I have a bone to pick with XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

[Zhukov]

Allow me to preface this with a brief rundown of my experience with the game for the sake of context. I played it first on normal difficulty, "ironman mode" (I hate that term). I got up to to where the cathedral ship arrives, then quit because I found it too easy. I then played classic ironman and finished the game after a few failed attempts, a feat I have since been unable to recreate, leading me to suspect that my success was the result of some crazy lucky streak, or possibly witchcraft.

Right. On to the picking of bones.

First off, the difficulty settings. I've only played on normal and classic, but I'm going to make the daring assumption that 'easy' is easier than 'normal' and 'impossible' is harder than 'classic'. Thing is, normal feels like Baby's First Turn-Based Strategy Game and classic feels like Hard Manly Mode for Hard Manly Men. I feel like there really should be something in the middle.

Second, the base layouts. They're randomized, but one layout (having multiple steam vents next to the elevator shaft) is objectively better than any other. On harder difficulties it's barely worth trying with a less than ideal starting layout. This means that the most advantageous thing to do is to keep restarting until you get a good one. Which is boring and wastes time. The game should just give a good layout or allow the player to pick from several.

Lastly, and most importantly, I find that the game is too punishing. Now before you give me the 'you just suck' speech (I freely admit that I suck at the game), note that I said "too punishing", not "too hard".

See, XCOM:EU is a game where you can fail through no fault of your own. You could play a perfect mission, but then two thin men get lucky critical hits, your heavy misses a rocket and the mission goes south regardless of your best efforts. That would be fine on its own, but the game doesn't really allow you much room to fail. You can swallow one failed mission, maybe two, three and you're basically done. Plus each failure will make future failure more likely because of the loss of experienced troops. I feel that giving me a game over because a dice roll didn't go my way is not inspired game design.

Oh, and thin men dropping out of the sky during council missions is just plain bullshit.

I really like the game, or at least I really want to like it, but damn it doesn't make it easy.

 

[Anathrax]

I really did not enjoy the game after my first playthrough because of that. I tried normal again, too easy to enjoy. I tried classic for a change, the computer is a cheating bastard and I can't enjoy myself because of that. Oh great lord of the RNG, what did I do to enrage you?!

 

[Comic Sans]

Yeah I felt the same. Once I got through the rough beginning on Normal, it was a walk in the park. Once I had the world covered in satellites I pretty much did no missions but the panic ones because they bored me. Then I tried classic, and I was get gypped by the RNG again and again and again. I would have guys in maximum cover repeatedly one shot from huge distances, and I could have my entire team unload on a partial cover enemy, and still totally miss every time. You can't take your time to get into perfect position because all it takes is them hitting you once, or uncovering one enemy closet in a rough spot. It was a game where you couldn't make a mistake, because the game would mercilessly punish you for it, but also punished you for playing safe by giving the enemy every possible advantage that made slow attrition impossible, and even one mistake on a mission could fuck you for the rest of the game, since losing your troops makes you more likely to lose the next mission, and it keeps spiraling.

 

[Jandau]

XCOM is a flawed game. It is also a small game, or maybe better to say compact. However, I feel that this game was more of a "proof of concept" kind of thing. People in the industry didn't have faith that you could put out a turn-based strategy and that it would sell. This XCOM was a side project, something to appease the fans in the wake of the FPS XCOM backlash. I'm pretty sure nobody expected it to get so popular. And it got popular despite its flaws and shortcomings because people were starving for something like that. It was a good-looking game with a sleek interface, some solid mechanics, easy to understand, but with room for depth. And it proved that you don't have to make everything into an FPS to sell it.

Also, I'm pretty sure that at least a part of the problem is that nobody was really sure how to make one of those anymore. The genre has been ignored for so long that it was almost like starting from scratch.

What I'm expecting now is that the next game will be far more polished. It'll have more content, better balancing, fewer bad mechanics because it's become apparent that games like this sell. It won't be a B-list project, it'll be a full-on game. However, that might end up with problems of its own...

EDIT: Though I wonder how the game would work if all (or almost all) randomness was taken out of it. Let's say that the % chance to hit gets converted into damage modifiers - So a 60% chance to hit for 10 damage gets converted into a guaranteed 6 damage. Would this improve the game or make it terrible?

 

[Dryk]

See, XCOM:EU is a game where you can fail through no fault of your own. You could play a perfect mission, but then two thin men get lucky critical hits, your heavy misses a rocket and the mission goes south regardless of your best efforts. That would be fine on its own, but the game doesn't really allow you much room to fail. You can swallow one failed mission, maybe two, three and you're basically done. Plus each failure will make future failure more likely because of the loss of experienced troops. I feel that giving me a game over because a dice roll didn't go my way is not inspired game design.

Judging from Fire Emblem it's a hard-core TBS thing. I don't necessarily agree with it either.

 

[Comic Sans]

XCOM is a flawed game. It is also a small game, or maybe better to say compact. However, I feel that this game was more of a "proof of concept" kind of thing. People in the industry didn't have faith that you could put out a turn-based strategy and that it would sell. This XCOM was a side project, something to appease the fans in the wake of the FPS XCOM backlash. I'm pretty sure nobody expected it to get so popular. And it got popular despite its flaws and shortcomings because people were starving for something like that. It was a good-looking game with a sleek interface, some solid mechanics, easy to understand, but with room for depth. And it proved that you don't have to make everything into an FPS to sell it.

Also, I'm pretty sure that at least a part of the problem is that nobody was really sure how to make one of those anymore. The genre has been ignored for so long that it was almost like starting from scratch.

What I'm expecting now is that the next game will be far more polished. It'll have more content, better balancing, fewer bad mechanics because it's become apparent that games like this sell. It won't be a B-list project, it'll be a full-on game. However, that might end up with problems of its own...

EDIT: Though I wonder how the game would work if all (or almost all) randomness was taken out of it. Let's say that the % chance to hit gets converted into damage modifiers - So a 60% chance to hit for 10 damage gets converted into a guaranteed 6 damage. Would this improve the game or make it terrible?

It certainly would remove a lot of the BS RNG elements that ruin the strategy. You wouldn't be punished as much for a low roll. As it is, it's too all or nothing, where you either get the hit or do absolutely nothing, and at times doing nothing can cascade into horrible failure that you can't control. I can make perfect moves all game, but missing one shot can lead to losing most of your prime squad and make it impossible to succeed later. There needs to be something to mitigate how punishing the RNG can be and make it so even one bad move doesn't totally screw you over for the rest of the damn game.

I'd say add some sort of glancing hit function. Like you have X% chance to hit for full damage, Y% for half damage, and Z% to totally whiff it. That would help with a lot of the frustration.

See, XCOM:EU is a game where you can fail through no fault of your own. You could play a perfect mission, but then two thin men get lucky critical hits, your heavy misses a rocket and the mission goes south regardless of your best efforts. That would be fine on its own, but the game doesn't really allow you much room to fail. You can swallow one failed mission, maybe two, three and you're basically done. Plus each failure will make future failure more likely because of the loss of experienced troops. I feel that giving me a game over because a dice roll didn't go my way is not inspired game design.

Judging from Fire Emblem it's a hard-core TBS thing. I don't necessarily agree with it either.

The difference with Fire Emblem is that generally you can see where all the enemies are, and there are clear rules as to what beats what. As such, you can plan ahead more, so losing someone is generally more your fault than the game being unfair. In addition, I found Fire Emblem's RNG much more fair. As long as you played your troops strengths and weaknesses right you could generally be relied upon to hit. The enemies are also generally the same types of troops that you field. They can't do anything that you can't. In X-com, an annoyance I felt on higher difficulties was that the enemy can shoot farther, more accurately, and for far more damage early on, and when you spot them get a free turn to run into cover. In Fire Emblem enemy units have the same limitations as yours, they just have more of them. Basically, it's more fair in Fire Emblem, you generally won't get gimped by RNG or cascading mission failure.

 

[5ilver]

The biggest issue is the RNG imo. At the end of the day, the increased difficulty feels massive because a tiny thing can bring the whole castle of cards down. Losing 1 or 2 experienced soldiers can lead to your entire squad getting wiped out next mission which might as well be game over.

They should just add some other mechanic to counterbalance those times the RNG gods are not with you and the difficulties would instantly feel smoother. At the same time, failure wouldn't feel quite as painful and save-scumming wouldn't be as mandatory.

It doesn't even have to be a huge thing. Here's an example: you just lost your entire squad, meaning a ton of xp and a ton of useful inventory items. So the council that's funding you decides this is a critical situation and transfers money from schools or whatever to hire veteran mercs (not quite as good as your old troops but at least they won't die in 1 hit) and maybe add some guns/other items/pure cash.

They should also increase the default/starting cash and reduce the amount you get from satellites because the latter are way, WAY too good.

 

[Joffas16]

I agree with every single thing that has been said here so hard. My neck is sore from nodding in agreement so much.

The original Xcom is one of my favourite games so when I heard about this I got pretty excited, but when I eventually played I had trouble enjoying it, mainly for the reasons listed here, the messed up difficulty and mechanics.

I couldn't agree more about the massive gap in difficulty between normal and 'classic', I played through normal and it was pathetically easy until right up at the end an unbelievable run of bad luck and BUGS killed off ALL of my best guys. I put the game away for a few weeks after that because I felt cheated, then when I tried again I chose 'classic' difficulty, thinking that because normal was a total walk in the park (When the game was working as it should) 'classic' would be about right for me. Holy balls was I wrong. Classic difficulty is unbelievably hard if you're stepping up from normal. The first turn after I spotted my first group of Sectoids they killed two of my guys, one of whom was in full cover! That's not how you start a game, not even on 'classic' difficulty.

That's another thing that bugs me, they called their 'super-hard, wreck-your-shit, screw you' mode 'classic'. Why, are they saying that it's like the original game. I've beaten the original game several times and it is very hard, but it is also actually incredibly fair. When I lose in the original Xcom I don't mind because I generally leave the game thinking something like "Oh well, I made way to many errors in combat" or "Damn, I wasn't thinking far enough ahead with my base management". But in new XCOM I never lose in a satisfying way, it's always "WHAT! Eight aliens just spawned in DURING THE ALIENS TURN, RAGHHHH!". That's the problem with new XCOM if you ask me, all of it's difficulty comes from being cheap.

One last thing I want to mention. The way that aliens spawn is complete crap, even when it isn't bugging out, which is way too often. Aliens are always just squatting in some dark corner waiting for you to stumble into them, then they take their free move and trash you. I have two problems with that, firstly, the free move thing, I shouldn't have to explain that one. And secondly, having the aliens hide away and that become active when you get close to them heavily discourages moving around a lot. But because of the way that the games combat works, you will have to move around at least a bit to flank and kill most enemies. But because moving into unknown territory always carries the risk of triggering and readying a new group of enemies, flanking is a bad idea a lot of the time. This completely ruined the games combat for me.

Damn, I knew that I had some problems with this game, but... damn that was long.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I don't really have any major issues with XCOM as I'm playing it right now because it's free on PS+. The battle system is literally DnD but with soldiers vs aliens; you have 2 actions each soldier's turn (you can double move but then you can't do a standard action, exactly like DnD). Your attack is based off you soldier's aim plus flanking and all that, and then you basically roll to see if you hit. I haven't played it on Classic or Impossible yet but I've seen videos of Ironman Impossible and it just seems like you have to play very careful. You move your first guy up to check for aliens, then don't move anyone past the initial guy so you don't trigger any aliens with only a soldier or 2 left to do anything or worst case scenario is you find aliens on your last soldier's move. You put most of the soldiers on overwatch to shoot at any aliens that find you during their turn, the aliens CANNOT shoot at you if they find you on their turn.

Here's a really entertaining (the guy is pretty funny and really good editing) Let's Play of XCOM on Ironman Impossible:

Aliens are always just squatting in some dark corner waiting for you to stumble into them, then they take their free move and trash you. I have two problems with that, firstly, the free move thing, I shouldn't have to explain that one.

However, when the aliens spot you on their turn, they can't shoot at you during their turn so that kinda balances that out.

 

[GiantRaven]

See, XCOM:EU is a game where you can fail through no fault of your own. You could play a perfect mission, but then two thin men get lucky critical hits, your heavy misses a rocket and the mission goes south regardless of your best efforts. That would be fine on its own, but the game doesn't really allow you much room to fail. You can swallow one failed mission, maybe two, three and you're basically done. Plus each failure will make future failure more likely because of the loss of experienced troops. I feel that giving me a game over because a dice roll didn't go my way is not inspired game design.

Yes, that's precisely what Xcom is all about. A never-ending downward spiral of doom and dread.

 

[Ebonrul]

The general complaint with XCOM always seems to be this.

"Me and my squad of space marines went in to kick some ET ass and my lone survivor was able to bring the rest of them home in his pocket"

For those of us who forgot the first 45 minutes of ALIENS, that's what we call "Doing it right".

Dislike the UI all you want (we all know it wouldn't have been as successful if it was the nightmare of micromanagement that those who remember it, remember it to be...I wanna be the Team Commander, not its Quartermaster) but the spirit of the game is still there as it succeeds in making the beatdowns it hands out hurt so good. The second you get comfortable, you hear the growl of something you haven't run into before and if you don't take the new threat very seriously, the Skyranger might be coming home empty.

I miss games kicking my ass and making me want to return the favor, and XCOM does that artfully.

 

[krazykidd]

But , isn't that the point of difficulty levels ? To give you choice ?

So we got 4 difficulty levels . And NONE of them meet your ( and other peoples ) expectations? That is certainly a weird complaint if i ever heard one . Personally i like luck being a factor in games . It prevents things from going too well or from going too poorly . It is a strategy game after all . And the biggest part of any strategy , in my opinion , is adaptation . You can have the best strategy but if you aren't able to adapt to different situations , it's pointless . Hope for the best , and prepare for the worst .

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Lastly, and most importantly, I find that the game is too punishing. Now before you give me the 'you just suck' speech (I freely admit that I suck at the game), note that I said "too punishing", not "too hard".

See, XCOM:EU is a game where you can fail through no fault of your own. You could play a perfect mission, but then two thin men get lucky critical hits, your heavy misses a rocket and the mission goes south regardless of your best efforts. That would be fine on its own, but the game doesn't really allow you much room to fail. You can swallow one failed mission, maybe two, three and you're basically done. Plus each failure will make future failure more likely because of the loss of experienced troops. I feel that giving me a game over because a dice roll didn't go my way is not inspired game design.

Oh, and thin men dropping out of the sky during council missions is just plain bullshit.

I really like the game, or at least I really want to like it, but damn it doesn't make it easy.

For my own part I found Classic too easy, and yearned for a difficulty level set between Classic and Impossible (ideally with Impossible's alien populations but Classic's to hit and damage modifiers).

Classic was tweaked specifically to NOT be winnable on every attempt, and I think they more or less hit the mark. My issue with XCOM is that the difficulty is almost entirely frontloaded. You'll likely live on the knife's edge for a dozen missions or so, and then you'll level some guys up and research better armor and weapons, and by game's end everything is a cake walk so long as you don't enthusiastically derp things up.

A second issue with XCOM is that it's ridiculously buggy, and the teleporting aliens bug is still alive and well and worse than ever, meaning key tactics like hunker down don't just fail to work properly, they can actively sabotage your entire campaign by summoning aliens into your midst.

And yes, I agree that a better way to implement the difficulty curve would've been to allow for more play in terms of fail states. The game is very binary with failure in Classic and Impossible. Either you win and keep winning, or you lose and the game is over. There's seldom any bringing things back from the precipice. Even something as simple as rotating in rookies later in the game becomes a dubious proposition, and required the implementation of researching global promotions as a kind of band aid.

As games go it's a solid foundation, and the tactics are sound, it just needs a lot of work around the edges. Better pacing, a longer and more varied campaign, more voices and soldier personalities, many more (and bigger) maps, etc, etc, etc. In an ideal state a game like this should be a potent story generator, and as it stands it lacks replay value due to its wobbly design and streamlined/linear campaign.

But , isn't that the point of difficulty levels ? To give you choice ?

So we got 4 difficulty levels.

At the moment there are really only 2.

Normal is almost comically easy, rendering the easy mode moot. And Impossible is mildly overtuned, and presently rendered basically unplayable due to the teleporting bug.

 

[doomed89]

You're playing wrong, on classic and impossible if there is a guy in cover you don't have your whole team shoot at it with %s ranging from 30-60 you throw a grenade damage it and destroy the cover and then you shoot at it. Granted on ironman it's a bit crappy because one unlucky turn and your game is screwed up, on my iron man playthrough I used the quit to XMB more then I care to admit...

Personally my biggest gripe with the game aside from the bugs (especially the sniper probe bug) is that you can't flank enemies alot because you'll discover more enemies and they will flank you... I think the free movement they get on discovering is a little unfair, sure it's fine if it's the first guy you moved but if it's the last guy you moved you are screwed.

 

[Atmos Duality]

You're playing wrong, on classic and impossible if there is a guy in cover you don't have your whole team shoot at it with %s ranging from 30-60 you throw a grenade damage it and destroy the cover and then you shoot at it. Granted on ironman it's a bit crappy because one unlucky turn and your game is screwed up, on my iron man playthrough I used the quit to XMB more then I care to admit...

Personally my biggest gripe with the game aside from the bugs (especially the sniper probe bug) is that you can't flank enemies alot because you'll discover more enemies and they will flank you... I think the free movement they get on discovering is a little unfair, sure it's fine if it's the first guy you moved but if it's the last guy you moved you are screwed.

The free movement on discovery is the first and last straw, simply due to the fact that it renders most actual tactics completely moot. Flanking is a game mechanic primarily for the enemy to employ on the player and not the player on the enemy.

My Normal game turned into "Just let 2 Assaults and 1 Sniper deal with everything". By the time I got around to assaulting the enemy ship all three of them had incredible sums of kills (my remaining two units were dedicated to Support or Heavy, either tossing grenades or capturing enemies).

 

[Fappy]

-Snip-

That's the issue Fire Emblem: Awakening has as well. On a higher difficulty the game starts out hard, but once you start leveling your guys the difficulty slowly chips away into nothingness. I agree with many people that the difficulty in XCOM is far too RNG. I loved the game, but I really hope they smooth the edges next time around. I couldn't get anywhere in Classic Mode due to the insane enemy crit chance

 

[themilo504]

It?s better than the original x com, but that?s not much of a feat.

 

[doomed89]

The free movement on discovery is the first and last straw, simply due to the fact that it renders most actual tactics completely moot. Flanking is a game mechanic primarily for the enemy to employ on the player and not the player on the enemy.

My Normal game turned into "Just let 2 Assaults and 1 Sniper deal with everything". By the time I got around to assaulting the enemy ship all three of them had incredible sums of kills (my remaining two units were dedicated to Support or Heavy, either tossing grenades or capturing enemies).

You can still flank but you just can't run out halfway across the map to do it and to be fair even if the game was set up differently you probably couldn't do that because they'd be aliens with overwatch way back that would probably cut you down. If the enemy is pretty far away and you have crappy shots the best thing to do is fall back a little out of it's sights and go on overwatch. Then when it comes in if it survives you'll have an opportunity to flank. I'm being using the absolutely critical modifier on second wave and I flank them alot more then they flank me.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

The free movement on discovery is the first and last straw, simply due to the fact that it renders most actual tactics completely moot. Flanking is a game mechanic primarily for the enemy to employ on the player and not the player on the enemy.

Nonsense. The "free movement on discovery" is actually a player advantage that translates into a significantly easier game. It allows you to pick and choose your tactics at will and impose them on the enemy without ever being caught out or blind sided.

If it was removed the game would be difficult to the point of being broken.