[Ghostavo]

I assume I'm near the beginning since I've got no idea what is going on, and since I never played any XCOM games before, I'll assume things are going normal.

I just had my first terror mission and it basically blew in my face. Right before this one, my veteran soldiers were injured somewhat and had to forgo this mission and so all I had was a veteran sniper and a few rookies, getting me 4 soldiers out of a team of normally 5. I got introduced in the middle (end?) of the mission to a new type of alien (spidery thingy), who in turn introduced another new type of enemy, zombie. My team was obliterated and now about 5 nations decided to withdraw.

I assume this series is like Dwarf Fortress, yes?

[Scotty]

That's called a Cryssalid, and it is the reason terror missions are terrible.

[NGTM-1R]

I assume this series is like Dwarf Fortress, yes?

Not always, though it does happen at high difficulties or low levels of caution or simply because you're not used to it.

MEET THE CHRYSSALIDS is one of the places that frequently does it.

[General Battuta]

If you ironman this game it's surprisingly hard even on Normal.

[StarSlayer]

Big Trouble in Little Córdoba

Aced the first Terror Mission in Argentina, Capt. Ibn "Poe" Battuta lead a squad of second string Squadies and Rookies to a crushing victory over the Xenos threat.  Granted I caught a lucky break and Big Sky dropped my squad off on a highway overpass which I was able to set up a meat grinder for the Crysalids and Floaters.  That said I won't say no the "Like a Scalpel" achievement.

The Man, The Legend:

[StarSlayer]

...and Squaddie Kara Thrace just captured a Sectoid and Outsider in one mission.  Two Objectives in one go!



Doctor Vahlen: Go and tell your Squad Leader that we have been charged by the Council with a sacred quest. If he will assign some plasma fodder some arc throwers, he can join us in our quest for the Outsider.
Kara Thrace: Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he will be very keen. Uh, he's already got one, I stunned it you see.
Doctor Vahlen: What?
Officer Bradford: She said they've already got one!
Doctor Vahlen: Are you sure he's got one?
Kara Thrace: Oh yes, it's very nice!

[General Battuta]

Holy ****, I think...they might have actually made a better mousetrap.

[headdie]

[StarSlayer]

Now whenever another squad member tags the controlling member of a linked pair of sectoids and both get fried I'll imagine him yelling "That still only counts as one!"

[Kobrar44]

What do difficulty levels change? Do aliens start being prepared for our arrival? Do they start shooting outside of our view? Because I see there is no shooting at skyranger anymore.

[General Battuta]

battuta spotted

[NGTM-1R]

What do difficulty levels change? Do aliens start being prepared for our arrival? Do they start shooting outside of our view? Because I see there is no shooting at skyranger anymore.

Below Classic, the AI is throttled and there's a cap on how many units it can actively control at one time. (Five, I think.) It can at times look as if it's monkeying with damage and to-hit, but actually it's because the aliens understand the internal cover system better at higher difficulties.

[General Battuta]

Mutons are really hard to hit for such big mother****ers

[Scourge of Ages]

Hey remember that red-suited Muton Commander from the opening of the first X-COM?

They made him real, as a special **** you to anyone still fooling around with lasers and Carapace suits. No, I'm not talking about Berserkers, it gets worse.

So this had me proper freaked-out, and then I met them.

And I laughed in their scaly stupid faces. And by 'laughed', I mean 'shot sniper plasma'. Worth every credit.

[The E]

So I've been playing this over the weekend. It's a very good game, with a few stability and usability issues (It seems to suffer from some issues after a couple hours worth of playtime without a restart, and the UI to target grenades, rockets and other throwables is rather bad).

It's also a rather punishing game, a game that rewards good and punishes bad decisions and that isn't afraid to tell you that it's game over for you, something that has been rather rare these past few years.
And yeah, it seems that playing it Ironman style is the intended way to go (even though that has just cost me my best Sniper, grrrrrr).

[Kobrar44]

I haven't played it[except the demo] and I am not going to so I can't talk about it the way you guy do, but if the selling point is that you get to make choices sometimes and they seem to matter and your soldiers can really die..
I asked about the AI because I wasn't sure if what I've seen on zero difficulty is all this game has to offer. It seems it much or less is.
Cover system seems to be working and nothing more than that. Watching vids I needed 'some' time to get used to the fact that shot fly through everything. It looks they botched this one up a bit knowing they can get away with it easily.
Balance is working in terms of gameplay, but is weird. If you can oneshoot a sectoid with a pistol, but you need plasma sniper rifle for another one.. meh.. It looks liek they had no better idea to make commanders more dangerous.
Aliens are unaware of presence and won't shoot at soldiers unless they enter their FoV. And someone still calls this X-COM. Animations of aliens roraring and taking cover on sight are really ridiculous when you encounter few seperate ones. And are generally unpleasant to watch. Aliens taking cover? Yes. Animations? Ugh.
Reaction shots look bad when there are few people shooting at the same time. Because they don't shoot at the same time. Some of them do, some of them shoot in sequence. There are situations when one man reaction shoots an alien and the other one still shoots later, missing the target because there is no target anymore. Looks all kind of wrong.
Some weapons take too many shots in one sequence. I remember from the demo, I shot a sectoid in the head with heavy machine gun. TRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR and then it came down dead. It looked so WTF, but I think you can get used to that. Supressive fire looks especially terribad. I can't understand what they wanted to achieve here. To be honest, all these animations look just bad most of the time.
Lastly, maybe it's just me but I can't really stand the drama they put into this game. Because it is a lame drama.
I played the demo so I kinda know how the gameplay feels like but I can't tell how different the things I pointed out feel from actual gamers perspective[how different can they feel?]
So how you actual gamers feel about these?

[General Battuta]

I haven't played it[except the demo] and I am not going to so I can't talk about it the way you guy do, but if the selling point is that you get to make choices sometimes and they seem to matter and your soldiers can really die..
I asked about the AI because I wasn't sure if what I've seen on zero difficulty is all this game has to offer. It seems it much or less is.

I felt like this after the demo, but the game is actually pretty hard! Even on normal (bear in mind I'm on oXCOM vet) I lost my first game (I had ironman on). This game can be really damn difficult and the AI is excellent.

Balance is working in terms of gameplay, but is weird. If you can oneshoot a sectoid with a pistol, but you need plasma sniper rifle for another one.. meh.. It looks liek they had no better idea to make commanders more dangerous.

I don't think sectoid commanders have particularly more HP than normal sectoids - maybe one or two, but nothing to compare to a sectopod or muton elite.

Aliens are unaware of presence and won't shoot at soldiers unless they enter their FoV. And someone still calls this X-COM. Animations of aliens roraring and taking cover on sight are really ridiculous when you encounter few seperate ones. And are generally unpleasant to watch. Aliens taking cover? Yes. Animations? Ugh.

Yeah, these are really dumb, and I'm sick of the over-the-shoulder shot cams as well. But you can turn most of that stuff off! (I just did!) You can even turn off enemy HP display.

As for the issue of what aliens do before you run into them...yeah, I do wish they were a little more active. My biggest complaint with the game is that the enemy placement doesn't feel particularly random. Compared to oXCOM the missions are quite predictable.

Lastly, maybe it's just me but I can't really stand the drama they put into this game. Because it is a lame drama.

The script is mostly just okay, but it's not actively annoying for most of the game. The demo was 10000x worse than the actual game in this regard - most of the game isn't cluttered with cinematics and crap like the tutorial is.

I played the demo so I kinda know how the gameplay feels like but I can't tell how different the things I pointed out feel from actual gamers perspective[how different can they feel?]
So how you actual gamers feel about these?

The game is much better than that dreadful demo. The only worries you have that I think really pan out in the full game are the ones I highlighted...but I haven't played on difficulties above normal yet, so even some of those may improve. (God I want those alien intro videos to go away.)

Rest assured, though, this game can be really damn hard, both on the tactical level and the strategy layer.

[NGTM-1R]

I don't think sectoid commanders have particularly more HP than normal sectoids - maybe one or two, but nothing to compare to a sectopod or muton elite.

They actually do in my experience; three vs. ten. But they're much more clearly different species as well; they look different, fight differently and the game maneuvers them differently. Still, Muton Elites have something like fifteen and Sectopods have thirty, which basically means you have to crit them to oneshot even with the best weapons in the game.

Aliens are unaware of presence and won't shoot at soldiers unless they enter their FoV.

You know if you'd actually read the thread (hell if you had even read my last Let's Play post), you would realize that's not true, because it's been discussed. The aliens do react and move around when you can't see them, though on lower difficulties the game has a hard cap on how many the AI can control at once. But I've seen them move to contact plenty of times. I've also seen them try and move to support other aliens as well; on my Easy game, the last mission before the temple assault, a Sectopod and a couple of Drones that I had deliberately bypassed via savescumming (I knew where they started but I didn't actually see them this time because **** fighting a Sectopod in a tightly enclosed space) nearly crawled up my rear while I was trying to capture an Ethereal. The first time I met Floaters I lost two people specifically because they moved from out of my FoV into my flank.

[Scourge of Ages]

I don't think sectoid commanders have particularly more HP than normal sectoids - maybe one or two, but nothing to compare to a sectopod or muton elite.

They actually do in my experience; three vs. ten. But they're much more clearly different species as well; they look different, fight differently and the game maneuvers them differently. Still, Muton Elites have something like fifteen and Sectopods have thirty, which basically means you have to crit them to oneshot even with the best weapons in the game.

I think their HP goes up with difficulty too. I'm playing on classic, and the Sectoid Commanders have at least 15 HP and are very hard to hit if they're in cover. I hate them quite a bit, with their mind-controlling and reaction-shotting my sniper, grrrrr.

This game could use a couple more patches, I think to bring it up to as good as it should be. The cinematic kills sometimes glitch with my soldier pointing in completely the wrong direction and the bullets coming out of the side of the gun. And there's that one large UFO where the game just can't figure out what level my guys are on, and keeps showing me the roof of the craft instead of the inside. Oh, and sometimes a squad of aliens will appear literally out of thin air, usually right in the middle of my squad. And there was the time a Cyberdisc sort of phased through the roof of a UFO to splash another of my snipers.

So yeah, some glitches need fixing.

[TrashMan]

So how you actual gamers feel about these?

The concensues among the X-com lovers group I know is that it's "not really X-Com" and it's too "stremlines and simplified".
Most people I know are somewhat dissapointed. They expected more.