XCOM: Enemy Unknown

ancapailldorcha

Running out of appropriate agents for my hatred, unfortunately.

degrassinoel

what difficulty?

ancapailldorcha

Normal with IronMan mode enabled.

degrassinoel

ouch, i lost a lot of my best on normal ironman too in my first playthrough of EW.
Sadly because i had unequipped their gear in favour of training up rookies and then the

base was attacked and i might as well have had naked soldiers with popguns attacking everything from cyberdiscs and mechtoids to ethereals and muton elites

- complete disaster but i made up for it with what i had left

Quatermain

Okay. I used to be a Double-Tap fan. I have basically converted to In The Zone.

Panic mission. Whole bunch of mutons and chryssalids all bunched up with the mutons behind cover. Out goes a missile to destroy some cover, leaving all six guys damaged and in the open. Up steps Jessica "Checkmate" Knightley, who proceeds to waste every single one in a single turn's worth of shooting. She only stopped because she needed to reload, so she just drew her pistol and went on overwatch.

Grimebox

I prefer the consistency of double-tap. There are only rare occasions like above where you completely destroy the enemy. With double-tap you can constantly chip away at them

Quatermain

I like the gamble, truth be told. And it gets a little better with the MECs providing reliable cover removal.

ancapailldorcha

degrassinoel wrote: »

ouch, i lost a lot of my best on normal ironman too in my first playthrough of EW.
Sadly because i had unequipped their gear in favour of training up rookies and then the

base was attacked and i might as well have had naked soldiers with popguns attacking everything from cyberdiscs and mechtoids to ethereals and muton elites

- complete disaster but i made up for it with what i had left

Might be in with a chance of clocking the game then. Didn't expect losing soldiers to be so painful. Nearly cried when my Scottish medic who'd been with me since the tutorial got flanked and subsequently executed by mutons.

Cravez

While I can see the advantage of "In the Zone", I do prefer Double Tap. It all comes down to the situation at hand and generally I find that you will have rare occassions of being able to flank tons of enemies.

Also not every enemy can be flanked even while out of cover such as the Berserkers, Sectopods, Cyberdiscs, Sectoids, Drones etc. I'd prefer being able to disable-shot a Sectopod and then being able to either headshot it for more critical damage or being able to shoot another high value enemy.

I also use Arch Angel Armor and generally stay behind and use Squadsight so the chances of flanking are even less.

If I did use In the Zone, I would also take something like Snapshot and Gunslinger and use them as a more mobile sniper rather than taking long range shots to increase the efficiency of In the Zone.

ancapailldorcha

How do people feel about Enemy Within? I was thinking of buying it but the MEC class is putting me off a bit. Does it have it's own story or does it integrate the main game?

Patser

It intergrates and adds quite a lot of nice features but you still end up playing the same campaign, with a few extra missions/options available.

degrassinoel

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

How do people feel about Enemy Within? I was thinking of buying it but the MEC class is putting me off a bit. Does it have it's own story or does it integrate the main game?

it's what the campaign should have been like from the start, much more to do, and much less of a grind through the higher tier tech and psi stuff. With some added bells and whistles. The campaign is the same, but it's a lot more enjoyable than it was with EW. You can do it with or without MEC's and Genemods, they just make it a bit easier for tougher enemies/maps - the Sectopod (same one from EU) has been buffed quite a bit, so it can take a proper hammering before it dies, but again, that's later in the game and you'll likely have plasma weaponry by the time you see one of those

if you enjoyed Enemy Unknown, you'll really like Enemy Within.

edit: approximately 50% of the maps are new too - something that bugged me about the original was the maps got a bit stale after a while, the new ones are good and vary from cityscape to farm and some awesome council mission maps

jaxdasher

No complaints there. Im just hoping EW will be on sale soon. Thats my xmas.

Grimebox

degrassinoel wrote: »

it's what the campaign should have been like from the start, much more to do, and much less of a grind through the higher tier tech and psi stuff. With some added bells and whistles. The campaign is the same, but it's a lot more enjoyable than it was with EW. You can do it with or without MEC's and Genemods, they just make it a bit easier for tougher enemies/maps - the Sectopod (same one from EU) has been buffed quite a bit, so it can take a proper hammering before it dies, but again, that's later in the game and you'll likely have plasma weaponry by the time you see one of those

if you enjoyed Enemy Unknown, you'll really like Enemy Within.

edit: approximately 50% of the maps are new too - something that bugged me about the original was the maps got a bit stale after a while, the new ones are good and vary from cityscape to farm and some awesome council mission maps

Took the words right out of my mouth.

EW is the game the original should have been. The missions got very, very stale for me in EU. EW has a huge variety and always keeps it interesting.

ancapailldorcha

Ta for the feedback. Think I might get it when the price drops a little more. Really hate the idea of mutilating my beloved troops for MECs though.

degrassinoel

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Ta for the feedback. Think I might get it when the price drops a little more. Really hate the idea of mutilating my beloved troops for MECs though.

One more thing about MEC's - once any soldier ranks up to rookie, they can be brought into the MEC program, then they get to level up a whole new tree and keep the fundamental bonus they had as whatever type of soldier they were before, sniper/heavy/support/assault - those bonuses are very helpful, especially the heavy and support ones

ancapailldorcha

On the final mission now. That pair of sectopods wiped out 2 of my squad leaving the ethereals to finish me off.

Grimebox

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

On the final mission now. That pair of sectopods wiped out 2 of my squad leaving the ethereals to finish me off.

Is the end of the game any different than the original? I got bored when the new content seemed to dry up

ancapailldorcha

I bought Enemy Within but I disabled automatic updating for XCOM as I wanted to finish the game without the extra content first. Cleared it last night. I had my sniper fire 2 shots at the uber ethereal which ended the game. I had no idea that that was the uber ethereal.
Edit: Tried veteran today with the expansion. Don't know if it's just me but nearly every time I've taken a hit, it's been critical. Think I'll give this a rest for now.

degrassinoel

I'd recommend playing on normal first so you get used to the changes

ancapailldorcha

degrassinoel wrote: »

I'd recommend playing on normal first so you get used to the changes

Yeah, I've noticed a few to the core gameplay like having to build the officer training school now. I'd heard normal has become easier while classic and impossible have become more difficult. It'd be the only way for me to see the new features annoyingly.

degrassinoel

the officer training school was never there in classic and impossible as far as i remember, and that's a really huge hurdle to jump early on in those difficulties too.

ye should play through on normal ironman, i'd be surprised if you didnt lose a few soldiers anyway with some of the surprises the game has for ye

sin0city

After multiple failed attempts, I'm just about to do the

temple ship

on classic ironman.

To be honest I don't think I'm going to bother with Enemy Within.
Having played through Enemy Unknown on normal ironman already and having bought and played the Slingshot DLC I can't motivate myself to play through the campaign again, even with the new changes. Additional maps would be welcome but between single player and multiplayer I've had enough of the other ones.

I would have much preferred if they'd held out and kept all the new changes for a fully fledged prequel/sequel with a completely different story and a complete set of new maps.

Starscream25

Was just about to take out the last chap at an enemy base and the game froze on me, I'm so demoralised.

ancapailldorcha

degrassinoel wrote: »

the officer training school was never there in classic and impossible as far as i remember, and that's a really huge hurdle to jump early on in those difficulties too.

ye should play through on normal ironman, i'd be surprised if you didnt lose a few soldiers anyway with some of the surprises the game has for ye

Oh right, it's a difficulty thing? Fair enough. Yeah, going to try Normal Ironman when I get back next week. I watched Totalbiscuit's video on Enemy Within and he was constantly moaning about how overpowered MECs are.

Sarky

I haven't gotten to the point where I can actually use the new Meld resource (although the enhancements advertised look very tasty), but I'm liking a lot of the little things. The map variety is very welcome, and the medals you can award soldiers are an excellent little extra perk system. Having a soldier immune to panic is more valuable than a fusion launcher, I think.

ancapailldorcha

Is anyone else having trouble with aliens becoming invisible? The amount of soldiers I've lost to a conveniently invisible alien on overwatch is insane.

Sarky

I found a bug when using the "soldiers begin with random stats" second wave option. When loading a game where the soldiers have low Will, they can just panic for no bloody reason. Game seems to do a panic test as soon as you load. Very annoying.

And yes, I'm save scumming on Classic Ironman with no shame. It's nearly impossible to keep all the nations happy without having to worry about losing half your soldiers every other mission. especially with the Slingshot missions

throwing in Mutons ages before you normally encounter the f*ckers.

YouSavedMyLife

Playing through Enemy Within again atm. Playing Normal Ironman this time cause gaming should be enjoyable and Classic is so RNG heavy its frustrating beyond words. Anyway, Im on the final mission at the moment and the game keeps crashing. Lazy to find a solution but i was wondering is there any new content unlocks or different cinematic's with Enemy Within compared to the vanilla game? If there is nothing new i think ill just start a new game on Normal Ironman with all the second wave options enabled.

DeVore

Not sure I understand your question... you say you are about to finish Enemy Within and then ask if there is any new content in Enemy Within? Did you mean "Enemy Unknown" at the start of your post?