Played for ~4 hours last night. Classic Iron Man, with a few second wave options turned on...not created equal, uh...the one that randomizes stat gain on level up...and the new "aiming angles" one. That one is pretty sweet, and makes the game more visually intuitive.
I had total catastrophic mission failure by about the 8th or 9th mission. New elements encountered...
1. Meld. This is what really fucked me. I was chasing the Meld really hard, and prioritizing it over troop safety. This got a couple of rookies killed, and resulted in a near total group wipe at one point (rushing the meld triggered three different groups). I never actually got to spend any, things went off the rails before I unlocked that much research. Chasing Meld may seem minor, but it really does result in a significant change in tactics, particularly early on. Creeping forward and spamming overwatch means no Meld. You NEED to take risks, and as always taking risks with rookies leads to dead rookies.
2. Game pacing. There's a lot more to unlock, a lot more to research, a lot more to build. This makes the early game feel a bit fresher and a lot better paced. Unfortunately it also exacerbates the difficulty cliff problem that early Iron Man campaigns run into, where you're fielding rookies and squaddies with crap abilities against Thin Men. With even more things pulling on your limited resources, I can see a lot of people pulling their hair in frustration early on.
3. Saw the first new enemy type. The invisible Stalkers. They're an interesting little menace, and obviously intended as a hard counter for the OP god of the battlefield, the squad sight sniper. They do seem to fixate on the first soldier they see, however, so it's not too tough to pick them off. Solo dashes not recommended on Stalker occupied maps.
Bugs seem to be largely addressed. No teleporting alien issues. No hard crashes or mission freezes. New maps are numerous and quite well designed...they've got pretty good flow. New dialects for soldiers are nice, although it would've been EXTRA nice to get some regional accents as well.
I had total catastrophic mission failure by about the 8th or 9th mission. New elements encountered...
1. Meld. This is what really fucked me. I was chasing the Meld really hard, and prioritizing it over troop safety. This got a couple of rookies killed, and resulted in a near total group wipe at one point (rushing the meld triggered three different groups). I never actually got to spend any, things went off the rails before I unlocked that much research. Chasing Meld may seem minor, but it really does result in a significant change in tactics, particularly early on. Creeping forward and spamming overwatch means no Meld. You NEED to take risks, and as always taking risks with rookies leads to dead rookies.
2. Game pacing. There's a lot more to unlock, a lot more to research, a lot more to build. This makes the early game feel a bit fresher and a lot better paced. Unfortunately it also exacerbates the difficulty cliff problem that early Iron Man campaigns run into, where you're fielding rookies and squaddies with crap abilities against Thin Men. With even more things pulling on your limited resources, I can see a lot of people pulling their hair in frustration early on.
3. Saw the first new enemy type. The invisible Stalkers. They're an interesting little menace, and obviously intended as a hard counter for the OP god of the battlefield, the squad sight sniper. They do seem to fixate on the first soldier they see, however, so it's not too tough to pick them off. Solo dashes not recommended on Stalker occupied maps.
Bugs seem to be largely addressed. No teleporting alien issues. No hard crashes or mission freezes. New maps are numerous and quite well designed...they've got pretty good flow. New dialects for soldiers are nice, although it would've been EXTRA nice to get some regional accents as well.
