How is everyone liking this expansion? The MEC troopers are cool. It's a little disturbing how they perform the transformation. I'll be honest I got a little queezy thinking about it. But then I was back to blowing things up so I got over it.
I'm liking it, too. A proper expansion from one of the few studios that understand what needs to be in an expansion....
Now if we could just get another expansion for LH!
Poor Stardock, their expansion releases have been fast and furious considering the amount of work and content that has been added. Yet we still chew threw it like a hot chainsaw through butter. I agree though more Elemental plz.
LH is itself an expansion even though it's more like a brand new game compared to fallen enchantress itself supposedly an expansion to war of magic.
Enjoying it so far.
Definitely liking the 'disturbing factor' of the transformation process.
In vanilla EU, the game repeatedly spouts its nonsense dialog about corruption and whatnot, whining about the 'dark paths' our studies into alien tech may take us down. By and large, this was baseless nonsense and annoyed me. We were gaining tech, big deal.
Now though, there's a practical example for that dialog. First, we have soldiers literally being torn apart, becoming more machine than man and second, we have genetic manipulation altering our soldiers to the point where one would hesitate to even define them as human anymore.
These two things are much better support for the already present theme of "we may win the war, but lose our humanity." This consistency of theme has much improved my experience.
It's still preachy, though. Transhumanism-friendly people like me don't necessarily agree with that message.
You want genuine shady stuff? We're shooting down UFOs that crash-land in populated areas, probably killing hundreds or thousands.
That said, the expansion is absolutely wonderful, in part because the new maps and the addition of time-critical secondary objectives has changed the dynamics on the tactical map (for the better).
Yeah, I am enjoying the new maps. And I've totally stopped customizing people or naming them after friends or family. This apparently marks them for death. I'm pretty sure it's hard coded.
Which is what happens in any war. Long term you save more lives. But tech that lets Xcom modify their soldiers so extensively will take humanity to Deus Ex world. Or worse...
On my Steam WInter sale list.
Agreed - Winter Sale list.
backs out of the room slowly...
I bought it on release day. It is awesome and classic is rough. Pre-Enemy within most of my games got pretty far on classic. I'm now celebrating the first game where mutons are turning up in the rotation. The exhalt missions are pretty rough at the level of gear you generally have when the french convoy appears. I'm starting to value beam weapons more. Just the first upgrade for pistols and rifles. With the seekers appearing as early as they do (same time floaters appear) the extra damage is required. It's more important than ever to move crazy slow through maps.
Well, its definitely a lot harder than the original, which is good (classic was too easy originally). Some of the missions can get pretty rough. Not to spoil anything, but there is a mission in Newfoundland that involves a whale that gets...rough. I drew that one on classic when I didn't have all laser weapons. It did not go well.
I'm not having too much of a problem with EXALT missions since they don't do much damage.
Oddly enough, I'm finding Enemy Within easier. By a fairly large margin.
I'm loving the new maps--It's great to have a UFO crash somewhere OTHER than the middle of a rather bland forest.
did they patch the vanilla with fixes now that the expansion is out?? i read the 4 gig update is mostly if not all just vids...
So, yeah my last game I lost 4 Colonels in 1 round of a terror mission!!!
This mission was 1 day before I finished Titan armor too. Basically it went down like this. I cleared out the chrysalid near the front. But I was basically pinned down while I watched the AI pop 10 civilians. I tossed a battle scanner because I knew that in the fog would be an ugly site. 7 chrysalid's and zombies were waiting for me. Still pinned down next turn I finish off the zombies near me and made a fatal mistake. I shot 1 chrysalid with my sniper. Then my worst XCOM nightmare because most of my units had finished their turns. All 7 Chrysalid's charge near my guys. They finish their turn basically within lethal range. I fire a rocket to wound all of them. I'm able to take out a few but next turn I loose 2 heavies, my support with 43 kills, and my assault. The heavy from the Slingshot expansion and my sniper is able to finish the mission.
Major Dumbass (Sniper, I know I'm controlling him but every game has a story), is promoted to Colonel (how). But is later court martialed for the crime of endangering his fellow squad members through an act of extreme stupidity and sentence to death. My engineers take his body and turn him into a MEC where he now just wrecks dudes.
Loving Enemy Within. I'm on the game's last mission again on the temple ship. It's a shame they didn't tweak the ending a little to accommodate the new content from EW. Honestly, with all the content in EW, it really feels the way this iteration of XCOM should have felt from launch. Great expansion though, but I still can't shake the feeling half of this was done before the game even launched and they cut it up into a expansion to milk the game (and our wallets) for some more cash. Is it worth it? Overall yes, yes it is. It makes the new XCOM way more complete and much more awesome.
I'm basically at the end of Classic Ironman. I lost everything I had on the base defense mission, except for the DLC hero who survived with 2 HP and had to solo the last Elite Muton, 2 Sectoid Commanders, an Ethereal, and a Cyberdisk! I couldn't find the last sectoid commander at the end I had 5 hp. I jumped down some steps and the punk was ready in overwatch. That shaved off 3 hp. I blasted that sucker in the face and yelled THAT'S XCOM BABY!!!
Welp, I saw the game in the store and picked it up. Curse my impulsive gamer brain.
I got my squads wipes on impossible ironman in 3 games so I'm going through normal just to say fuck you game I'll try it again later for impossible and ironman. I hated the council mission "Site Recon", it just ended so badly. I didn't come prepared only because it got triggered so damn early.
Oh if your curious about some mods for xcom- http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/top//?
I'm waiting for Long War to get back up and running. Can't wait. And yes I am enjoy the new expansion. (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THATS HOLY COOP AND MOD SUPPORT IN NEXT EXPANSION DAMN IT!)
with meld, there's finally a reason not to just spend 1 hour on each mission by advancing slowly
they didn't fix anything else though
the balance is still horrible. satellites pay for themselves way too soon. research requires 0 adaptation
it seems like no matter what you do, there's just a simple recipe to playing optimally that you follow every game
the game just needs a more realistic choice between buffing troops and the rest of your expenditures instead of 'do both' all the time
it was so close to a decent game... but the expansion didn't seem to fix any of the core problems
I think the expansion is pretty perfect 9/10.It adds so much new content/flavor/aesthetics/missions/etc. MECHS! OMG, I love the Mecs.I loved they added the ability to change the languages of your squad mates, I just wish they had some none Western voices, like Asiatic or maybe languages from Africa or Indian.
After playing maybe 50-60 hours into a Classic Ironman game, I think I've had enough. There were many false starts and crushing defeats, but slowly I got the hang of things. They slowed down research times considerably more or less forcing you to invest in a lab or two. The DLC missions of Slingshot and Progeny no longer come back up if you skip or fail them. This is something many people have been clamoring for on the 2K forums. But........
It's a buggy mess (on PS3 atleast). I ass-umed it would be less buggy than EU, but I was very wrong.
I won't go into it, but with EU I never ever, ever, ever had to scrap an Ironman game because it froze. I could just reboot and continue from where I left off. Not true on EW. I've had two soul crushing game breaking bugs appear that forced me to start over.
Just today I was at the end of the Temple Ship run and the Uber-Ethereal started his cutscene. When it was over all was dark except I could see still see lifebars of the newly appeared Ethereals and Muton Elites. I saved and rebooted, but it was to no avail. The save file was corrupted.
My advice: don't even attempt an Ironman game until the game gets patched.
Anyone else finding it a lot easier than EU?
Battleships with lots of Sectopods are tough. There was like three of them in the fusion core room when I played. Sectopods now divide their incoming damage by 2.
That being said, MECs are kickass against regular enemies. Less than twelve HP? Say hello to my kinetic fist o' doom.
Genetically modified soldiers are even more awesome. Neural Damping makes psionic enemies really useless. I went into the alien base mission and captured the Sectoid Commander without getting anybody mind-controlled. Secondary Heart? Yes I'd like to not lose 20 Will when a soldier gets critically wounded.
The training roulette creates some interesting (some might say overpowered) combinations.
I have an Assault soldier that can fire three times in one round.
The only thing the aliens have going for them is that they field a lot more mechanised units e.g. Mechtoids. However I actually found EXALT operatives to be more of a challenge, though I still wiped those guys off the map.
Depends. Are you (ab)using Mimetic Skin? If yes, then it is much, much easier. That is why for my 2nd C/I playthrough I am going to run 2 MECs, 3 SHIVs and only one Mimetic skin support with both Medkits and Arc Throwers
X-Com: EU also had similar problem, (ab)using two squad-sight snipers made the game very easy. That is why for any future playthroughs I didn't use snipers or only used one snapshot sniper.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
