The last alien has been killed, and the Earth is saved (except for
France, sorry.) In my analysis of X-Com Enemy Unknown, I did not touch on the
end game and how the game's challenges change. For this last post for now on
EU, I'm going to go into more detail about the various elements of the game and
what worked and didn't work for me from mid to end game.
The following
post will be a spoil filled discussion on X-Com Enemy Unknown. I will be
talking about specific alien encounters, strategies and a look at the final
mission. If you haven't played X-Com yet or are playing it now, read on at your
own risk.
Strategic Layer:
I found that the
strategic layer's challenge broke down at the midpoint of the campaign. As long
as you produce enough satellites to keep panic levels low and get the
"all in" bonus from Africa, you'll be rolling in money.
For the first half
of the game, the challenge of the game moves you along to take on the alien
base. Beating the base will drop panic levels around the globe dramatically,
and reduce the # of UFOs that appear. The base mission itself is similar to the
final mission in some of the design problems I have with the tactical layer
that I'll come back to later on.
For the remaining
half of the game there really wasn't a lot to do. The only big push came when I
had to get firestorms built to take on the overseer ship, but other than that I
was just fast forwarding through research and structures.
I also ran into
some issues with the gameyness of the base building and how easy it was to
exploit it. The adjacently bonus for uplinks made the upgrade buildings not
needed. As you get further in, scientists become even less utilized as
you finish your research products and get bonuses from alien captures.
Because of the
cost of buying the higher tech weapons and gear, engineers are always important
for the price reduction. On my classic play, I didn't need to expand my base
and left the third and fourth layers empty except for plot related structures.
Now to be fair,
there were a number of optimal base plans you could use in the original X-Com
to make things easier. However you had more freedom in designing your bases by
building different bases that focus on different parts. You could have one base
that is for manufacturing and other for research for example.
But with one base,
it was very easy to figure out the best layouts for everything. As mentioned
the adjacently bonuses for uplinks can save you a lot of money and can get you
all the satellites you could need.
Equipment:
I was really let
down by the equipment choices by the end of the game. While there was a decent
variety of armor available, I was disappointed by the # of viable
weapons. I had my crew outfitted in plasma weapons long before the end of the
game and it felt like progression just stopped.
One thing that I
was surprised with was the lack of new secondary equipment going into the last
part of the game. Besides the blaster launcher, the only other one was the psi
shield, and those were very late game upgrades. I was really hoping for new
scopes, med kits and other items to add more diversity to your choices at the
end. While the foundry upgrades were a great touch, it's not the same as
getting more alien or technological upgrades for your squad.
While I
can appreciate the class system for making your squad more developed
then in the previous game, it definitely came at a cost to the variety of
equipment. A part of what made the original so great was that feeling that you
were catching up with the aliens in the arms race through research. But in EU,
I ran out of research projects and it felt like things were cut out.
This was another
lost opportunity by the designers to have more choices put into the
game. Such as a med kit that would heal for less, but heals over an area. Or
scopes that add an extra point or two of damage, or those designed to deal with
armored enemies.
Tactical Layer:
The late game is
where the gloves come off for those playing on classic and higher. Enemy health
is boosted into the twenties requiring you to focus down enemies quickly.
After finishing
the alien base mission, you'll start to run into enemies who can use psi
attacks on your squad. The added challenge from fighting them, and the more
options for using them yourself was good. However, I don't like how the iron
will upgrade that increases your squads will power (and psi defense) wasn't
retroactive. This one upgrade can really screw you in the late game depending
on how long you wait until you get it. As taking high ranked, but low will
soldiers are easy targets for psi attacks and panic.
Returning to my analysis of EU, I talked about my issues with the cover system and how it forces the player
and the AI into playing two different games. But the straw that broke the
camel's back was how enemy armor becomes a factor. In the last quarter of the
game, you'll run into armored floaters, mutton elites and sectopods who have
anywhere from a -30 to -40 to-hit penalty thrown in for wearing
armor. In my opinion, this takes the gameyness of the design too far.
There's something
off about an enemy standing in broad daylight with their back to my troops and
still having a greater (or equal) chance at dodging compared to my guys in
partial or full cover respectively . There are no weapons or tactics
the player can use to mitigate this and their only option is to hope the RNG is
on their side.
Because the will
power of your troops affects their to-hit chance with psi attacks, this is
where they start showing their usefulness. But you can't use them on mechanical
enemies like sectopods who have a number of nasty attacks.
The Final Mission:
The final mission
of the game where you take on the mothership of the alien forces highlights in
my opinion, the problems with the new design of EU. Both the last mission and
the alien base have a similar pattern: a large environment with a higher than
average alien total.
The more aliens
you have to fight, the more the cover system favors them. Now in the original
game, alien bases were the same way, forcing you to fight more aliens than
normal. But in the original, you had a lot more squaddies at your disposal.
Losing one or two guys in the first firefight due to bad luck wasn't the end of
the world. But with only a max of six, leaves you with a less margin for
bad luck.
Now, you do have
more options thanks to the psi powers and fully ranked units, but there is one
thing that can still get you: attrition. Because med kits are restricted by
usage and points, it makes every point of damage very dangerous. When you
have enemies that can score a critical hit for ten or more points, it’s very
easy to lose a squad member.
What's worse is
that from mid to end game, you'll be fighting enemies that can use grenades and
other area of effect skills. With how limited your cover options are, it's
very easy to have two or more soldiers taking cover around the same object. As
with the player, these attacks almost hit every time for damage, that you can
only heal a limited # of times.
This leaves the
player with only one safe option: slowly go through each section and using over
watch and psi attacks to keep everyone safe. This doesn't leave a lot of room
for the player to think tactically about playing.
Bugs:
Lastly I wanted to
talk about some of the bugs that myself, along with friends have encountered.
There have been reports of issues with mind controlling enemies for the final
mission, as the mission is scripted to only allow the player to move from room to
room after all the enemies have been killed.
Regarding Psi, I
hope that this next one is a bug and not a poor feature. If an enemy who
is mind-controlled is killed, your soldiers will
suffer penalties and may even panic from the aliens being killed. And
having to wait until the mind control runs out before you can kill them when
there is no one around was another poor choice.
There have been
comments about game crashes occurring, which I was lucky enough to avoid.
But for those playing on ironman mode, I can feel their pain.
But what is
probably one of the worst bugs have to be with the SHIVs, people have been
reporting cases where they are unable to use or build anymore SHIVs. For what
was considered an important and viable strategy, to have a bug rendering
them unusable is not good to hear.
Overall, after
spending several posts looking at EU, I'm walking away from the game moderately
happy. Firaxis has managed to take one of the most highly regarded (and
challenging) games of all time and rebooted it for today's audience. With that
said however, in terms of replay ability and longevity, I think the original
still is miles above EU.
As it currently
stands, I don't think we're going to be talking about EU after 15+ years in the
same way as the original. For now, the ball is in Firaxis's court on if and how
they want to expand on the game. They have a great foundation, now they just
have to build on it.
Heh, I said similar things on a forum (that you don't hang out at) just yesterday. I think it's a fine game, but in 10 years I expect the # of XCom playthroughs I have will be a fraction of the X-Com playthroughs. As of right now my desire to play the game is minimal. It's like D3 in that respect - I burned through it quickly and stopped caring.
ReplyDeleteI really hate the in-game economy. I should probably modify that and say that I find the entire strategic layer lacking.
I miss the dual advancement from X-com (where soliders improved skills through use but then get certain bonuses from ranking up). I also miss how much more special soldiers felt in that game. Xcom tries to make them feel more special but doesn't. Even a Captain or Commander in X-com is ultimately expendable, but losing a highly ranked solider here is just killer. Certainly there's time to get another trained up (assuming you aren't on the base/final mission), but then it feels like tedium.
Lastly, I do not care for the attempts to inject story into the game. The principle I am ok with, but not the execution. I hate it when Scary German Doctor Lady or the Engineer do an in-mission voice over, because it takes me out of the action (you can't act until they are done, typically, and you can't skip them). Most of the base voice overs worked the same way, so you had to skip them or just wait there twiddling your thumbs. Boo!
I somehow never finished that thought about soldiers:
ReplyDeleteThe high ranking guys in X-com are expendable but you still have an intimate relationship with them. It's just that they don't feel like RPG party members. The guys in XCom feel like RPG party members, which is not what you want in this game IMO.
Hey, I spend my time on each forum, it's just that I pick and choose what topics to post about on each :)
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't on Qt3 or Broken Forum though.
ReplyDelete