XCOM Enemy Within: First Impressions

[Megalodon]

If it was actually a choice, then fine. But I've lost more than 25% of the meld canisters without even seeing them. This coupled with being unable to collect if you dash to them, really pisses me off. I've repeatedly got into sustained firefights with multiple enemy mobs (2nd one walks into the combat zone before first is dead), only to see both meld canisters are lost, when they hadn't yet appeared on the map (first time attempting Classic btw). Or revealing one with 1 or 2 turns left, and realising it is physically impossible to collect. Then the game tells me I did a poor job of collecting the meld. Then I rage.

I don't want to come off a harsh but this is not a problem with the game, it is most likely a problem with your skill level. So far on classic difficulty I've only lost like 10% of available meld and most of the time I can get to the first meld within a few turns and end the entire scenario before the second one expires. Considering that the average turn length on the "distant" meld is something like 10 turns and 4-5 for the closest one you shouldn't have any problems unless you play very conservatively or fail to decisively end your combat encounters (which probably also puts you out there with a high casualty ratio). Just keep playing, getting the meld will become easier once you learn where the suitable aggression threshold is and you get more comfortable with extending your lines.

So a five turn countdown that starts before I know which direction I'm going in (and sod's law, my second turn is normally spent backtracking as the "it's over there" signal often tells me I picked the wrong direction), with potentially several enemy mobs in the way, which I can't dash to, is a problem with my skill level? Sorry, but while I'm not fantastic at the game, I'm also not going to suicide my men by bad cover/running overwatch because a canister might be hidden in the fog of war. If the timers are running from the start of the mission, then at least tell me which bloody way to go. Or have a shorter timer,that onlt atarts once contact is made with the canister. I genuinely don't see how the game expects me to get some of these canisters (like the one in the bakc of a UFO, that was irritating).

 

[BloatedGuppy]

So a five turn countdown that starts before I know which direction I'm going in (and sod's law, my second turn is normally spent backtracking as the "it's over there" signal often tells me I picked the wrong direction), with potentially several enemy mobs in the way, which I can't dash to, is a problem with my skill level? Sorry, but while I'm not fantastic at the game, I'm also not going to suicide my men by bad cover/running overwatch because a canister might be hidden in the fog of war. If the timers are running from the start of the mission, then at least tell me which bloody way to go. Or have a shorter timer,that onlt atarts once contact is made with the canister. I genuinely don't see how the game expects me to get some of these canisters (like the one in the bakc of a UFO, that was irritating).

The game gives you that little...yellow liney...thingy...that points you towards cannisters when you get close. In all reality I still play pretty conservative, and I've run into maybe...10% of cannisters where I was like "Oh I was never gonna get that anyway".

 

[Ihateregistering1]

I just downloaded it a few days ago and have already had to restart.

I played through Classic on EU and, while it certainly wasn't easy, it didn't feel insane to me. I tried playing EW on classic...HOLY shit. They have seriously ramped up the difficulty curve. Missions seem to come at you much more frequently than I remember them occurring in EU, I was finding myself more and more often having to chuck rookies into missions simply because, even with the upgrade to make guys heal faster, half my vets were still injured and we'd get hit with another mission, then 4 days later we'd get hit with ANOTHER mission, it's insane.

In EU, I remember having beam weapons and carapace armor when I encountered my first terror mission; this time I was still sporting body armor and regular weapons, and thanks to all my vets being injured, I had to chuck mostly rookies in. Needless to say, the chrysalids absolutely slaughtered my entire squad, and that's when I realized that this campaign was probably over before it began.

Still, it's X-Com, and it's still awesome, and I'm still gonna keep playing it.

 

[Maeshone]

So I just did the base defence mission, and holy shit was that hard. And even then I'm just playing on Non-Ironman Normal. When the game decides that 4 Sectoid Commanders and an Ethereal all want to mindcontrol your squad on one turn, that's when I start cringing at the expected outcome

It's a pretty damn good expansion though, loving it so far. Haven't tried the gene-mods yet, went all out MEC for the first playthrough so I've got 2 MEC-3 Paladins with different loadouts, and they rock hard.

 

[BQE]

I'm very glad that the response to this new entry seems positive. I feel that I haven't given XCOM the time it really deserves and I'm eager to have a reason to give it another go.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I've been playing it for about 6 hours now and I'm very impressed. I played Enemy Unknown so much to the point of being sick of it, but there is so much new content here it almost feels like a sequel. Also rocket punch MECs are freaking awesome.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Also rocket punch MECs are freaking awesome.

They really are. When I first saw it I was like "Pfft, whatever. Anime fanboys". But punching a guy and sending him smashing through walls is just so much damn fun.

Mind you the flamethrower is pretty sick too.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Also rocket punch MECs are freaking awesome.

They really are. When I first saw it I was like "Pfft, whatever. Anime fanboys". But punching a guy and sending him smashing through walls is just so much damn fun.

Mind you the flamethrower is pretty sick too.

Haha yeah I've got one of each on my squad. I had an epic moment with the Flamethrower MEC on a terror mission.
My assault captain was surrounded by Chryssalids and zombies. Using the close combat perk she managed to get 5 of em down to about half health but sustained alot of damage. In comes my MEC who proceeds to hit all of em with a single flamethrower salvo. 5 kills in one, it was awesome.

 

[Jandau]

One thing that bothered me with Enemy Unknown was the difficulty spike between Normal and Classic. On Normal, it was pretty easy to never lose a country, get every research and item, optimize base design, etc. Then classic puts you several hundred dollars behind, with higher starting panic levels and much harder missions. I wished Normal was a bit harder, Classic a bit easier or that there were an intermediate setting between them.

Well, Enemy Within makes the problem even worse! Normal is same or a bit easier, while Classic is notably harder. I've decided to really give Classic a shot, though not on Ironman. I don't have that kind of free time, to restart over and over and over again until I figure out what's the optimal course of action while lucking out on missions. EW made the game better, but this is the one part they didn't quite get right IMO...

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Well, Enemy Within makes the problem even worse! Normal is same or a bit easier, while Classic is notably harder. I've decided to really give Classic a shot, though not on Ironman. I don't have that kind of free time, to restart over and over and over again until I figure out what's the optimal course of action while lucking out on missions. EW made the game better, but this is the one part they didn't quite get right IMO...

With the exception of a couple of the council missions, most specifically Portent, Enemy Within is probably a little easier on Classic than Vanilla was. Particularly if you rush meld and get a Mec out early. Mecs are moderately to significantly overpowered at pretty much every tier, and it's pretty easy to rush meld on the first few missions.

Portent is a problem. I anticipate a lot of campaigns coming to a crashing end on that mission. It's over tuned for when you get it.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Well, Enemy Within makes the problem even worse! Normal is same or a bit easier, while Classic is notably harder. I've decided to really give Classic a shot, though not on Ironman. I don't have that kind of free time, to restart over and over and over again until I figure out what's the optimal course of action while lucking out on missions. EW made the game better, but this is the one part they didn't quite get right IMO...

With the exception of a couple of the council missions, most specifically Portent, Enemy Within is probably a little easier on Classic than Vanilla was. Particularly if you rush meld and get a Mec out early. Mecs are moderately to significantly overpowered at pretty much every tier, and it's pretty easy to rush meld on the first few missions.

Portent is a problem. I anticipate a lot of campaigns coming to a crashing end on that mission. It's over tuned for when you get it.

You must be some sort of X-Com master, because I found the complete opposite to be true.

I beat Classic on vanilla X-Com, and while it wasn't easy, it wasn't soul-crushingly difficult either. But I gave up on EW on classic pretty quickly. Portent was, no doubt, pretty ludicrous, but even without it, missions seemed to come much faster than I remember from EU. I'd complete a mission, and then literally 2-3 days later I'd get hit with another mission. My guys wouldn't even have time to heal before another mission would pop up, and before long I'd be getting slaughtered. Once the Chrysalids came in, I pretty much threw in the towel.

 

[EternallyBored]

Well, Enemy Within makes the problem even worse! Normal is same or a bit easier, while Classic is notably harder. I've decided to really give Classic a shot, though not on Ironman. I don't have that kind of free time, to restart over and over and over again until I figure out what's the optimal course of action while lucking out on missions. EW made the game better, but this is the one part they didn't quite get right IMO...

With the exception of a couple of the council missions, most specifically Portent, Enemy Within is probably a little easier on Classic than Vanilla was. Particularly if you rush meld and get a Mec out early. Mecs are moderately to significantly overpowered at pretty much every tier, and it's pretty easy to rush meld on the first few missions.

Portent is a problem. I anticipate a lot of campaigns coming to a crashing end on that mission. It's over tuned for when you get it.

You must be some sort of X-Com master, because I found the complete opposite to be true.

I beat Classic on vanilla X-Com, and while it wasn't easy, it wasn't soul-crushingly difficult either. But I gave up on EW on classic pretty quickly. Portent was, no doubt, pretty ludicrous, but even without it, missions seemed to come much faster than I remember from EU. I'd complete a mission, and then literally 2-3 days later I'd get hit with another mission. My guys wouldn't even have time to heal before another mission would pop up, and before long I'd be getting slaughtered. Once the Chrysalids came in, I pretty much threw in the towel.

If you turn off the slingshot missions, that tends to make it a lot less hectic at the beginning, or at least you don't get so many missions stacked in the same month, Slingshot throws the last two missions at you in rapid fire, and stacks them on top of everything else going on, as well as the portent mission that introduces EXALT.

As for the rest, as long as you focus on what you want to go for right away, the expansion actually seems to make classic a lot easier. I never made it all the way through classic in EU, I tended to get screwed in the mid-game and ended up with not enough good weapons and armor for the level of enemies it was throwing at me. With the expansion, I've now got two level 3 MECs with grenades and proximity mines and 2 explosives focused heavies that just blow the crap out of the entire map by turn 5. The only thing that can survive more than a turn against me is a sectopod, and even then thats only if they get lucky on the positioning.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

So I just did the base defence mission, and holy shit was that hard. And even then I'm just playing on Non-Ironman Normal. When the game decides that 4 Sectoid Commanders and an Ethereal all want to mindcontrol your squad on one turn, that's when I start cringing at the expected outcome

It's a pretty damn good expansion though, loving it so far. Haven't tried the gene-mods yet, went all out MEC for the first playthrough so I've got 2 MEC-3 Paladins with different loadouts, and they rock hard.

That base defense... The first time it hit me with 4 Mechtoids drops on turn 2, then it dropped another 3 in the second area and finished it off with 2 Mechtoids and a sectoid commander for the last area. And this was just two weeks after I had cleared out the Alien Base and was still working on getting the Hyperwave Relay.

I had to reload a save two missions back and make sure all my idle soldiers were kitted out before trying again. And then the RNG decides to "only" drop 5 Mechtoids total distributed evenly over the course of the mission, which made it far more manageable when I wasn't losing 2 soldiers a turn to each of their bullshit plasma cannons. I mean, those guys regularly score critical hits while suppressed and firing at soldiers in full cover, on higher ground and in smoke.

 

[Sixcess]

If you're hard wiping on Portent (the first EXALT mission) and don't want to save scum or groundhog day your way through it, try running it without Aiming Angles on.

I really like Aiming Angles, so I'll take the rough with the smooth for now. I'm slightly less apprehensive about Portent than I was, since I've now beaten it once (out of four attempts) by going in with two Mecs. Sticking to the rooftops where possible also seems to pay off.

Though in my latest attempt I was doing just fine until the civilian got poisoned and, to my disbelief, took poison damage 4 turns in a row, which I don't recall ever seeing before.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I really like Aiming Angles, so I'll take the rough with the smooth for now. I'm slightly less apprehensive about Portent than I was, since I've now beaten it once (out of four attempts) by going in with two Mecs. Sticking to the rooftops where possible also seems to pay off.

Though in my latest attempt I was doing just fine until the civilian got poisoned and, to my disbelief, took poison damage 4 turns in a row, which I don't recall ever seeing before.

IIRC, poison is 2-5 turns, randomly determined. You were unlucky. Or "Thin Manned", if you prefer.

 

[Kevlar Eater]

I found the base defense mission a bit easy (Ironman Normal player). I had the rookies toss grenades down on any sectoid commanders while my sniper handled the mutons and disabled any enemy mechs she (or any of the squad) saw. My fully upgraded MEC's (one melee/healing-oriented, one long-distance fighter) made short work of the mechanized units with my support keeping them healed. Things got heated when the last of the alien waves came through the front door, with 2 sectoid commanders, an ethereal, a cyberdisc, 3 floaters and 2 repair drones. I tossed the last of my prox. mines in the bottleneck (where the two paths met up) and did some heavy damage to a lot of stuff, then had my melee MEC run up to the ethereal and punch. He and my support got mind-controlled the next turn. In comes my sniper who introduced her plasma rifle to everything stupid enough to stand out of cover (5 units + disabling support's gun), with my sneaky assault finishing with capturing the remaining sectoid commander.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

What works, exactly? Precious, irreplaceable units dying randomly and forcing a restart? Maybe it works for you, but I've had my fill.

But the point is that the game is made so it never forces a restart and no unit is irreplaceable. You're just too attached to being in a position of comfort.

Bull shit. I've tried a number of times to continue playing after losing the units that I deemed crucial to my squad. It's a pure gamble. You have to hope that a few decked out rookies can luck their way through enough missions to keep you from losing countries.

Edit: I might add that I am referring to classic difficulty always. Normal actually gives the player a leg up in the odds department.

What works, exactly? Precious, irreplaceable units dying randomly and forcing a restart? Maybe it works for you, but I've had my fill.

1. They're completely replaceable.
2. Games having a failure state doesn't make them broken.

It doesn't "work for me" so much as it works in general. It's a legitimate form of turn based strategy.

1. They're replaceable, if you luck out.
2. Not what I argued, at all, or ever.

In general it's more like turn based gambling.

That's why in a squad of 6, I always have someone with them a bit lower, so as to level up others. Take them on Abduction missions that are ranked easier, if it happens to fit where you want to go in terms of reducing panic. Heck, 4 colonels and 2 squaddies works fine for me, try let the low ranked ones finish them off (give em grenades for guaranteed hits.) and you'll rank your backup soldiers to a competent level.

There are also mission rewards that give you decent ranked soldiers. I have about 13 soldiers I would consider all decent enough if I have to bring them out in case my A-Team is out of commission. I'm doing a classic play through, have lost 3 countries and have just finished the Alien base mission.

I grant that you can have bad luck sometimes and that can end a game, I've had that. But part of XCOM is base/squad management that can help get the odds in your favor.

 

[Souplex]

I've beaten it on normal. I enjoyed it. Enough bugs were removed that I actually feel like Ironman might be playable.
Playing on Classic now to acheivement whore myself Army Of Four. I hate Thin men so much.

 

[Therumancer]

I've been playing this a little, and my opinions are mixed. I'm not wonderful at it and play on normal as opposed to classic, iron man, or other levels (incidentally classic does not feel like the original X-com to me for whatever reason, which is part of the problem I think). To me the new options are nice, but it seems to be broken in some respects. I do half a dozen missions all with solid victories and I've already pretty much lost all of Africa more or less arbitrarily, leading me to seriously contemplate a restart despite some pretty strong soldiers and a decent pile of meld, basically it seems like I needed to be psychic and have satellite coverage there. Now I could still pull off a victory (and might stick with it to see how close I can cut it) but generally speaking that much panic, that early in the game is pretty crazy, and was either a fluke, or something integral to the new expansion.

I've also noticed the enemies do seem to be considerably more accurate and almost always crit. Given the way the game doesn't re-roll, I've actually played around with it to get some general idea of enemy accuracy and crit rate... and wow, just bloody wow.

That said in response to comments about irreplaceable soldiers, there is some truth to that. Losing the guy from Slingshot is a pain since you can't get him back, what's more later in the game losing a psychic can be pretty much impossible to recover from if you've had bad rolls/luck in recruiting them given the win conditions and what the
endgame is like.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I've been playing this a little, and my opinions are mixed. I'm not wonderful at it and play on normal as opposed to classic, iron man, or other levels (incidentally classic does not feel like the original X-com to me for whatever reason, which is part of the problem I think). To me the new options are nice, but it seems to be broken in some respects. I do half a dozen missions all with solid victories and I've already pretty much lost all of Africa more or less arbitrarily, leading me to seriously contemplate a restart despite some pretty strong soldiers and a decent pile of meld, basically it seems like I needed to be psychic and have satellite coverage there. Now I could still pull off a victory (and might stick with it to see how close I can cut it) but generally speaking that much panic, that early in the game is pretty crazy, and was either a fluke, or something integral to the new expansion.

I've also noticed the enemies do seem to be considerably more accurate and almost always crit. Given the way the game doesn't re-roll, I've actually played around with it to get some general idea of enemy accuracy and crit rate... and wow, just bloody wow.

That said in response to comments about irreplaceable soldiers, there is some truth to that. Losing the guy from Slingshot is a pain since you can't get him back, what's more later in the game losing a psychic can be pretty much impossible to recover from if you've had bad rolls/luck in recruiting them given the win conditions and what the
endgame is like.

Enemies are only more accurate on Classic and up.

You can lose multiple countries and still do fine. I'm only down two in my late game C/I run, and I'm swimming in cash I really have no way of spending.

The guy from Slingshot is indeed irreplaceable, but that's a nod to how stupid creating a series of set missions with a specific NPC was.

Psychics are a dime a dozen now. Especially since the game will feed you slightly leveled up extras through a series of very easy council missions just in case you have trouble unlocking your own.

There are also mission rewards that give you decent ranked soldiers. I have about 13 soldiers I would consider all decent enough if I have to bring them out in case my A-Team is out of commission. I'm doing a classic play through, have lost 3 countries and have just finished the Alien base mission.

I grant that you can have bad luck sometimes and that can end a game, I've had that. But part of XCOM is base/squad management that can help get the odds in your favor.

Yeah I have approximately fifteen Sergeant and up at this point, and eight of them are Colonels. Mind you, I'm at the stage of the game where things have to seriously pear shaped to lose a trooper. Things always seem to snowball heavily in XCOM's favor at that point. Game has had its G&K expansion. It needs its BNW. End game is too damn easy.