I’m still playing, I have 4-5 laser weapons, I got a pair of captured aliens (though I still have to do the alien interrogation research), and I have a bunch of things to research right now.
The game is slightly repetitive, or grindy if you may say it that way, I think it’s because here you play more battles with the same weapons/aliens (because not enough time has advanced) than in the original game, though maybe I’m misremembering the originals.
I’m disappointed with the destruction, the alien ships themselves are not destructible, I shot a pair of rockets to one and nothing happened. A pity, one of the good points of making a 2d game is an easy destruction system, but here they have used unique big sprites to the ufos, instead of an “alien hull tileset”.
I’m at 20 hours played now. I did 30 crashed aliens, 3-4 terror sites and 4 alien bases. I’m in the middle of building the plasma arsenal for my team, though I had my first big setback: I lost a secondary base in NA. I still have to unlock the flying armor, the psychic abilities, the more advanced jets, the alien battleships still have to appear, etc.
The problem is that I’m already kind of done with the game, but my gross estimation is that it has been designed for games to have a length of around 35 hours, no 20h. There are just too many ufos in a month.
(As a superfan of both the original X-COM and Firaxis’ XCOM)
Xenonauts wants to be X-COM and falls short. If you want that style of game, play the original.
XCOM wants to evoke the spirit of X-COM while being its own game. It’s a fantastic reboot that doesn’t replace the original. I don’t recommend The Long War, though.
I never finished a game of Xenonauts but did enjoy the hours I spent with it. It’s the best of the various X-Com clones (XCOM is different) but still has some magic missing. I’m hopeful for the sequel.
I guess I should say that I’ve played both of the new XCOMs and their expansions and liked them quite a bit. I only mentioned The Long War since it would shake things up a bit and give it some variety.
For some reason back when the original X-COM was released, I bounced off of it. I don’t think I really gave it a fair shake. A part of me regrets not fully playing it. But, I don’t have a tolerance anymore for old games with difficult to read graphics or cludgy UI. I just fired it up and I don’t think I could look at the original X-COM anymore.
If Xenonauts is merely a decent game that captures the feeling of the original X-COM, I guess I’d just as soon pass, but if it is a really good game in its own right and worth spending the time on then I could do that.
It’s funny to me because it almost never happens, but I found myself disagree with each of your opinions save one, lol.
I love the original X-COM, like you. But the new XCOM I didn’t like much at all but it’s better with the Long War mod. And I preferred Xenonauts to anything the new Firaxis guys did.
That’s mildly disappointing, although I need to see how the systems work before I can further comment. It’s one of the worst parts of the new franchise. “Here’s a base and you can build whatever you want anywhere, except for the part that how you place facilities in terms of adjacency is SUPER IMPORTANT and you don’t fully grok that unless you’ve played the game before” is not good design.
