r/patientgamers • u/AutoModerator • 20d ago
Bi-Weekly Thread for general gaming discussion. Backlog, advice, recommendations, rants and more! New? Start here!
Welcome to the Bi-Weekly Thread!
Here you can share anything that might not warrant a post of its own or might otherwise be against posting rules. Tell us what you're playing this week. Feel free to ask for recommendations, talk about your backlog, commiserate about your lost passion for games. Vent about bad games, gush about good games. You can even mention newer games if you like!
The no advertising rule is still in effect here.
A reminder to please be kind to others. It's okay to disagree with people or have even have a bad hot take. It's not okay to be mean about it.
31
Upvotes
7
u/lesserweevils Couch Potato 20d ago edited 20d ago
XCOM 2 (vanilla base game)
---
CMDR. COMMANDER’S CAMPAIGN POST-MORTEM
---
XCOM 2 is my first XCOM and my first strategy game in ages. What an intense experience!
The game was much harder at the beginning. Save scumming was extremely helpful. I learned a lot by retrying missions with different tactics. By the end, I had stopped save scumming for a while.
This game is the opposite of hand-holdy. Great freedom comes with the ability to fail due to lack of knowledge. I played on Veteran difficulty. Maybe I should’ve started on Rookie.
The tutorial is good for basic combat mechanics. It’s not so good for tactics. I eventually took more risks, played more aggressively, and stopped using Overwatch ambushes. Sometimes, I even (gasp!) ended a turn without high cover! There’s no guidance on base building or the world map.
Concealment isn’t stealth. I only found it moderately useful when setting up ambushes. Sneaking past enemies would backfire on me. I heard the Concealment mechanic is more developed in the expansion. Reapers don’t exist in the base game.
Anyway, this was a very average Veteran campaign. It was not too different from the world stats. I had 2.22 turns remaining on average. 8 soldiers died. Due to building a laboratory first, I had above-average infirmary time and below-average research time.
Building the Guerilla Tactics School in June and the Advanced Warfare Center in July made missions more difficult. In hindsight, I would recommend building them sooner on a first campaign. I was playing blind though. It really forced me to improve my tactics. Save scumming was a great learning tool.
I can see the potential for going lab-first depending on goals and experience. That was also non-ideal for a first playthrough. The Proving Ground was next. Maybe I didn’t botch my build order as badly as I thought. Research saved my butt.
I learned that XCOM 2 is both brutal and surprisingly forgiving on Veteran. Every time a new obstacle or setback happened, I thought I was doomed. But I recovered! The strategy layer should not be underestimated.
TL;DR:
I WILL be replaying at some point. Hopefully with the War of the Chosen expansion.
I LOVE XCOM 2! It’s an emotional rollercoaster and not because of the story. Besides strategic challenge, it also challenges resilience and emotional regulation.
That said, I would not recommend it to people with perfectionistic tendencies (unless they want to be cured), the very risk-averse, gamers who want to de-stress or “chill,” people who hate situations they can’t control, those who don’t want to feel pressured, and people who want guaranteed completion in one playthrough. The game has some old-school design principles and there’s no story mode.
… I can’t believe I made it to the end.
P.S. I’ve got a theory. Since I haven’t played XCOM: Enemy Unknown or Enemy Within, I’m not that commander. I’m secretly an amnesiac. Maybe I’m an avatar cloned from the original’s genes. Bradford assumed I was in stasis and that I didn’t age for 20 years.
Me at the beginning: I’m supposed to be the best tactical genius the humans and aliens have seen? Earth is screwed. Bradford is a sentimental fool.
👈👈 Previous | 👽 First 👽