Is XCOM 2 any good?

Is XCOM 2 any good?

no and my 5 agrees

It's better than EU if you can forgive an Overworld map with less staying power than a more traditional Xcom. Everything else improves on the reboot

Yes but is not worth its price.

I don't know, I still haven't played it because it somehow runs like shit on my computer, despite barely looking any better than EU.

It's great. Play on iron man, even on your first play through. Trust me.
Try to get it on sale though.

This man is smart.

It also has great mod support

Mods you say?

It feels like it's over so much quicker than the first game.

It's also incredibly poorly optimized. Takes up like, 40 gigs and the game runs like ass. Apparently there was a performance patch awhile back, but if this is how it runs after that I'd have hated to play it before.

Lol before the patch I got 30fps on medium settings 1080p with a 290x and 3570k

Only if you hate any of the good tbs games released in the past 15+ years.

Definitely better than the first, but that alien hunters dlc drags it down.

Can i give all my units a black suit and make them go full men in black?

think theres a mod that adds all civilian outfits should be some weird aesthetic suits in there

There a million and one mods available.

Yes.

Better than the first, and arguably even better than the original in some degrees. Mods also make the game a lot better.

Whoever made that cover art should get a million bucks

That shit is GDLK

It's terribly optimized but it's a solid game otherwise.

>even better than the original in some degrees
Graphics maybe. The game ignores any progressions tbs games have made since the 90s and decides to use its own system which just doesn't work well. The two point system limits what actions you can do, you can't aim at anything but enemies or preplaced setpieces, not having an inventory also limits certain things like being able to toss items to other soldiers and in general limiting you to the game's loadout system, among other things. I also really dislike how forcefully cinematic the storymode is but some people might like it.

Overall it fails at being a good tbs game unless you ignore every game in the genre that's come out in the past 30 years.

>season pass has mostly negative reviews

Holy shit, was the DLC that bad? I was sort of thinking about getting the season pass. Wasn't there also a rumor of an EWesque expansion in the future?

The costume packs were alright, but should have either been free or just bundled with the meatier themed packs; Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift. Those two are pretty solid and add a lot of new content, the former adding powerful new alien "rulers" who can fuck up your shit if you're not careful, while the latter sees the successors of the MEC unit in Sparks.

its shit, just play the original

Just play Apocalypse*

If they wanted to break formula they should have made a game where you are the ayys. I loved the advent but something just seemed so off about a base on the move.

Also less base slots and no air game was pretty gay. It improved in a lot of ways but overall I didn't enjoy it as much as the first one which was a shame. The season pass was a fucking yoke

>Mandatory timers

Aren't really that bad.

I've played through on Legend more than once
Timers have only ever given me trouble in one or two missions
They just encourage you to reposition units constantly throughout the battle, moving them closer to the objective
Even then, there's multiple mods that change the timer, some double it, some balance it, some even outright remove the timers
It's not an issue

>still no snake tits mod

Not worth it.

Nah, it does it's job just just fine. It's a great streamlined system that's easy to use and gives the player a great overview.

I really, really don't want to back to TUs.

>streamlined
There's good streamlining and there's bad streamlining. This is bad streamlining. It takes away a lot from the game. All you can do is attack or move anymore. You can't prime explosives separately from throwing them, you can't throw anything actually, you can't pick up friendly equipment if one of your soldiers dies, you have to use the game's shitty loadout system (which I hate loadouts in general), if you move one tile or more than one it takes the same amount of action points which is stupid, and I'm sure there's other things I'm forgetting. I was open minded with the two unit system at the beginning but it's just way too limiting.

I also hate the fucking classes for the same reason I hate loadouts. Why can't I just equip my guys and determine their use by that? Why do I need the game forcing soldiers into certain roles for the rest of the game?

It's just bad and is like 10 steps backwards from where the genre was going in the early 00s and even in comparison to games in its own series from the 90s.

Pretty sure you can retrieve some gear from fallen soldiers. Even then, you just pick up the body and carry it away, it's part of the fucking immersion.

>In a mall, lined up perfectly in a corridor
>Civilian walks up to me
>SQUAD BROKEN

I don't think it's bad, it's just different. Original XCOM was going for an actual simulation whereas nu-XCOM is going for a boardgame style. I can see why they would go with the boardgame system, but as a rule I prefer the original's simulation style of gameplay more.

Yeah it sure is immersive to not be able to use a friendly's grenade if they die or are knocked unconscious. Actually fuck that unconciousness mechanic in 2 too. If immersion is all you care for how immersive is it to have someone out the entire mission if they're knocked unconscious unless you have a certain level of some class with you?

Not sure what you mean.

You can handwave anything away by just saying it's different. It's different in that it objectively has less things that you can do. Uncharted is just different from Doom (or any other shooter that doesn't funnel you down corridors) too but I don't see anyone using that excuse in threads around here and it would be stupid if they did.

That's XCOM, baby. What do you want? To be able to just do whatever in any situation? Might as well have the option to choose an evac point and say "Fuck you, Central. Put it right on top of my squad here." or grab an dead MEC arm and make it shoot an enemy.

>What do you want?
A turn based strategy game that doesn't ignore the ones that preceded it to try and shoehorn in their own shitty system that is worse.

It made some huge improvements but has some shortcomings.

If you enjoyed XCOM EU/EW, you'll enjoy it, just don't go in expecting EU/EW.

It's meant to be different, and it's not shitty. You don't like it, fine, but don't go around acting like it's objectively bad.

If a civvie walked up to your squaddie, they would get up from their firing position and let them through, or in the case of tight corridor, make your whole squad breaking out in dance trying to pathfind away from civ and get back to original position.
I guess that wasn't an issue for most people though since dead people can't walk and everyone who isn't a friendly, is an enemy.

I'm not handwaving anything; they weren't trying to create a simulation system like the original game. Yeah it has it's problems and allows less actions than the original game, but generally the system works pretty well and most abilities and stuff tie together.

I'm not saying it's better by any stretch - I also prefer the original game's system for the very reasons you stated. I just don't hold it against the game because it was enjoyable anyway. They improved on EU a fair amount (like skeleton suits not taking up a movement turn with the hook which actually made them useful)

I would prefer a new XCOM TBS game that actually works like a simulation like the original game - with actual modelled cover (So accurate shots could still go through the gaps steel girders and hit like in TFTD or whatever)

Timers were an improvement.

it's pretty fun, but i feel like it has the same issue as the first reboot title and that is the difficulty balancing

i think the early game is really good -- it feels challenging and puts you under a lot of pressure. but once you make it past the first few weeks and start building up your team, the game becomes an absolute joke and you basically have to fuck up real bad to not flawlessly finish missions. after that point the game just becomes quite boring

this is me playing Commander difficulty (the second hardest level, I think that's what it's called)

Being different also doesn't mean that it's good but I think you would have a hard time explaining how being so stripped down compared to earlier games in the same genre is a good thing. It's no different from the dumbing down that has affected other genres but for some reason people don't care when it comes to X-COM/XCOM.

Never had that happen. What usually happened for me was that your soldiers just can't pass civilians so if you meet in a tight corridor you just won't be able to go forward until the civvie movies out the way. Which can be annoying I guess. Most levels have wide enough areas to make this not an issue though.

I just can't enjoy it. From the (I guess imo) worse combat to the overly cinematic story I just can't find much redeeming value about the game. Even the customization was a good idea but there's so many issues with it from really low character limits to really very little customization at all apart from picking from a handful of faces and then changing colors.

I enjoyed it OP, having played XCOMEU a good bit before.

Flaws:
>Poor Performance (Runs like shit)
>Some random difficulty spikes due to the new randomly generated maps which can end a playthrough.
>The story is more "in your face" than the first one and features a few unskippable cutscenes (thankfully none of them are more than 10 seconds but still).
>Grenadier is OP
>No air game (Personally I didn't enjoy it much in the XCOMEU either)

Pros:
>Random maps makes the variety much greater than XCOMEU, overall a great addition.
>Classes are somewhat more interesting than the first game
>Choosing which mission to take now has more meaningful consequences and you have more missions to choose from
>Enemies are way more intimidating than before with psychic abilities from the second mission forwards.
>No more overwatch spam because the addition of a timer to the missions makes them way more intense and fun to complete than the slog XCOMEU could turn into.

Overall I would recommend it. Stay away from the alien hunters DLC because I hear it sucks.

Agreed. Enemies don't have a way to deal with most late game abilities, so they're totally helpless.

It may not be good for you, but don't go about acting like it wasn't good for others.

Performance issues suck but its all around better than xcom enemy unknown/within.

But just play long war.

>Console in a train car mission
>One pod near the start, rest at the console
>Mutons, archons and muton queen
Saves were scummed that day.
And fuck the beach ball of sparks.

That's fair enough - I do think the customisation has some big flaws but I've had a ton of fun with it (mostly with voicepacks I made) There doesn't seem to be support for new face models which really does fuck up the longetivity of it IMO, but it was still miles better than EU. You can of course argue that part of XCOM's spirit was having faceless soldiers and getting attached to them anyway through their actions, but I still had that with this one a bit. I had a Polish grenadier alongside all of my custom soldiers and shit that was just the game's RNG making a guy and he become one of my star team members.

I DO fucking hate the pod system though, it feels better than EUs in this one but I stopped playing EU once I realised how it works. I understand the emphasis was on creating set piece battles rather than the slow-burn of the original but fuck setting foot off of the skyranger in the middle of the night made the game incredibly tense. You just don't get that with pods.

Curious btw, did you like Xenonauts? I felt it had some neat ideas but other parts dragged it down (constant massive air battles for one thing)

more mechanics =/= better mechanics. You are bringing up some retarded reasons.

also let's appreciate that with this, Phoenix point, Xenonauts 2 and OpenXcom it's been pretty fucking great to be a XCOM fan. A few years back all we had were the UFO series and nothing else new but broken dreams (I feel sorry for the UFO: Alien Invasion guys though, it's not a bad game but just so horribly dated already)

The original XCOM wasn't really about mechanics though, it simulated a battlefield environment and gameplay tactics and stuff cropped up from there. The new XCOM is more deliberate in it's mechanical/gameplay nature which is mostly why he's arguing that it sucks. I don't agree but I see 100% where he's coming from and watching superhuman playthroughs of the original game made me appreciate it's strengths in relation to nu-XCOM's boardgame style combat.

Did they add controller support yet? I figure with them being released on Xbone and PS4 its inevitable theyll start supporting controllers.

Again, you can say this about anything to brush off criticism. For instance

>Thief 4 might not be good for you but don't go about acting like it wasn't good for others

Saying "but some people might like it" isn't an argument against a developer stripping a game of features and ignoring so many things that the previous games in the series or genre did well. I don't care if some people can still like it, it isn't good game design to completely throw out features rather than building on them, especially if you're making a sequel/reboot of an established franchise. I mentioned Thief 4 above and I don't see any difference between the two in the way they went about the reboots. XCOM might have been more competent but both of them misunderstand what made the originals good and decided to do their own thing rather than just making a new IP because for some reason even lesser known IPs I guess might still get brand recognition?

Xenonauts is fine but it's not really that different from the original. If it feels like I want a clone of the original games through my posts, I don't, and Xenonauts was a letdown just because it was too close to the original game that you might as well just play the original. It also had some awful art design. Hopefully Xenonauts 2 has some cool stuff. Also looking forward to Phoenix Point.

I agree, it isn't automatically better but in this case I feel it is. I can't find anything in the reboots that I feel is better than even the original game. Everything is just stripping out mechanics which stems from using the two point system instead of time units and making things just simpler in general like not being able to freely aim. I just don't find it enjoyable and it feels way too limited because of these missing mechanics.

I don't really like the new mission system. In the first one you could let a couple pass by because you didn't need the rewards or wanted to focus on base buildling or researching. This game every single mission is vitally important with a red flashing screen and alarms blaring. There's no point in time where you can take a break from the combat part of the game.

Everything in Anarchy's Children is ugly edgy kid shit. Alien Hunters adds obnoxiously overpowered enemies, along with weapons/armors that while functionally good, don't fit into the game at all, and again are ugly as fuck.

Shen's Gift was good. Has a hint of feels, good mission, good addition.

Expansion when

>It also had some awful art design.

Yeah - I did like the human design of stuff if only because it actually showed them applying the crazy tech and shit throughout the base and the plot essentially says "now the aliens are dead we've hit the singularity...if we don't nuke each other first" which was neat.

The aliens though, jesus they were plain fucking awful. The art designer knew how to do human stuff but when it came to the aliens he couldn't do shit. At best the Reapers were just Genestealer rip offs. I appreciate them not wanting to lift the ideas off of the original whole-cloth but shit, maybe they should of because the aliens were woefully lacking. None of them were creepy or weird or intimidating.

Maybe they'll make the transition to 3D a bit better, who knows.

Because half of your criticisms are things that weren't even a thing in other games. Even then, they wouldn't fit with the kind of game the new XCOMs are. If you could just snatch up grenades off of allies and foes alike, players could just spam the hell out of explosives instead of having the strategic limit that is imposed to ensure you aren't abusing such things.

>weren't even a thing in other games.
Retard.

>Because half of your criticisms are things that weren't even a thing in other games
Like? Everything I mentioned you could do in either 1 or Apocalypse. If you had enough ammo and a friendly ran out you could toss some to them, same with grenades.

>Even then, they wouldn't fit with the kind of game the new XCOMs are
Which is part of the problem. It's the same issue with a lot of other games made recently, that the devs license the IP and make a completely different game.

>If you could just snatch up grenades off of allies and foes alike, players could just spam the hell out of explosives instead of having the strategic limit that is imposed to ensure you aren't abusing such things.
The solution isn't to say "welp, you can only carry one grenade and also we're just going to entirely remove the inventory system". The original games (or at least Apocalypse) gave you weight penalties if you tried carrying too much stuff rather than removing entire mechanics. It's not like you could just fill your inventory with grenades and other explosives. And in Apocalypse you needed to research enemy weapons to be able to use them.

I think it's interesting there was such a varied response to this game. Some people seem to like it a good bit (while acknowledging it has flaws), and others hate it.

Could just be Sup Forums being Sup Forums though.

It's pretty much the same game as the first except with some neaw features, better graphics, and better animations.

Some people can't handle the time limits that many of the missions in XCOM2 impose on you, but other than that it's literally just an upgrade to the first XCOM. And there are mods to remove all time limite anyway.

Yea, just fling a name instead of making a counterpoint, child. Good on ya.

They didn't remove anything because they went with a different gameplay style entirely. You want the old gameplay, play the older games. The new ones aren't meant to be 1:1 recreations of the original. If series didn't try something new every once in a while, shit would get stale fast.

The DLC in general is disappointing.

Shen's Legacy was alright, but Alien Hunters was annoying and the new suits are ugly as fuck, and Anarchy's Children was just all-round garbage.

I said in another post that I don't want a clone (and hence didn't really like Xenonauts very much) but I also don't want 3/4 of the game mechanics stripped out. I want games in the genre to improve on what previous games did and actually move forward.

I'll refer back to my Thief 4 example. I guess they didn't do anything bad there either since they obviously weren't trying to, you know, improve on the previous games or anything like that. Why would anyone expect that in a game in the same series?

Then what's the point in keeping this up? You don't like what they did, that's fine. But plenty of others do, and find plenty of options with what is given. It's fine to want more/something different, but it hardly seems fair to just keep calling what has been given terrible as though it'll transmogrify into what you seek.

Long War 2 when?

I'm replying to people who replied to me. And plus OP asked if the game was good and I'm giving my opinion on the game.

It's garbage like the first.

Luck of the draw early game that fucks you over randomly, ridiculously easy middle and late game because lol xcom.

Terrible game design through and through that is only "hard" in the beginning at highest difficulty because the tactical options that actually allow you to play the game are locked for longer.

>Luck of the draw early game that fucks you over randomly, ridiculously easy middle and late game because lol xcom.

Nice bullshit.

Here comes the EU apologists.

>tfw Gatecrasher

Did they ever fix all of the performance issues it had when it came out?

How, exactly, does it "randomly" fuck you over?

Are you one of those idiots who start complaining every time they miss a shot?

Here's come the shitposters who say shit about something but don't explain their shit because they can't actually provide shit.

>That's XCOM, baby
Anybody else fucking hate that nu-XCOM fans have redefined what x-com is about with this stupid fucking line.

The original game wasn't missing 5 point blank shots in a row because '85% means 85% you stupid casual.' Other user is right, turning x-com into a boardgame was a stupid idea. It limits the hell out of your possibilities and makes me feel restrained by arbitrary rules rather than the actual conditions of each battle. XCOM is sold as a fairly hardcore game but it's a streamlined bastardization of what came before.

I had some fun with the first one but I still go back to UFO constantly while that one hasn't gotten a single playthrough. In fact I never even got the end of EU because a bunch of alien mobs glitched out and teleported into the middle of my squad towards the end of the game.

You could use this logic to justify the holocaust. Just saying, somewhere, somebody was probably having fun.

Not him, early game EU on higher difficulties is easily made or broken by particularly lucky or unlucky dice-rolls. Hunkering down, guaranteeing kills with grenades and overwatch spamming can make it pretty consistent but when you don't have many abilities at your disposal you're going to be at the mercy of shot-connection dicerolls to some degree no matter what.

Yea, go fuck yourself kid. If you can't fucking stand differing opinions, then get the fuck out you crybaby.

No, I came here to suck a dick and I'm not leaving until I do. Now are you going to fuck my ass or do I have to force you to, you fucking pansy?

I'm the guy that's been saying I don't like the new games all thread.

I don't really have an issue with the RNG as X-COM has always had similar things. It's better in the original and Apocalypse because you have actual projectiles and your character's accuracy just affects the cone of fire but I do get sick of people complaining about missing shots because yeah, 85% is not 100%. You also need some amount of RNG in any game where you don't directly control a character otherwise it's just as bad with every shot hitting.

And in Apocalypse you can basically just run up to aliens and fill them with lead. I don't think this really makes it any easier but it's still kind of silly to be able to do that I think.

Overall I agree with you though.

Yeah it's pretty good despite it being every bit the technical shitpile EU/EW was.

Shen's Gift was god, everything else was pure garbage.

My GOTY so far

...

When people complain about EU/EW, are you talking about vanilla?

Vanilla was shit. The actual game is Long War and the devs admit this.

I thought there was something about inability to execute alien rulers in the patch notes? Finally decided to start another playthrough with Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift and my ranger killed Archon boss dead with 66 hp left.

I think Long War might just be the antithesis of fun game design. What asshole thought gimping the player even more was a good idea?

I had to look at an article about that pig in school 7 years ago.

>Everything in Anarchy's Children is ugly edgy kid shit.
Ironically Anarchy's Children power armor is a lot less comic than the vanilla one.

People who barely played the originals and think "It needs to be so hard that every action is always wrong, even when you were meticulous with the details. Now where is my bondage mask and gagball?"

What are you talking about? How does Long War gimp the player? Fatigue isn't a gimp, it just forces you to raise an army instead of a single A team with occasional substitutes.

Long war gives you a fuckton more options. You get more soldiers and way more abilities. You get punished less for losing soldiers. You have twice as many classes and they're all useful. MECs are gods. You get more strategical options for economy and tech.

The aliens get buffed a bit, and bosses can be interesting, but you are given all the tools you need to beat them. If you think it's too hard you are either playing on too high difficulty or just suck.

Your right, its not harder, its just more bullshit. The real issue is the base game. You can mod the game all you want, make the aliens have bullshit amounts of health; but if combat as a whole isn't fun, you're terminally fucked.
The most glaring problem is the "pod" system, where the player is disincentivized from making tactical moves. What were they even thinking?

Just doing my second playthrough of Enemy Within. Assaulted the alien base and 2 deaths so far. A lot better than my first playthrough.

>The most glaring problem is the "pod" system, where the player is disincentivized from making tactical moves.
I agreed, when I first started playing. It seems like bullshit to accidentally proc another pod when you're moving.

Thankfully long war fixes that in the best possible way; you get many tactical options to prevent it. The scout is a dedicated class now. You have battlescanners, motion trackers, gene mods to detect enemies, concealed movement. You can and should know where all the pods are, and even what's in them, before you proc them.

If you know how to play the game you know how to not make tactical blunders.

Post snek.

Have there been any noteworthy TBS games recently which isn't the new XCOM?

I tried to get into Silent Storm and Xenonauts but Silent Storm had such weird progression and The style put me off especially the audio. Xenonauts felt really dry I can't really put my finger on why it didn't pull me in.

Is XCOM EW with Long War still better than XCOM2 with the new Long War mods?

i dunno did multiple playthroughs of EU and EW on c/i

did 1 playthrough of cuckcum 2 and havent gone back.

Latest patch added a weird C++ pure virtual function crash, and somehow Firaxis are unable to fix it.

Good last DLC lads thanks

Is there a mod that fixes the spawning groups of enemies programmed to always find your stealthed squad members? Please let there be PLEASE