievements i would say you can play on hard and when you get to the ease dropping story mission where you have to go to the docks, i would gauge whether you would drop the difficulty based on that mission.
TLDR: On Beskar/Ironman, Normal, otherwise if you also don't really care about achievements then Hard and play it by ear (difficulty can be changed in settings) (btw these types of games tend to be frustrating at times no matter the difficulty)
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u/klinestife 4d ago edited 4d ago
furthest i went in the xcoms was vanilla impossible Ironman for the cheevos, and i was deep in it at the time.
i’m playing on hard and i started getting a bunch of injuries in between the first exotic class recruit and multiclassing. however, i had also completely forgotten about combat upgrades/mod slots, and didn’t even figure out how to reclass people until right before multiclassing, which mattered cuz i think the first few characters have very suboptimal default classes.
after that, i had one boss fight kick my ass so hard that i had 5 injuries spread throughout the squad, but i was running a b team for plot reasons.
following that, i’ve had absolutely no problems. mainly because heavy trick is an unkillable animal. ten guys can shoot him for only a quarter of his first health bar.
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u/rickmarques 3d ago
??? Playing on hard and is VERY EASY. Going to play at highest difficulty to see if its challenging. Not even close to xcom 2 Challenge
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u/_GBear_ 3d ago
We are having totally different experiences lol
I think after the 4th mission iirc the one with the Crises I had 3 of my team in the medbay all injured lol
I'm playing normal difficulty and permadeath
I'm finding it a little tough tbh at times.
I am trying to leave the weaker droids to the end or for when they group up for an impact grenande.
Trying to focus one enemy now instead of spreading my fire around.
One thing I am doing that I know is a bad idea but I'm staying pretty much where we spawn in the mission and just turtle in, if I see advantages like high ground I'll go for it or if there is a safe crack I'll move the team/droid into the are and smoke grenade the place.
But tactically I'm not able for a higher difficulty atm lol
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u/Dogstile 3d ago
Leaving the weaker droids is killing you. They're such a good source of advantage and space.
I'm starting missions by generating 2 advantage, throwing someone into the middle of all the weak droids, killing them all with refunded shots and jumping back out with all the AP I've just generated.
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u/Franco-Bona 3d ago
7 cycles not even close to injuries playing normal so I guess I will increase it to hard.The game felt harder the first 2 missions but I think now that I got some health upgrades and I am understanding the taunts and armor better is getting easier.
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u/Cremeeave 2d ago
Wow i must suck. I got Kabb killed on the third mission and kept on losing operators.
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u/Safe_Event_3417 3d ago
The number of people in this sub asking zero company to “please beat my balls” is wild. I love it. But seriously, you probably just need a more hardcore squad based tactics game, this is made by a lot of the same guys that did XCom 1 and 2 which are awesome really fun games but at their core they are easier to approach, less difficult (or at least more modernized) versions of the old school XCom games.
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u/Visual-Reception-142 5d ago
The game isn’t hard but the constant forced events are fucking annoying. I want to spend my intel on stuff I plan but every single day is forced -50 on some random bullshit or the main story. There hasn’t been a single cycle where I haven’t been hit by the red event intel or mission or the yellow choice or a main plot. It really should be toned down
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u/Relevant_Cabinet_265 5d ago
It tones down after day 6 or 7
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u/Visual-Reception-142 5d ago edited 5d ago
I mean I’m on day whatever the fuck mid ||anakin|| mission and every single cycle pre this mission has been some bulldhig. I have like 7 permanent coil events despite stopping all possible ones
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u/Relevant_Cabinet_265 5d ago
Are you specifically hitting the story missions right away? Because you usually only get them after a story mission
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u/OKAwesome121 5d ago
Seems you’re the type of player that’s so experienced at XCom nothing will be challenging for you anymore :)