faetal on 14/7/2017 at 14:20
[video=youtube;o-ik5hH9gGU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-ik5hH9gGU[/video]
Looking good SoNnNnNnN!
I may even have gone ahead and been a dickhead and pre-ordered.
Renzatic on 14/7/2017 at 16:54
Damnit, Faetal. You dickhead. :mad:
faetal on 14/7/2017 at 18:10
I know, I'm ruining it for everyone and I'm not even sorry.
catbarf on 14/7/2017 at 18:55
While this thread's at the top, any tips for dealing with the Vipers? I thought I was doing well by using the cover and overwatch systems from the previous game, but these guys seem to negate cover entirely with their spit and grab attacks, and are borderline impossible to hit through overwatch.
Renzatic on 14/7/2017 at 19:27
The best thing to do is to use snipers to take them out from a distance. Barring that, attack them in pairs, so you'll always have one guy there to bail the other out in case he gets constricted.
faetal on 15/7/2017 at 01:33
For a start, I recommend (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=880396912) this mod. Then, generally don't group your soldiers too much, as the AI will favour a spit over a shot if it can get 2 or more victims. Flashbangs or burning damage can prevent them using special attacks.
Maxmillion on 29/8/2017 at 23:39
Incredibly early impressions of War of the Chosen:
Will power actually means something now. In a great move, it now serves as a stamina counter for your soldiers, forcing players to not just have an A-squad. Those PCS willpower upgrades might be actually worthwhile now.
The missions that integrate the new factions is quite well done. Anyone who is a fan of Star Trek will get a kick out of the actors they chose.
There are new mission types, and new map nodes and types. Both are incredibly welcome, particularly the new map nodes.
Boo boos so far:
Better video performance was promised. I'm not seeing it, as I'm still getting framerate drops on my GTX 1080 and core i5 Skylake CPU.
Also, at the end of the mission which introduced the faction leaders, the game hung and I had to log out of my user account to make it unstuck.
First edit: I am writing again because of another crash. This time after ordering a unit to fire at a target. Blah.
On the better side, this feels like the culmination of one of the big bits of design philosophy behind Nu-Xcom: interesting, exclusive choices.
With Xcom 2 and especially with Xcom 1, once a player got familiar with the mechanics there was a pretty set path both strategically and tactically. While Xcom 2 was more liberal in this regard, it still had a fairly set flow and set of decision trees. While some of the exact order of the tree branches could be swapped around at player discretion, the makeup of the beginning, middle and end were similar game to game.
With the expansion, there are simply too many choices to make to create an optimized build/tech tree that will serve all or most playthroughs.
They did this while cutting down on the unfairness. Players are given warning on the strategic map when boss enemies can or will appear, and other "randomized" elements designed to fuck with the player get properly signposted as well.
I'm loving every moment that isn't accompanied by crashes or lockups.
Second Edit:
God fucking dammit. Third crash. As awesome as the gameplay is, this is utterly unacceptable.
faetal on 30/8/2017 at 08:23
I have noticed a significant performance boost and the visuals are way better too. I have been playing XCOM2 like the devil recently (LW2), so have fresh reference points.
I've only played a couple of hours so far, so not seen too much of the new stuff yet, but I'm already liking what I see, and I have a "can't wait to get home" feeling which I haven't had for while.
Malf on 30/8/2017 at 09:17
I had a brief pop at it last night. Not enough to get into the meat of what's been added, but enough to say that I also saw massively improved performance. It just feels smoother all round, with no stuttering transitions (either between turns or when navigating the base) and a silky-smooth framerate. But then, since last playing XCOM 2, I've upgraded both my CPU and GPU. But judging based on the performance of other games and where the game experienced hitches before, I genuinely think they've spent time cleaning up the game.
I'll definitely be playing more tonight, and hopefully I won't get distracted by soldier customisation.
Maxmillion on 30/8/2017 at 13:57
One undeniable benefit of the expansion is load times. I have Xcom 2 on a SSD, and with the vanilla version load times were still often 20-30 seconds with bigger missions. Now sometimes missions only take five seconds, and going back to the Avenger the button pops almost instantly.
