Man, this game is hard. I understand it’s harder than Xcom2, which at the same time it was also a bit harder than Xcom1?
Enemies always more numerous than you, better equipped than you, the pressure of the objectives, the chosen participating, the advent special effects, the bullshit it already had from before (ok, enemy reinforcements… could at least appear on the border of the map and not on top of me thank you very much?!!)… it all combines in a big punch.
I think I’m going to ‘surrender’ and lower the difficulty.
Just finished another run through, this time playing the WOTC DLC, was a great time. The new content made Xcom 2 feel more complete to me. Really liked the chosen, never knew when they’d pop in and liven up a mission. Plus the factions were a fun addition too, helped flesh out the strategic side a little and given you a bit more to do there. As for the new classes, loved the reaper, not all that crazy about skirmish or templer, I used them both out of curiosity what they brought to the table, but I took neither of them on the final mission.
I lost 3 Templars before I got their shit leveled up. At lower levels they suck. Later they are pretty good. Their best use is against the Chosen that they do extra damage to.
Yeah, I mean I completely leveled mine up, burned a bunch of points on her to max out her abilities, she still left me a bit underwhelmed relative to my other class choices I have available on any given mission.
I mean don’t get me wrong, I had fun playing her, but if I had a do or die mission, say like the last one, I’m not taking a skirmisher or a templer with me (and I didn’t take either).
With only 6 slots I took a reaper, sniper, psi, support, heavy and ranger. I would not even consider trading any of those slots for a skirmisher or templer even if I’d burned a bunches of points and fleshed out their entire skill set (which btw I nearly did anyway as I had 300+ group points to burn before I went on the final mission).
I agree with all of this - such a good game. I didn’t choose to use the skirmisher very much, but when I did his grappling hook came in very handy many times. That mobility can be very helpful.
IMO the Templar needs to be able to use non-damaging abilities instead of moving as part of Momentum. Except for Invert, even when you’re in close enough range to use an ability and still melee attack the damage loss from having less Focus makes it counterproductive. And if you’re far enough away to need the double move then it’s not even a choice because none of the Templar’s support abilities are worth not getting the melee attack.
There’s enough value in the guaranteed damage early and mid game to consider taking the character but most of the time I end up just sitting on max Focus the whole mission. (Volt sucking doesn’t help any)
When I started my WotC campaign, I didn’t “integrate” the older DLCs (Shen’s Gift and Alien Hunters) because I didn’t want to face the Alien Ruler units when I already had the Chosen to contend with. But they were installed, because I forgot to uninstall Alien Hunters before starting the campaign. So my question is, which is the particular mission that triggers the Alien Hunter/Ruler content, so I can just avoid it (at least until I’m well-prepared)? You’d be amazed how difficult it is to Google for that info. I already did the Lost Tower intro mission for Shen’s Last Gift (probably too soon–what a PITA that was).
Also, when I started the current campaign, I think I had it set so new recruits came from both randos and the character pool–after the first couple of missions I changed it to the character pool alone, but now I wonder if that was too late. Is there an .ini file tweak I can do to make it pick from the character pool?
I had that turned on and it’s not that big a deal, they showed up at black-sites, which I’ll admit made those missions a bit harder, but not a lot harder because they had a tendency to come out and play with your team in front of the black-site building itself.
So, you tangle with them, do some damage to them, then they open a portal and run off to lick their wounds, then you subsequently run into them again and likely finish them off (receiving a nice reward for each you defeat).
This is just personal tastes when it comes to how to approach missions, but I don’t tackle black-sites until I have either power armor or plasma weapons. So I’m up for the task of tackling the site and an alien hunter, btw, the sites where they are located say as much when you ghost over the site, so you’ll know going in if they’re there.
I found black sites were often a good place to fight them- no time limit and plenty of opportunities for high ground. Easy to get them alone, too. Well, relatively easy :)
Thanks for the replies, guys. On arstechnica, someone told me that it’s the mission called Locator Beacon with a downed aircraft of some kind, so I’ll avoid that one till I’m good and ready.
It seems like advanced repeaters aren’t procing at all like they used to. Maybe twice total in the game. But with Chosen weapons in the rotation I don’t really care. Chosen weapons seem to be a bit OP, actually.
On one of the early missions, you have to save the civilians after a resistance camp has been blown up. There is a star marker in the building where they are located. My guys are in the building, I have gone to the exact spot of the star marker, but it’s not doing anything. It used to be you just got close and they ran off. Is there something I am supposed to be doing here to save them?
Edit. Nevermind, I just had to find the last enemy and kill it. Guess the star just meant to defend that area.
I think I’m done with XCOM 2 for now. After winning my non-ironman veteran game I just got decimated by taking the first Chosen mission in my ironman commander game. I was doing OK up until that mission. I guess I should have waited until my party as a whole was more advanced and had better weapons and armor. The mission said difficult, but I had handled at least one difficult mission already, so I thought I was OK. I kinda rushed to get to the chosen mission so she wouldn’t cause me trouble - and I guess in the end she did.
If I come back to the game I don’t know if I’d rather try commander difficulty again for stick to veteran. I think I’d stick to ironman if I went veteran.
My experience with those missions is that if you don’t have at least partial beam weapons you’re in serious trouble. The Chosen’s coffin seems to have roughly the same amount of health no matter when you go so if you don’t have the tech you can’t get it done fast enough.
I like the idea of that mission but the execution doesn’t feel right to me - it always feels either too easy or nearly impossible. It’s also another place where doing the right thing at the wrong point in the turn can screw you far more than it should because of the way they do scripted events and timing.
I just played today’s daily challenge. The player’s squad consists of some archons, chrysallids, a sectoid, and one other thing. It was interesting to use the enemy as my units.
Just happened. Data tap mission. My whole squad deploys right outside of the building with the tap. In sight of a sectopod. All of them on the exact same square.
