[Scourge of Ages]

Other possible titles:
BattleteXCOM
Frozen SynapXCOM
Door KickrXCOM

boy that got away from me...

So what is *XCOM Chimera Squad*? In case you missed it, there's a new XCOM game that's set some years after the events of XCOM 2, in a city where humans, former ADVENT, aliens stranded by The Elders, and alien-human hybrids live, sometimes in peace. XCOM is there to supplement the police force, and investigate weirdness, and do counter-terrorism stuff.
It's a turn-based tactics game that plays very similarly to XCOM 1 and 2. EXCEPT now instead of whole teams moving at once, every soldier is placed in initiative order, generally friendlies and enemies taking turns. Think Battletech.


ALSO, you don't get the big ol' maps that you had in other games, you also don't need to worry about accidentally activating pods before you're ready. Instead, missions take place over 1-3+ "encounters" on fairly small maps. And before each encounter, you set your team up to breach, and using explosives and other buildable items, you can get pretty cool bonuses on breach.


Also also, instead of random and fully customizable soldiers, you get (have?) to pick from a roster of existing people. But they're all sorts of species from human to alien, and they each have a different skill tree to go down.

[Grizzly]

I quite like how they've gone about this wrt pricing.

BattleteXCOM
Frozen SynapXCOM
Door KickrXCOM

I think my favorite so far is "Snek Ops"

[0rph3u5]

X-Cops

[Scourge of Ages]

And this game gets hard fast. The biggest problem so far, is that while it's uncommon for team members to *die*, if they fall in combat they'll get a scar that inhibits their performance, and have to spend two days healing to get rid of it. "Ah, you say, no problem! Just sub in another operative!" Thing is, you can't just recruit them at will, you only get more at specific points, and you can't take a mission with fewer than 4 operatives. And you also need operatives to speed "research" projects, and go on special ops. I currently have six total people, and I'm having to send some of them into the field with their scars. And I only have one healer so far.

Fun though!

[theperfectdrugsk]

I heard on another forum that it comes with a bunch of adware, spyware type stuff and that's why it's so cheap? Requires an internet connection even though it's single player only, that sort of thing?

Y'all notice anything like that?

[0rph3u5]

Heard nothing about that, but there are other more sane explainations for the low price point: From the lack of high-powered marketing, to the lack of QA (I've not read any review that didn't mention bunches of bugs and difficulty spikes), to it being fundamentally build on X-Com 2, to trying to undercut the Gears of War-tactics spin-off (which appearently suprised a lot of industry insiders how not terrible it is), to it being an "after hours" project.

[Colonol Dekker]

So is this dlc, a freebie, etc?

[0rph3u5]

It's stand-alone. It costs €10 this week and starting next week it'll be €20.

[Colonol Dekker]

I might treat myself....

[Colonol Dekker]

Shameless double post....

I did treat myself, downloading now.

Its my birthday so I deserve this

Also noticed that the original series plus the awful enforcer is on sale on steam for about 2 quid.

[theperfectdrugsk]

Heard nothing about that, but there are other more sane explainations for the low price point: From the lack of high-powered marketing, to the lack of QA (I've not read any review that didn't mention bunches of bugs and difficulty spikes), to it being fundamentally build on X-Com 2, to trying to undercut the Gears of War-tactics spin-off (which appearently suprised a lot of industry insiders how not terrible it is), to it being an "after hours" project.

Probably just the bog-standard game telemetry stuff that everyone collects nowadays then, and not anything too egregious (if it was I assume we'd be hearing more about it by now).

[Scourge of Ages]

[...] to the lack of QA (I've not read any review that didn't mention bunches of bugs and difficulty spikes) [...]

So many bugs...
All my SMGs just up and disappeared. The fix is to just console them back in...

[0rph3u5]

If it were not for the bugs, the game actually flows quite nicely. Although I kinda miss the ability to reverse momentum and would sometimes fall back into a perviously cleared area - esspecially against the Sacred Coil.

I am don't actually like the iniative order and there appears to be a persistent problem when it picks enemies for objective-critical behavior and then picks the ones at the top of the iniative order - but without knowing the specifics I can't tell if its broken or I just don't manipulate the iniative order enough.

In contrast however, breaking up the missions into chunks actually ambilifies the "one more turn"-effect.

[Scourge of Ages]

If it were not for the bugs, the game actually flows quite nicely.

Big agree

I am don't actually like the iniative order [...] but without knowing the specifics I can't tell if its broken or I just don't manipulate the iniative order enough.

It's possible. When you really get into abilities like Terminal's Teamwork(?), Godmother's Overtime, the one-use thing ability you always have, and the motility inducer, you really start to see things pop. It's extremely satisfying to watch the red tabs slide out of initiative order and your blue tabs slide up and stack together

Also: snEKS-COM

[0rph3u5]

I just had the best ambient conversation between Verge and Axiom, about exterrestrials and cats

There is so little of the characters but they doubled down on dynamics that pop in short dialogue

[0rph3u5]

I had to restart my campaign last night, because I'd gotten myself stuck on the finale of the Sacred Coil-arc and Ironman-mode being Ironman-mode ... you get it, right?

So what you assestment on the best route through the investigations?

Spoiler:

After my second start I went Progeny -> Grey Phoenix -> Sacred Coil now - and so far it is looking good. Before that I went Progeny then Sacred Coil and no matter who well I played or lucky I was, I got hammered in the encounter with the Gatekeeper.

I picked the Progeny first because I remember just who powerful psionics can be - and if you don't pack those flashbangs the Progeny really gives you a hard time.
Grey Phoenix however felt kinda weak as second pick, they didn't seem to have the same powerful combinations that the Progeny and Sacred Coil have.
Sacred Coil ... pulls no punches, but the kicker is really their finale with the waves of Ronin and then that f'ing Gatekeeper for a boss...