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X-COM Firaxis - XCOM: Enemy Unknown + Enemy Within Expansion

Jasede

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
It's nothing like the original. I think it's a fun game in its own right and well-made, but as soon as you compare it to Enemy Unknown or Terror from the Deep you will consider it dumbed down.

It's not really 'dumb' though: it's a board game.

Literally. The people who worked on this were obsessed with board games (you can research that, it's true) and essentially, they made an X-Com boardgame for computers. A good one, not without flaws, but a damn good one. If you enjoy small-squad TB combat (small being 4-6 people) with an X-Com flavor you will be happy, but if you expect a worthy remake or successor of the originals you'll be extremely disappointed, hence the pretty divided opinion on this game.

Personally, I recommend you try the new X-Com 2 as it adds a more interesting strategic layer to the game and ironed out some kinks. It can also be had for essentially free.
 
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After an initial dislike for what they've changed compared to the original, I've grown more and more fond of this "reboot" over time.
I'd second the suggestion to play the second one, maybe giving a quick run to the first chapter just to know where it comes from, since the sequel improves arguably on every single aspect of the game (except maybe the charm/mood, but that's more a matter of taste).
I hated the two-actions system compared with the old time units at first, but now that I got over it I can't deny I have a very good opinion of the tactical combat.
What I still think really stinks, on the other hand, is the overall strategic layer. Especially in the first game, where it's extremely linear and leaves virtually no room for variation.
 

Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I just bought Enemy Within to try Long War 1.0. Now I am wondering if I should try EW first?

Is there a way to minimize the time required for LW without playing it on Easy or similar compromises?

edit

I did beat XCOM EU on Insane on release.
You can enable faster campaign in the launch menu. It does not make the game easier. No idea about the balance, though.
 

Jaedar

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
I just bought Enemy Within to try Long War 1.0. Now I am wondering if I should try EW first?

Is there a way to minimize the time required for LW without playing it on Easy or similar compromises?

edit

I did beat XCOM EU on Insane on release.
You can enable faster campaign in the launch menu. It does not make the game easier. No idea about the balance, though.
You can play LW with options to make it go faster (or slower if you are insane), but the balance is not so great. It is quite a bit harder because if you play on double speed, every failure counts for double, but unlike in a regular game where that panic would be spread out it will all apply in one place. Also way harder to get a decent soldier roster going, because you only get half as many easy missions (ie, ones where you can take rookies without seriously reducing your chance of success).
 

Dawkinsfan69

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Just got this for $8 good deeaaaaaal.

Never played these games before, started on ironman normal mode and was doing well for about 12 missions until two of my top guys got gibbed and the rest had like month long injuries.

Ran a mission with all new recruits and holy crap they got rekt, all dead. Dunno if I should keep moving forward or restart but i dunno if I wanna go through all the start stuff again yet.

I guess I'll see how far I can get but this run's prolly a fail lol.
 

Serious_Business

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Yeah, this game is okay. What pisses me off most in terms of what changes they made to the original is not so much the gameplay, but actually, the music and overall presentation. The music is the most generic symphonic crap, it's unbearable. It doesn't generate any kind of tension. The game has essentially no personality. It's all pretty tedious. I don't know what they were thinking when they went for this style. Makes all the third-person view and cinematic bullshit all the more irritating. You get used to it, I guess.
 

Jasede

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
The music is ... serviceable... That's not to say it's good. It is, in fact, so utterly forgettable I didn't remember there was any until SB just mentioned it.
 

Dawkinsfan69

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Okay I'm total ass at this game.

Playing classic ironman and getting wrecked/needing to restart in the first 5 missions now.

I think I'm not turtling enough or something, I like to dash around and scope out areas and I can't stand just sitting on overwatch.
 

ArchAngel

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Okay I'm total ass at this game.

Playing classic ironman and getting wrecked/needing to restart in the first 5 missions now.

I think I'm not turtling enough or something, I like to dash around and scope out areas and I can't stand just sitting on overwatch.
Yea the optimal way to play this game was to move one guy a bit forward and if you didn't see any aliens move other behind that one and set everyone on overwatch
 

Jasede

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
The new expansion is basically a new game. Highly recommended. Love the deeper strategic layer and the ability for soldiers to form bonds.
 

Dawkinsfan69

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Some DLC missions are insane. The Asian Mafia Man with some Artefact had to be saved through !30! Thinman with 6 guys. Its insane... I had to reload and and camp around to figure out what triggers them. If this was on a timelimit.... good night.
Then his next mission is a train station, that has to be beat by sneaking on the edge and triggering all required locations at once, or you will lose soldiers.
And the followup is a ?Dreadnought? spaceship with a pod of 6 Mutons. Doable but I sent my 3rd squad...

Yeah they always drop the dlc on me super early game too (before I even have 6 soldiers) and it fucks with my game since i'm ironman.

I've always done the train mission by triggering locations one at a time, just slowly working my way through the thing. I usually have a sniper on the roof and some guys standing outside the train in overwatch tho. Really fucking annoying when a muton magically appears right on top of a soldier in that mission though, but at least they give you a round to kill em quick.

Meks are really strong though and they made the game more fun for me because they support more aggressive play.
 

mastroego

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Sorry, I dropped off.

Playing Dynamic War with 50% scaling, on Normal cause all the tooltips about Difficulty rating scared me. They shouldnt have.

LW plays exactly like the Original, to be honest. All the new fluff doesnt change much tactically.
In fact, I get the feeling that the roaming pods (is that new? especially on Harvester ships) make the vanilla's safe and ideal movement of 1 tile per turn or 1 cover per turn and Overwatch spam even worse. I've won my first landed Harvester by standing still in cover. And then triggerign the Outsiders.

Balance changed. Rocketeers got nerfed something serious. Now Infantry is top imo, can shoot twice per turn on the very first level! And the next two Abilities are also extremely useful. Overwatch without penalties? Yes, please! Its interesting, because at first I thought it was a good ability but after I picked it up, I realized that Overwatch usually triggers in the Open which bumps Crits to +50% if enemy "flanked"! This makes this ability 1A Great. You can trigger a pod with a scout and run back to entrenched Infantry in Overwatch and keeep on Winninnn!

Injuries recovery is far too much. Organically, I developed 3 squads and a forth that might as well be rookie level. I wish they'd shorten it by a lot.

Some DLC missions are insane. The Asian Mafia Man with some Artefact had to be saved through !30! Thinman with 6 guys. Its insane... I had to reload and and camp around to figure out what triggers them. If this was on a timelimit.... good night.
Then his next mission is a train station, that has to be beat by sneaking on the edge and triggering all required locations at once, or you will lose soldiers.
And the followup is a ?Dreadnought? spaceship with a pod of 6 Mutons. Doable but I sent my 3rd squad...

Thinking about quitting. I dont think Psi or Genmods (half of which I've already seen through saving and experimenting) or Meks are gonna change the tedious pressing of 3... If only it stayed on 3 alwyas....
I have 5 soldiers of each class. Before getting Annette and the others.
I think most keep an even larger roster, mine does feel small at times, I had to skip a couple of missions in order not to remain unprotected (I want to contain my roster to use only unique voices, which takes mods too). Yours is small anyway.

I've started another run after doing one at easy... I thought I was burned out with the game but I'm having more fun that before.
Some DLCs missions are truly hard, yes.... but this time around I've managed to do the Asian Man mission on the first try with no injuries even, IIRC. You need to keep all your squad in the starting spot, cover them well, and let the aliens come at you. Use overwatch, snipers, high aim gunners if you have any, and rocketeers. Perhaps don't even bring assaults on that mission.

In general, learn to truly specialize your troops and make good use of them. For instance, make a couple of INSANELY high movement scouts with concealment (with the right gear and level ups even more than 20-22) use them as hidden spotters and pick your enemies from afar with true snipers. Use specialized sappers to reliably destruct cover and clean up groups of enemies with In The Zone snipers. I managed to take down like 6 uber-exalts with my ITZ Sniper a couple of days ago, following a carefully placed grenade. And so on. Plenty of good and fun tactics to use, even though yep, it can be pretty unforgiving at times. Do refer to the Long War wiki, lots of good info there.
Oh, and try to research things at the right time. Prioritize things you need like right now. Sacrifice the rest, they'll come once your position has gotten stronger.
And oh, The Dynamic option sort of screws up the balance anyway.
 
Last edited:

ArchAngel

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I put it at moment their internal pitch video for Xcom 1 starts. It was made almost 5 years before release of Xcom 1 and it shows how they envisioned the game at first and what they compared what they got in the end with.

For me the game from that pitch video seems much better :D (the music and atmosphere is proper horror like original UFO).
It even had time units :)
 

Plisken

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Oct 8, 2017
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why the fuck is this game on steam from 2012 still almost as expensive as the fucking sequel from last year?
 

mastroego

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Well, Long War has been finalized for the first game.
That might be playing a part.
I did buy it at full price because of that.
 

Plisken

Learned
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Well, Long War has been finalized for the first game.
That might be playing a part.
I did buy it at full price because of that.

I'm tempted but hesitant.

How is the long war, really?

I enjoyed nucom when it first came out but I'm also patently aware of its bullshit and gamey mechanics once the illusion breaks.
 

mastroego

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Well, Long War has been finalized for the first game.
That might be playing a part.
I did buy it at full price because of that.

I'm tempted but hesitant.

How is the long war, really?
It's looooong and unforgiving.
What can I say I have 600 hours logged on Steam and counting. I love the soldier classes and the tactics you have to refine to survive this game.
 
Last edited:

Ivan

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Hey Bros, thinking about trying Long War. Are there any mods that make the experience a little faster, something along the lines of Stop Wasting My Time for XCOM 2? Also is the default mode preferred over the "Dynamic War" (shorter) campaign option? Does the regular mode start feeling like a grind. Not sure how I feel about starting something that I'm not realistically meant to complete/finish.


Thanks,
 

mastroego

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There are a few Ease of Use mods, look for them on the Nexus. I didn't feel the need for them, though, honestly.
I know how you feel anyway, and I tried the Dynamic War setting the first time.
My feeling (heck, I think it's explicitly stated somewhere) is that the mod is not really balanced around that. The regular, long version is way better for that aspect.

Now, about the lenght and the grinding.
It depends on how you play, how fairly and how good.
The modded campaign is really, REALLY long, but for a long time you'll be kept on your toes and you'll be constantly looking forward to the next little bit of progress. If you're very good or savescum a lot though, piling up little advantage over little advantage, eventually even with Long War you'll start snowballing and at that point getting to the end might indeed become a long, tedious, grinding business
Still, you'll always have the option to skip missions if you don't feel like doing them and if you don't need them. A little immersion-breaking, but there it is: it might help you beeline for the end.

On the other end of the hypothetical spectrum, you'll play suboptimally, or avoid savescumming altogether. Chances are that your game won't be very long in this case - the aliens will see to it.
Now, normally you'll be somewhat in the middle of course. So don't expect perfect balance and a constant level of engagement.
Bottom line is that it's probably close to impossible to balance a campaign this long where, after all, the choices and the skill of the player are EXPECTED to produce results.
So you'll probably - not surely, but probably - have to grind eventually, if you're not forced to abandon the campaign before that.

It's still absolutely worth it though (my opinion).
 

Raghar

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Gentlemen, XCOM 1 Complete edition is now on GoG at a discount (80%)
I could borrow disq version for free, and then use crack because I doubt they would find manuals as well. But what's the point? Shouldn't this game be for free already?
 

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