Just completed the game (normal, ironman) for the first time and I certainly enjoyed it, though I don’t know how soon I’ll be willing to replay. Probably some spoilers below, if anyone cares on the 143rd page of the thread.
My first game failed fairly quickly due to going into the first big story mission unprepared and having no resources to recover. Restarted, focused a bit more on resource build-up with satellites and weapon/armor upgrades, and breezed through until I got to the bit where you need a psionic soldier. At that point I got stuck because nothing told me that I not only needed psionic abilities, but also to equip the psi armor on that same guy. Maybe I just missed it, but that was seriously annoying and if I hadn’t had the Interwebz to tell me what was wrong, I might have given up. Then I got my ass handed to me in the final mission, but armed with foreknowledge of what was coming was able to finish it the second time through.
Early on, I really enjoyed the mechanics. The combat maps are interesting to explore, and I like the environment interaction with trees being destroyed by grenades, cars blowing up, etc. Moving your squad around and setting up actions is pretty easy, although there are some places where the camera hates me and it’s nigh impossible to see the area properly (mostly alien ship maps). Multi-level areas are also a problem. Ground floor and roof were easy via the scroll wheel, but getting it to stop at a middle floor was a real headache. And I ran into several places where the free aim didn’t work right; I’d try to throw a smoke grenade or shoot a rocket, the UI would say it was a legal target, but clicking did nothing. On the whole, though, the combat worked pretty well. Mostly it’s not too hard (on normal at least), as long as you’re patient and don’t send your squad running headlong into unknown areas.
The initial phases of resource management outside of combat have a pretty steep learning curve; my first game I didn’t know how important satellites were and ended up starved for resources. Even once I had most of the world covered and was bringing in lots of alien parts, I couldn’t move too fast due to credit limitations. Spent a lot of time waiting for the paycheck at the end of the month, up until the very end of the game when I had to wait on building the last couple of facilities. I managed to finish all the research and foundry projects while waiting on the building, though I never used several of the things I unlocked, like SHIVs or the archangel armor.
Later on in the game, I was getting pretty tired of the same combat missions over and over. Rescue some dude, loot the downed alien ship, save the civilians, rinse and repeat. I probably did a month or so longer of game-time than necessary because of the aforementioned psi armor issue, but even taking that into account, it felt like the game went on forever. Steam says 30 hours played; probably 25 of those were a lot of fun, and 5 were a grind.
I really didn’t like the final mission design, either. Every mission you get up until then gives you freedom of movement. There are some restrictions, obviously, but almost every area has a couple of different approach options, and you can use those to your advantage to set up crossfire, decoy enemies into moving into your sniper coverage, etc. But in the last mission, you have to go in a straight line. There’s a few areas that invisibly narrow to a single map square that your entire squad must pass through, funneling you into a small area that might as well be a shooting gallery. The very last area is the worst offender. Cover is pretty sparse, too, so basically your only option is to run in guns blazing and hope for the best. I don’t mind a final mission being challenging, but I don’t like that it’s so much different than the rest of the game. All those tactics I learned through the game were useless for a large portion of the last mission, and that made it feel cheap, almost like a last minute addition that they couldn’t bother to flesh out properly.
Bottom line, it’s a fun game and I’m glad to have played it. It has it’s faults but the vast majority of the game was enjoyable. But the parts that I didn’t like were bad enough that I have no desire to play it again, at least not anytime soon.
