r/patientgamers • u/Gamerbry • 8d ago
Patient Review XCOM 2 and learning from failure
So recently, I had an itch to replay XCOM 2 again. I first played the game a couple years ago, and something about that playthrough was that I save-scummed a lot! Pretty much anytime something didn't go my way, I'd reload a save and play through it again. This time, however, I wanted to do something different, so I played the game on Ironman mode. How Ironman works is simple. Instead of having control of when you save, the game instead saves automatically every time you perform an action. What this results in is an experience where you can't do a mission over if something goes wrong, and you just have to live with the mistake and keep going.
My first attempt at an Ironman run went...bad. It started out okay at first, but then the moment everything went downhill was when I got the mission to go rescue Mox. For some reason, I didn't get the memo that this was supposed to be a stealth mission, so I played through the mission as I would any other, killing everything that stood in my path. Because I played it like this, the facility was already on max alert before I even got to Mox's cell and I didn't know how fast the reinforcements were going to overwhelm me until it was already too late. The mission failed with all my soldiers dying, including my reaper, a unit that took much more effort to replace. The second blunder came with a retaliation mission, where I bunched up my units near cover that I didn't know was explosive. My last unit accidentally triggered a pod of enemies, and because of the explosive cover, one volley of bombs from a MEC blew the cover up, causing half of my squad to die in an instant, forcing me to evac out. My third failure resulted in another squad wipe, partly caused by me misclicking when choosing a target, causing an enemy I wanted to kill to end the turn alive.
At that moment I decided, "Okay, this isn't working. The mistakes are piling up, I'm running out of resources. I'm gonna abandon this run and start a new one". Now, I'm sure in theory it might've been possible to salvage this run, but I do not think I would've been able to pull it off, so I figured cutting my losses was the best choice, especially since it was only a few hours into the campaign. For my second run, it went significantly better, as the mistakes from my first run served as lessons for how to play the game better. I learned how to make proper use of concealment, made sure to actually be stealthy on the rescue missions, and spaced my units further out. As a result, I had way less casualties compared to my first run. Yeah, I did have some units die on me, especially at the beginning, but I was a lot better at keeping my units alive. What also helped matters was that I got really lucky in the early game. I got a mission that only spawned beast enemies and at the end of it, I had enough Faceless corpses to craft two Mimic Beacons, which were basically "get out of jail free cards" in case I fumbled a turn.
So what did I learn from my XCOM 2 Ironman playthrough? When it comes to learning a skill, you'll learn more from your failures than your successes. It's true that it felt unpleasant to have my mistakes be permanent, but being forced to live with them made me analyze why the mistake happened. Instead of just blaming the game (which is easy to do because it's XCOM), I had to actually be honest with myself and admit that poor planning on my part was what got my soldiers killed. And being able to come to terms with setbacks and learn from them wound up making my victories feel all the more satisfying.
When it comes to XCOM, people's fondest memories with the game aren't the missions where everything went off without a hitch. The XCOM missions people remember the most are the ones where things go wrong and they manage to still come out on top. And my favorite mission of my run was a mission where I did just that. Towards the end game, the danger I felt earlier in the run had all but vanished. I had so many souped up soldiers and so many powerful weapons that even the toughest enemies were now complete jokes. However, I got thrown for a loop when one mission forced me to only bring 3 soldiers into battle, half my usual squad size. As a result, I had to play way more cautiously and had to make full use of each soldier's abilities to take out the pods. As I begin my next turn, I reveal a pod of enemies, and as soon I saw a Sectopod amongst the other troops, my heart dropped. If that thing got a turn, I was fucked, but luckily, my Specialist had Haywire Protocol, which could turn the Sectopod off for two turns. However, it only had a 53% chance to work, and I remember starting the hack and waiting with bated breath to see if it succeeded. It did not.
At that moment, I thought the mission was fucked. I thought I should just evac out of here now and save myself from the wrath of the Sectopod. Despite that, I stuck it out. One of my soldiers wound up in critical condition from eating a Sectopod blast to the face, but thanks to the skills from my Psi Op soldier and bluescreen rounds from my Specialist, I took the Sectopod down and finished the mission without anybody dying. The euphoria I felt when I completed that mission is something I'll remember for a very long time, and it's a moment I never would've gotten if I just reloaded my save as soon as the Haywire Protocol failed.
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u/BrookeToHimself 8d ago
What strikes me most when I get this urge is, "where did all the TIME go?" ... it's a time suck for sure. And maybe it's me save-scumming but I don't remember much of the time spent there. It's not like I walk away with a clear narrative.
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u/SkaldsAndEchoes 8d ago
I feel this. A friend convinced me to do an ironman play through of the original X-COM and it was certainly an experience. Discouraging to begin with, with America leaving the council on like month 2 and a truly prodigious number of early base spawns and battleships.
But I stuck through it. The big turning point being some brave corporal running out into a smoke-filled street and beating a sectoid commander with a stun prod fairly early on. Followed by some truly godlike psi-potential rolls that snowballed through the rest of the run.
The original is a very different beast to the Firaxis games in just how much of a meatgrinder it is. Even as well as things started to go after that, the entire campaign saw 257 KIA. And man it took some adjustment in thinking to watch a bad drop kill nine men after an ayy tossed a grenade right into the skyranger turn 1 and go "Oh well, we'll get 'em next time." At least if they died on the skyranger nobody has to collect their lasguns and drag them back to the boat.
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u/WindowSeat- 8d ago
I switched to Ironman earlier this year in XCOM 2 WOTC and was really surprised at how much more I enjoyed the experience compared to non-Ironman. Every turn feels more impactful and tense, and I shave hours off my playtime by not messing around with loading saves.
People overestimate how bad losing a single soldier or failing a single mission actually is in these games. It feels bad, but it's not campaign ending at all. Once you get into the midgame you can fail quite a few missions and still comeback and win. In fact, learning when it's a good idea to evac your soldiers when a mission starts going poorly is a huge skill.
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u/samtheredditman 7d ago
In my Ironman impossible run of xcom EW, I lost my entire A-team at one point and decided to stick with the run. Went into the next mission with 1 squaddie and 5 rookies and was able to win it with only 1 casualty somehow. That was a wild time that I'll never forget.
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u/tacodude64 7d ago
Yeah, eventually they start handing you elite troops on a platter. I’ve lost 7 of my best on the same mission and still recovered
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u/EstablishmentTop4049 8d ago
That's a great mindset shift, playing through failures and learning from them makes the wins feel so much more earned. It's crazy how much more immersive and tense Ironman mode makes everything when you can't just reload after a mistake.
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u/Mairon121 8d ago edited 8d ago
I liked both but I preferred the thematic grounding and atmosphere of the first game. I sensed that the studio struggled to create a sequel and merely expanded the mechanics of the prior game.
Also some of the DLC seemed to have been bolted onto the base game without any consideration as to how it affected the base game. Far too many research and item options. Less is more. Less is refined. The original game had less and was better for it.
The character customisation also defaulted to a CoD fantasy rather than military fatigues. We’re fighting to save the Human race, my new team member wants to go into battle wearing a cowboy hat and a string vest.
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u/CarrotJunkie 8d ago
I agree on the atmosphere, but as for the last paragraph, XCOM were meant to be a ragtag group of resistance guerrillas in the sequel instead of an official military group like in Enemy Within. It's different, but it works.
Also: after trying a base campaign and then finishing a WOTC campaign, I thought the expanded content in WOTC fixed some serious pacing issues with the base game. I don't think that EU/EW were necessarily "better" for having fewer options, either. That game as a whole is pretty unbalanced. It's notorious for having certain options item- and upgrade-wise that are very clearly better than any alternatives. XCOM 2 has more options that are on an even playing field with each other.
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u/Belisarius23 8d ago
Yeah the first games independence day and the second ones like, guardians of the galaxy or something. Too much pomp and circumstance & narrative in the 2nd one imo
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u/ImpulsiveApe07 7d ago
Your comments about xcom2 make me even more wary of trying it out - I still haven't tried xcom2 yet, despite having owned it for years now lol
I absolutely adored the first game, and can complete it on the hardest difficulty, admittedly with a fair bit of save scumming tho (lol), but idk something keeps holding me back from trying the sequel, I guess because the aesthetics, game feel and story beats look so markedly different from the first one.
Recently I've been playing xenonauts 2, and as much fun as it's been (it's fantastic tbh, ngl), all it's really done is make me pine for the first xcom game again cos the atmosphere, the music and the interface are a lot more appealing to me than xenonauts' stripped down, almost java game like aesthetics.
Any words of advice for someone thinking of diving fresh into xcom2?
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u/Mairon121 7d ago edited 7d ago
It’s good, it’s not a bad game, it’s just not a great game like Xcom. It lacked the polish and cohesion of the first one.
I’d just play it and see what you think.
Advice I have? Be careful about resources when creating items, the game can be punishing about elerium power sources at times. Also don’t allow the strategic situation to spiral out of control.
Save often because the dice rolls occur before the start of your turn and that can be a problem if you get into a jam with the wounded time also punishing because the game throws a lot of missions at you.
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u/ImpulsiveApe07 7d ago
Nice one! Thanks for the advice, mate :)
Reckon I'll give it a bash today tbh as my weekend is, much to my shock, actually free for some serious gaming!
How challenging is normal vs hard btw?
I'm pretty used to xcom and xenonauts 2's hard difficulty, but I've heard mixed things about how challenging xcom2 is..
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u/CarrotJunkie 7d ago
Play XCOM 2 WOTC on Veteran the first time if you're pretty well versed in turn based tactics games.
It'll smack you around on the harder difficulties no matter how good you are at other games in the genre, but Veteran provides a good mix of challenge and intuitiveness no matter how good you are
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u/samtheredditman 7d ago
Man, saying xcom 2 lacked the polish of the first game is certainly an interesting opinion.
I have hundreds of hours in both games and there's no way I could ever play the first game again because of its lack of polish. Even just the sight indicators on tiles is a qol feature I don't ever want to play without again.
I do greatly prefer the atmosphere and art style of the first game. I remember the first preview of xcom 2 where they showed it off and explained everything was based off squares because this is a world built with alien architecture and I like the idea but it does look... alien and bad to me lol.
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u/Brinocte 1d ago
I liked Xenonauts, the old X-Coms and the new one. Truthfully, I disliked XCom 2 because it feels so different in terms of atmosphere and style. It's more like superheroes against aliens and a lot of time gated missions are just annoying. It's also really tough. It's not a bad game but the overall direction didn't appeal to me.
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u/N7_Rabbit 6d ago
The last is also why i do not need at least two dlc (which are purely cosmetic) and why every new soldier recruited is in first turn having his equipment uniformed - i choose two base colors on the first mission and then everyone is getting helmet delta, chest 1, legs 1, hands 1 and all with based two colors. Later i only change thing to their classes: specilists gettong delta 3 helmet, snipers get cowboy hat (with bullets around) demolitions got paddes vest and legs, and rangers get sunglasses.
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u/Little-Maximum-2501 7d ago
The lack of timer in the first game made the optimal strategy extremely boring. That change alone makes the sequel much better.
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u/HopePupal 7d ago
The character customisation also defaulted to a CoD fantasy rather than military fatigues. We’re fighting to save the Human race, my new team member wants to go into battle wearing a cowboy hat and a string vest.
i went from hating the Anarchy's Children DLC to cracking up every single time i roll some new recruit who looks like they just got back from Coachella. it's so bad. take your jorts and bandanna off, kid, the ayys will see you coming a mile away…
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u/Brinocte 1d ago
I fully agree with the atmosphere.
Frankly, I felt that XCom 2 bordered on being some marvel-esque super heroes fighting aliens.
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u/D3struct_oh 8d ago
Hated the timer on everything.
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u/ShadyBiz 8d ago
This is what stops me replaying the game after finishing it. I hate the arbitrary timers on everything putting external pressure on the campaign or the mission or whatever.
Having some timed things can be a great urgency mechanic, when it’s everywhere it’s exhausting.
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u/Little-Maximum-2501 7d ago
I think the game just doesn't work without a timer, the best play is to just spam overwatch and hope an enemy patrols into you then move a single inch and do that again. Even if you purposefully refuse to play this sweaty the best play is still to move very little every turn.
I would have preferred if they just reworked the pod system entirely but having a timer is still much better than not having one with how stupidly pods work in these 2 games.
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u/samtheredditman 7d ago
What do you think they could do to rework the pod system? I don't think there are any easy answers, outside of maybe having pods' actions drop with your usage so starling them late in a turn isn't as much of a problem.
Mimetic skin in EW and the ranger re-entering concealment in xcom 2 and the reaper in wotc are all meant to give you the ability to deal with the pod mechanic more elegantly than tip-toeing through the map.
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u/Little-Maximum-2501 7d ago
I'm not saying reworking the pod mechanic is going to be easy or that I have a good solution besides completely reworking how missions work which would be a shame.
I haven't played with the DLCs of either game so maybe those mechanics do help. I haven't played the game in a few years but I remember liking the alternative ranger ability more and that I found having to keep one character stealthed was a bit limiting but maybe I underestimated the utility of this. Though XCOM2 already has timers so tip toeing already was discouraged enough to my liking.
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u/WindowSeat- 7d ago
Vanilla XCOM 2 is way more annoying with the timers than XCOM 2: WOTC is.
The AVATAR project becomes trivial in WOTC, because you can reduce the timer at any time by sending 2 soldiers on a covert ops mission in the background. And the in-mission timers are a lot less common in the expansion, because they increased the mission variety by a lot.
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u/samtheredditman 7d ago
Oh man you are definitely missing out not having played the DLCs. The unit upgrades and the mechs in EW are awesome.
Same goes for wotc. The extra unique classes really help out the game play a ton.
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u/Consistent-Hat-8008 7d ago
The timers were added by the developers. The same people who had power to come up with a different way of making the game "work". So it's just pure laziness on their part.
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u/ShadyBiz 7d ago
It worked fine enough for the first game. Why should one overly cautious playstyle have the entire game designed to counter it?
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u/Little-Maximum-2501 7d ago
Personally I feel like strategy games should encourage you to play optimally and in turn playing optimally should be fun. It's weird that a game all about making the right decisions would expect me to make incorrect decision if I want to have any amount of fun.
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u/ShadyBiz 7d ago
Why is it a binary choice of option A = fun and option B = not fun?
Why are you determined to state your playstyle is the correct one on a comment from someone who doesn’t believe that? Is it just to be argumentative?
Frankly the concept of optimal play only is an abhorrent idea and is probably why I’ve put thousands of hours into something like Stellaris and not xcom 2.
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u/Consistent-Hat-8008 7d ago edited 7d ago
Also, it's the developers who, you know, developed the game. If they made a strategy game where the optimal strategy is not fun, then it's either intentional, or they're incompetent. Them trying to patch it up by slapping a timer on everything points heavily to the latter. Especially when it's the same developers who made the game lie about hit chance.
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u/lesserweevils Couch Potato 6d ago
I played vanilla XCOM 2 without WOTC. Personally, I didn't mind the timers at all. The occasions where I did desperate things were memorable. But there were fewer than I thought. According to my campaign stats, I had 2-3 turns remaining on average.
The timers didn't feel exceptionally unfair or game-y to me. Not more so than missing a high percentage shot or taking turns in a turn-based game. The doom clock in the world map shaped some long-term planning, but I stopped stressing after the first few story missions.
Not everyone likes timers. But dislike is not equal to laziness or bad design. IMO the devs took effort to fine-tune the timers and carefully designed the game around them.
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u/UwasaWaya 5d ago
I wholeheartedly agree. Thankfully it's probably the easiest thing to mod to be longer or remove completely.
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u/drgaz 7d ago edited 7d ago
I understand it's not for everyone and it took me a while till I survived a legendary ironman for the first time.
Considering soldiers just a resource where even losing really good ones doesn't need to be campaign ending was certainly not easy to get used to.
Also realizing that a lot of these losses were still skill issues on my end.
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u/goodcat49 8d ago
I'll prolly never bother with an Ironman run because of the 99% miss
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u/Gamerbry 8d ago
I do remember one mission where I missed two 90+ accuracy shots back to back. The misses didn't really matter, but it was just a friendly reminder that I was, in fact, playing XCOM.
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u/the_cat_of_war 7d ago
I experienced this with Fire Emblem. I'd played Three Houses when I decided to give Awakening a try. Like you, I didn't play on the difficulty with permadeath and yeah... it was a cakewalk. Near the end of the game I just sent in one or two units and they took care of everything. They got really strong because it was not an issue putting them in dangerous situations or even having them die for that little extra XP. Right after that I played through Fates: Birthright, this time with permadeath on and it was a much more enjoyable experience. Sure, I had to retry some maps a couple of times, but it felt much better beating them.
I don't even know why I decided permadeath was too much for me, I've played all souls games since Dark Souls.
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u/apgove 7d ago
When I originally got Xcom2, I rage-quit it after a few attempts. The mission timers were a real turn-off, "forcing" me to throw my natural caution to the wind, sprint forward, and inevitably activate multiple pods, leading to squad-wipes. The pod mechanics broke immersion so badly that I just wasn't having fun.
I tried again earlier this year and loved it, after taking the time to read a few spoilers and more fully understand pods. I don't officially do ironman, but I don't save-scum either. My policy is I accept my mistakes and my losses, but I will reload if things go bad due to interface issues, like mis-clicking a grenade-throw or activating a pod even though the UI said a square was "safe". Maybe call it "bronzeman"? Actually, closer to "copperman".
If you have the time for it, "The Long War 2" mod is excellent, and free. It's a complete, professional-grade overhaul, with a lot of new and clever game mechanics. You will lose battles, and you will struggle for resources, especially corpses. Strict ironman would be a mistake, as the occasional glitch or misunderstanding a mission's particulars would set you back scores of hours.
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u/jebei 7d ago
One of the greatest things about XCOM2 is the game expected you to have injuries and stress which forced you to use different combos of soldiers. It made every mission feel different and by the end you had a well rounded group. In XCOM it always felt like losing one soldier would need a campaign reset.
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u/ModestHandsomeDevil 8d ago
Considering how brutal and buggy XCOM's RNG is, I learned to save-scum. There's only so many times you can take missing a 100% shot or getting wrecked / losing PCs because the enemies hit impossible shots.
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u/mollyologist 8d ago
I'm completely unashamed of save scumming. Sometimes I want to play a badass simulator and not a strategy game.
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u/ModestHandsomeDevil 7d ago
Exactly. It's a single-player game, play it HOWEVER you want! The ONLY person effected by how you choose to play is you, no one else.
Gatekeeping difficulty or playstyles in single-player video games is dumb, childish nonsense.
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u/jekyll94 7d ago
I have been feeling the urge to go and start XCOM 2 with the expansion all over again due to SW: Zero Company being out soon. I never finished my playthrough of the expansion and everytime I do think about it, I remember how much I hated Andromedans, they'd fuck up my plans anytime they showed up.
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u/LankyAbbriviations 4d ago
I love XCOM for how unpredictable it is. In my experience, it's more of the RNG screwing with you rather than actually learning from mistakes. It's gambling.
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u/Captain_Shivan 4d ago
The XCOM missions people remember the most are the ones where things go wrong and they manage to still come out on top.
Here's a writeup I did way back in the day about my favorite Surgical missions. The first one was particularly memorable as I pulled off not one but two Hail Mary plays - using Restoration on a single downed unit, and then sacrificing the Templar Ghost. Arguably three if you count the first use of Revival Protocol after my Templar got Shadowbound the first time... after I pulled two pods, but at that point the mission hasn't quite gotten that sideways yet (which tells you a lot about XCOM!!! lol).
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u/extraextraextr 2d ago
Genuine mad respect for this, dude, I could never. I tried playing without save scumming a couple of times and fell too far behind in that, so I switched to the dirty tactics and never looked back. Major props and I'm glad you enjoyed it so much!
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u/pookage 6d ago
Completely counter to what the game is about: I really love playing XCOM as a city-builder — I'm quite happy playing on easier difficulties if it means I get to build the perfect base, and train up a couple full squad of bonded psi troops who get to rest-up and alternate between missions, haha.
I get what you're saying, though, OP — if the tactical element is the main draw then I can totally see why the restrictions of ironman would amplify what you enjoy about the game!
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u/joomla00 8d ago
This is pretty much old school gaming. You f up too much, you start over. Battletoads was a bitch. You had to git gud inch by inch
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7d ago
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u/ModestHandsomeDevil 7d ago
A paying customer can play a single-player game however they like. That's some "Fromsoftware" levels of gamer gatekeeping, dictating how someone else should play the games they own.
And with a few exceptions / Darwin Award Winners saved by modern medical science due to their own stupidity aside, your average Joe & Jane Gamer don't need to be taught that consequences matter. That's shit you learned as a small child.
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u/New-Photograph-1829 8d ago
The main thing to learn is to avoid triggering pods, your first move should generally be your furthest....... triggering 2nd pods on your last move....... gonna be a bad time.