XCOM Enemy Within: First Impressions

[Megalodon]

I'm playing on C/I, and I've gotten approx. 75% of all Meld encountered. Of course it's forcing you to take risks, that was the entire point of it. The game over-rewarded caution and barely rewarded risk taking at all. At higher difficulties this meant a creeping, super-conservative method of play was always optimal. Meld is there to crowbar you out of your comfort zone and give you high risk targets to shoot for, without making them mandatory to mission completion (ala bomb defusing).

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.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

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.

Personally, I think meld was a nice addition. It is a sort of high risk/high reward option were you can end up losing soldiers due to overextending, but you also have the possibility of fielding some really powerful soldiers later on. So far, and I just finished off the alien base, the MECs seem pretty balanced and the gene mods opens up for alternative tactics without necessarily becoming overkill. One thing I might nitpick on is that the flamethrower seems just a tad too effective. Having EXALT soldiers running in terror feels fine, it feels a bit less fine when chryssalids start running from my MEC, allowing me to negate their only advantage by using a tier 1 MEC ability.

Also, shouldn't they have fixed gunslinger when they rebalanced the skills? Having snipers run around and being more effective with their modded pistols than supports are with their assault rifles still feels kind of silly.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Is it worth the $30 purchase now or should most people wait for the Steam Christmas sale? $30 seems pretty steep for an expansion.

Certainly looks fun though.

I dont think that the steam winter sale will discount it beyond 10%, 15% at a stretch, but it will most likely just sit at "pre-order" price.

It's kind of interesting that the OP said that Meld is a game changer, because veterans like TB said that it barely changed their style of play.

Personally though, I am awaiting the second expansion so that XCOM Enemy Unknown is fully fleshed out, like Civ V w/ Gods & Kings and Brave New World.

 

[Yabba]

hey does anyone know if the bug where save games will apeare out of order and bug out has been fixed with XCOM:EW?

 

[Frankster]

I'm starting to think that going into the EXALT intro mission without Carapace Armor is suicide, given that I've wiped twice on it now. Oh well, time to rethink my early game strategy...

See above. 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. It'd still be hard...it's an enemy dense mission with a lot of vertical space, Thin Men, and a VIP to baby sit, but you won't need to cope with the Thin Man trick shot show as they get massive flanking bonuses from taking two steps halfway across the map.

I did the first exalt mission with 3 rookies and 1 squaddie (my vets were in the hospital) and no special gear on classic so its well doable so long as you don't mind heavy casualties.

First time I got creamed after reaching the VIP, but 2nd time...Here's what made the mission a lot easier for me...
Between you and the VIP there's 2 buildings which both have comfy rooftops for your men to hold up on whilst you send one to go towards the VIP. From this position of height your men are able to easily rain death upon the aliens as they land whilst being decently protected due to the height advantage.

That said... All my men ended up dieing due to thin men being accurate and mobile, but it bought enough time for the VIP to leg it, and as my last man fell to the floor wounded... MISSION SUCCESS. Wtf didn't you want me to kill all the aliens left? Well i'm not complaining, time to shower the survivor with medals once he recovered from his month stint in the hospital (the award for this occasion was named "MEDAL OF THE UNDYING BARSTARD").

 

[BloatedGuppy]

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.

 

[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.