SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
Dark Descent was more like a squad based RTS that you can pause than turn based either, but it did look pretty neat. Really nails the aliens atmosphere.
Dark Descent was more like a squad based RTS that you can pause than turn based either, but it did look pretty neat. Really nails the aliens atmosphere.
It's pretty fun! Also nails the OH FUCK when things start falling apart because you pushed too hard, too fast.
I love that game so much because it is more than happy to just sit back and watch the player dig their own grave.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Who owns the XCOM IP? Because I know Solomon left after Midnight Suns and is starting a new thing. That doesn't mean the IP won't be exploited further if there is money in it.
I expect it's Firaxis. It looks like any exploitation of the IP would be done by an almost entirely different team, though. The quality of such an effort is not in any way a done deal; how many times has an IP changed hands and the result is an uninspired mess done out of obligation instead of passion for the product (please be good, V:tM Bloodlines 2)?
Take-Two owns the XCOM brand, so I would expect a Take-Two studio to do a new XCOM game, whether that is Firaxis or another developer they own.
Ah fair enough. A brief rabbit hole tells me that Take-Two subsidiary 2K owns XCOM. Interestingly enough, 2K just bought Gearbox, which is Borderlands, Duke Nukem, and... Aliens: Colonial Marines. Now the real time aspect of A:CM turned me off, but a lot of people I've heard from say that it is a very solid tactics game. If Firaxis is toast, they could probably do a lot worse than that team for XCOM 3.
But that is just rampant speculation.
Aliens: Colonial Marines is a FPS. The one you are thinking of is Aliens: Dark Descent, which is indeed excellent, but also not Gearbox.
Probably thanks to this thread, I literally had a dream last night that a teaser for XCOM 3 dropped, and now I'm sad.
It was so believeable too, just a short 10-second or so clip of an alien ship, of conspicuously NOT elder design, phasing into existence and strafing a busy street full of civilians; said civilians also conspicuous including vipers, mutons and hybrids.
I guess there's still a chance we get something like that from Firaxis, but I'd definitely forgotten that Jake was no longer with them.
0
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I've played Aliens: Dark Descent twice, once for the regular campaign and once for NG+. It's definitely not the same flavor as XCOM where you can take forever debating a move, but it's an excellent game overall. There's a decent selection of class and class abilities and the game is this odd, but great, mix of trying to be both stealth and deploying overwhelming firepower when needed. The Stress and Aggressiveness mechanics also feel a little one-sided at first, but they're actually pretty great for making you feel smart for pulling out of a mission before shit snowballs and also making you go "shit, I should've pulled out thirty seconds ago" when you have three catastrophes in ten seconds and shit goes sideways.
The Aggressiveness mechanic in particular is great for generating those "holding action" moments that look awesome in the movie. Xenos are not permanently aware of you; they patrol a map and can be avoided by taking different routes or taking them out in a few different ways. If you get in LoS, you get a few seconds to react. If they finally become aware of you, then a "Hunt" starts where the currently-spawned xenos swarm your position. While the Hunt goes on, the hive Aggressiveness climbs and, at certain intervals, will cause the hive to spawn nastier and nastier boss xenos. You can end Hunts early by welding yourself into a room, otherwise you have to ride them out. And at each level of Aggressiveness, the Marines build Stress faster and that will start to hit them with debuffs every 100 points (even permanent debuffs).
So when you play, you want to be aggressive enough to finish objectives, but also smart about when to push. You will get found, so you basically always want to have a good defensive position in mind so you can deploy defenses (like turrets) and set up abilities. Because a fully-equipped and prepped squad can shred literally hundreds of aliens on a mission, but a lack of planning can see a squad fold in seconds if a xeno gets behind your line. There's also the matter of juggling Marines so you can rotate out tired or injured troops while still maintaining a full squad.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Yeah, to be very clear, Dark Descent is NOT a tactical turn-based game. Combat has no turns, the game plays in realtime except when you pause it (or set if for time slow, they're both options and the game can also be set to pause automatically for certain things), there's no movement grid, and there's no action/time unit resource system. Learning to use abilities and tactical options well involves some amount of prediction and timing to make sure things go right where you need them (because the abilities have a realtime windup and stuff can move in that timeframe).
It's a tactical game, it is not a turn-based game outside the strategic base layer.
Just finished Tactical Breach Wizards. What a charming ass charming game.
The final battle was pretty tricky.
I mostly ended up abusing Zan's Predictive Shot until Kennedy was in a position where Rion could just spore bomb her last clone and her swap target at the same time.
I may go back and do the optional missions, but I will say that the bespoke puzzle missions are interesting, but don't draw me back for the replays. I tend to gravitate back to stuff like Into the Breach that can randomize every mission.
+2
SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I recently tried out Aliens: Dark Descent thanks to Gamepass and I have to say it's a very interesting, refreshing take on the squad tactics genre. Instead of turn-based it's real-time, but pretty much all of the other mechanics found in X-COM are there - base building, soldier management, permadeath, etc. And the gameplay itself feels very similar even though it's not quite the same. There's definitely more of a time urgency element, since you can't just sit there and think through your turn, but it does pause when you are selecting skills, etc., so in practice it's not too dissimilar from a simultaneous action phase.
The only thing is that the game is pretty brutal in terms of difficulty and it doesn't do the best job at explaining all the underlying mechanics, but I guess difficulty sliders exist for a reason!
+4
mastertheheroProfessional Video Editor & Book AuthorRegistered Userregular
I recently tried out Aliens: Dark Descent thanks to Gamepass and I have to say it's a very interesting, refreshing take on the squad tactics genre. Instead of turn-based it's real-time, but pretty much all of the other mechanics found in X-COM are there - base building, soldier management, permadeath, etc. And the gameplay itself feels very similar even though it's not quite the same. There's definitely more of a time urgency element, since you can't just sit there and think through your turn, but it does pause when you are selecting skills, etc., so in practice it's not too dissimilar from a simultaneous action phase.
The only thing is that the game is pretty brutal in terms of difficulty and it doesn't do the best job at explaining all the underlying mechanics, but I guess difficulty sliders exist for a reason!
Aliens: Dark Descent is actually one of my favorite real time strategy games! Commanding a squad of misfit marines to kill xenos was really well done and excellent. The biggest issue with the game is not necessarily the mechanics but the lack of replayability. With X-Com you at least have the illusion of playing in a different setting with every campaign, especially with the randomly generated tilesets.
Unfortunately, Aliens doesn't do any randomization. So if you decide to replay the game, you're just going to replay the same maps over and over again. Yeah, you get new game + and all that but it doesn't really shakeup or add that much new to the game. The research tree is also extremely small compared to X-Com so there's really not much progression in terms of discovering new technology. The game keeps it with the lore of the movies and as a result doesn't stray too far from what we've seen in the films.
The other major issue with the game are the scripted and unavoidable horde attacks. There are certain areas where the game literally tells you, "This is going to be a boss battle. Make sure you're ready." Boss battle could mean a giant Xeno, horde attack, or something else that's crazy. Although I appreciated the warnings, this unfortunately also added to the linearity of the game. If the game was a bit more freeform like X-Com, I'm sure I would be replaying it over and over.
One of the best mechanics is the feeling of utter terror you get when that motion sensor goes off. Is it a human walking around or a xeno? If it's a xeno and it spots you, it's going to call its friends. If you don't go back to stealth in time, it's going to call even more friends and more friends and more friends until you're all either dead, disappear, or evacuate. Also, your marines can get pretty damn powerful like X-Com soldiers. The sniper in particular can make it so you can stealth your way through most of the mission. But even with these powerful marines there is never a feeling of safety or complacency. Because no matter how powerful your sniper is or how many auto turrets you have, once you start running out of ammo or medpacks, there ain't no way you can defeat the xenos.
X-Com had a way of making your soldiers become super soldiers. They have unlimited ammo. Colonial marines do not. In X-Com you can clear a map and earn a victory. The Aliens map is never cleared because they create tunnels which spawn an endless amount of xenos. You can reduce the population but you can never exterminate them. And god help you when they send those swarms of face huggers after you.
I like both strategy games and War hams quite a lot, but I remember a lot of talk about it being a broken buggy mess when this one came out (especially in relation to BG3). Is it worth getting now?
I like both strategy games and War hams quite a lot, but I remember a lot of talk about it being a broken buggy mess when this one came out (especially in relation to BG3). Is it worth getting now?
I haven't played for a few months because I'm waiting for the second DLC before I start a new game, but the game was pretty playable by the time I finished my first run.
It's a pretty iconic 40k experience; the best part is that it focuses on the cool society shit you don't see in the after action miniature war reports, and essentially allows you to shape your own experience in the three paths (dogmatic, iconoclast, heretic).
The last patch before the first DLC was fantastic. I'm also waiting for the second DLC (and probably a patch after that to be safe) to go back to it, but it hit every note of the setting perfectly. It also made sure none of the morality options were the default right - Iconoclast feels better but you are often allowing bad things to happen because you don't want to personally do a less bad thing.*
The characters are great, and the romances are all fascinatingly dysfunctional (BG3's bear scene has nothing on this shit).
*-that said my Iconoclast ending was the closest to moral good I think you can get
The Imperium eventually came and killed me, but set off a civil war in the attempt. And even though they killed me, they could never tear down what I built - the worlds I touched remained for generations as pillars of freedom and equality, where humans and eldar shared worlds in lasting peace and chaos never took root.
"Shoot, coward. You are only killing a man."
The big downside is that the character system is incredibly wordy and full of values that are derived from other values and combined to form more values, and every talent is a mathematical theorem. "Decrease veil degradation by willpower*(fellowship+carouse)/(2*momentum)% per psyker level" is a pretty typical looking tooltip, and the talent list is just. So. Fucking. Long. It's a great argument for cranking difficulty to the bottom and installing a party limit mod so you can just bring everyone everywhere.
Actually, they changed the tooltips around. Now it gives you the actual number (Decrease veil degradation by 14) and then if you hover over that number it tells you the formula.
Actually, they changed the tooltips around. Now it gives you the actual number (Decrease veil degradation by 14) and then if you hover over that number it tells you the formula.
I think when I played last, months ago, some of the tooltips were formulae and others were the solution/hover for formula. It was pretty inconsistent and good on them if they fixed it.
0
SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
edited December 2024
I totally thought Rogue Trader was supposed to be like a 40k XCOM game but was surprised it was more Baldur's Gate. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not what I hoped.
Yeah the 40k XCOM is Mechanicus. Which is an interesting game because it manages to go even MORE buck-ass stupid with how powerful your dudes get by the end.
Chaos Gate Daemonhunters is also XCOM with Gray Knights, and I cannot sing its praises enough (including both DLCs, the poor reviews of Duty Eternal are idiots and I will die on this hill surrounded by my broken enemies).
Edit: also, its incompatible Steam Deck rating is a lie. It runs fine if you turn things down a little, the text is readable. Only issue is one not even mentioned in the rating - the controller input is a bit fiddly for movement inputs.
Hevach on
+2
SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
Already played through Chaos Gate. It was an okay game but late game is pretty repetitive. I'm also mostly through Mechanicus, just got a little bored. It's why I've turned to just modding XCOM 2 heavily. I might do another modded HBS Battletech if I can get the damn game to run okay but it just doesn't seem to like my computer.
Daemonhunters is great...yeah the late game can get repetitive, but the story is so good, and honestly the repetitive nature can propel you towards the finale instead of just grinding eternally.
That said, the new mission types in the DLC add some interesting wrinkles. Some find them annoying because your established strategies won't work, but I kinda like choosing my squad and gear specifically for those circumstances.
Mechanicus I never got into for some reason, despite buying it twice.
Ok I think I'll get Rogue Trader, but I'll wait until this next DLC is ready since it's so close.
Daemonhunters I've already finished. It's fine but definitely had some noticeable issues. Repetitive in both maps and enemies for sure. It has a giant research tree that's largely pointless because the best stuff is generally right at the start (teleport your entire squad anywhere on the map? uh yes please) and then goes and permanently disables all of your Stratagems for the final act anyway just to drill in how much you wasted your time doing extra missions to unlock everything past the halfway point. The class balance is also kind of off; Purifier comes in as an advanced class and is basically worthless, being a class that specialises in flamethrowering large groups of enemies for middling damage when you're now at the point in the game where large groups of cultists/chump daemons have been replaced by 3-4 hardened plague marines/terminators and a giant mech. The paladin is just a worst justicar (and please, why give me a storm shield but no thunder hammer to go with it? Also where are the lightning claws!?). The apothecary I thought was essential (being the only healer) and then quickly realised he sucked and bringing actual damage was far more useful, similar with the chaplain where it's like, sure those buffs are okay but I could bring a second interceptor or purgator or one of these shiny assassins because straight killing power is just so much better.
Didn't like that the squad size never increase from 4, and then the final mission wanted me to field 8 people and I literally did not have 8 people levelled up because there was no need to. I played on hard and the hp penalty for fielding a tired marine was nothing compared to the power of a veteran marine vs a rookie, so I just kept using the same 5 marines for everything. Really thought the inquisitor lady would join missions eventually as well, but that never happened either.
This all sounds very negative but it's a perfectly fine game, it just badly needs more variation at a minimum and a balance pass preferably.
Ok I think I'll get Rogue Trader, but I'll wait until this next DLC is ready since it's so close.
Daemonhunters I've already finished. It's fine but definitely had some noticeable issues. Repetitive in both maps and enemies for sure. It has a giant research tree that's largely pointless because the best stuff is generally right at the start (teleport your entire squad anywhere on the map? uh yes please) and then goes and permanently disables all of your Stratagems for the final act anyway just to drill in how much you wasted your time doing extra missions to unlock everything past the halfway point. The class balance is also kind of off; Purifier comes in as an advanced class and is basically worthless, being a class that specialises in flamethrowering large groups of enemies for middling damage when you're now at the point in the game where large groups of cultists/chump daemons have been replaced by 3-4 hardened plague marines/terminators and a giant mech. The paladin is just a worst justicar (and please, why give me a storm shield but no thunder hammer to go with it? Also where are the lightning claws!?). The apothecary I thought was essential (being the only healer) and then quickly realised he sucked and bringing actual damage was far more useful, similar with the chaplain where it's like, sure those buffs are okay but I could bring a second interceptor or purgator or one of these shiny assassins because straight killing power is just so much better.
Didn't like that the squad size never increase from 4, and then the final mission wanted me to field 8 people and I literally did not have 8 people levelled up because there was no need to. I played on hard and the hp penalty for fielding a tired marine was nothing compared to the power of a veteran marine vs a rookie, so I just kept using the same 5 marines for everything. Really thought the inquisitor lady would join missions eventually as well, but that never happened either.
This all sounds very negative but it's a perfectly fine game, it just badly needs more variation at a minimum and a balance pass preferably.
After doing the game on legendary I'm going to disagree with some of these.
The Paladin for one is fantastic, being the linchpin of a Stun focused group and easily supplanted the Interceptor for me - except for specific missions where I needed the extra mobility (which you rarely do thanks to the Librarian, for me really only the save the Servitors mission). Apothecary and Chaplain may not deal a super big amount of direct damage, but when their buffs are what allows one to clear entire maps in a single turn on highest difficulty without getting a single point of damage then I'd say calling them more than just "okay" is warranted.
And as for the Purifier...
automatically reloads when out of ammo, damage can go up to 26 with the right support
I rarely used them because they didn't fit my main group's stun focus, but when I did they easily cleared any group of enemies I aimed them at.
Oh man, Paladins rock so hard with their AOEs. Mine was soloing spawn points in the servitor missions, just wiping whole groups. Purifiers also have some great advantages, though I usually have at most two, a flamer guy and a grenade guy. Plus the level 20 DLC doofus that I only use if everyone else is injured.
I never had a problem with only having four guys leveled because I swapped people out for injuries, circumstances (specific missions call for specific builds), and because my OCD doesn't let me "waste" XP by having a whole crew of max-level dudes on every mission. That's a shit idea in XCOM and it's a shit idea here. You gotta be doing contingency and succession planning, because, especially when you're doing Ironman/Grandmaster mode, you never know when shit is going to get real.
So maybe have one max level guy leading rookies or mid-ranks each mission. Keep your veterans' powder dry for emergencies.
0
SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
I'm still pretty salty that they nerfed a bunch of stuff when I was halfway through playing the game with no way to fix those characters.
I admit I almost never used Strategems in my first several play-throughs because I saw a tooltip that said they could only be used once and thought that was EVER. Because Warhammer does that shit in the setting.
So they went into the same backpack as all of those potions in RPGs I was saving for a real emergency.
Plus the level 20 DLC doofus that I only use if everyone else is injured.
Garran Crowe, who like Kheldor Draigo is a big deal in the Grey Knights lore, OP by the standards of an OP faction. He got kind of screwed by the game design. Or maybe the Purifier class got screwed by him.
Crowe is bound to that daemon sword, so he doesn't use a flamer like all the other Purifiers. So apparently to support him half the class's talent tree is a mixed grab bag of stuff from the melee classes, while the other half is built around a specific weapon type that can't be equipped with a melee weapon.
Which on its face isn't that bad since short of grinding up a stack of dead dudes in boxes to mentor their replacements you can only fill about half the tree. But when you pull a character their first few talents are randomly assigned and half your purifiers have wasted them.
Plus the level 20 DLC doofus that I only use if everyone else is injured.
Garran Crowe, who like Kheldor Draigo is a big deal in the Grey Knights lore, OP by the standards of an OP faction. He got kind of screwed by the game design. Or maybe the Purifier class got screwed by him.
Crowe is bound to that daemon sword, so he doesn't use a flamer like all the other Purifiers. So apparently to support him half the class's talent tree is a mixed grab bag of stuff from the melee classes, while the other half is built around a specific weapon type that can't be equipped with a melee weapon.
Which on its face isn't that bad since short of grinding up a stack of dead dudes in boxes to mentor their replacements you can only fill about half the tree. But when you pull a character their first few talents are randomly assigned and half your purifiers have wasted them.
I managed to get some satisfactory builds out of the melee purifiers by speccing into grenades. There are so many great melee weapons that having a sword-and-bomb guy was pretty alright.
The "wasted" specs are a problem for a lot of classes, though. Do you really need soneone who is good at both psilencers and cannons?
My favorite grenade spec ever was an apothecary. There's a terminator armor with an extra slot and multiple purity seals to extend uses. It made them a damage powerhouse on turns when they weren't healing, and while they gave up having a servo skull for extra healing they could get a ton of extra willpower off kills and got a lot more stabs with the healing chainsaw than my other apothecaries could. For boarding actions, a well placed grenade can ring out a whole pod so I could often split them from the team on missions with enough holes to knock dudes into.
My favorite grenade spec ever was an apothecary. There's a terminator armor with an extra slot and multiple purity seals to extend uses. It made them a damage powerhouse on turns when they weren't healing, and while they gave up having a servo skull for extra healing they could get a ton of extra willpower off kills and got a lot more stabs with the healing chainsaw than my other apothecaries could. For boarding actions, a well placed grenade can ring out a whole pod so I could often split them from the team on missions with enough holes to knock dudes into.
The grenade spec terminator armor always baffled me until I put it on a Chaplain with the maxed out Empyrian Brain Mines and buffed executions and then went on an execute festival.
All this recent talk about Aliens Dark Descent is very timely because it is one of the free PS+ games this month and i have been interested in it for awhile. Glad to see it is actually pretty good.
Gamertag: KL Retribution
PSN:Furlion
+3
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Be warned it's hard. If I could change one thing it would be that the game needs more levels and an easier ramp.
Be warned it's hard. If I could change one thing it would be that the game needs more levels and an easier ramp.
How hard? Like Souls hard? Or like Super Meat Boy hard?
I'd say the difficulty levels should be adjusted one level down. So Story Mode is basically Normal. Some of the difficulty is in unexplained mechanics as well, which adds to the learning curve.
Be warned it's hard. If I could change one thing it would be that the game needs more levels and an easier ramp.
How hard? Like Souls hard? Or like Super Meat Boy hard?
I'd say the difficulty levels should be adjusted one level down. So Story Mode is basically Normal. Some of the difficulty is in unexplained mechanics as well, which adds to the learning curve.
Oh i will be reading/watching guides on how to play so hidden mechanics don't bother me. I mean dark souls is my favorite game.
Posts
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
He already announced the game they’re working on is a life sim.
I love that game so much because it is more than happy to just sit back and watch the player dig their own grave.
Ah whoops.
It was so believeable too, just a short 10-second or so clip of an alien ship, of conspicuously NOT elder design, phasing into existence and strafing a busy street full of civilians; said civilians also conspicuous including vipers, mutons and hybrids.
I guess there's still a chance we get something like that from Firaxis, but I'd definitely forgotten that Jake was no longer with them.
The Aggressiveness mechanic in particular is great for generating those "holding action" moments that look awesome in the movie. Xenos are not permanently aware of you; they patrol a map and can be avoided by taking different routes or taking them out in a few different ways. If you get in LoS, you get a few seconds to react. If they finally become aware of you, then a "Hunt" starts where the currently-spawned xenos swarm your position. While the Hunt goes on, the hive Aggressiveness climbs and, at certain intervals, will cause the hive to spawn nastier and nastier boss xenos. You can end Hunts early by welding yourself into a room, otherwise you have to ride them out. And at each level of Aggressiveness, the Marines build Stress faster and that will start to hit them with debuffs every 100 points (even permanent debuffs).
So when you play, you want to be aggressive enough to finish objectives, but also smart about when to push. You will get found, so you basically always want to have a good defensive position in mind so you can deploy defenses (like turrets) and set up abilities. Because a fully-equipped and prepped squad can shred literally hundreds of aliens on a mission, but a lack of planning can see a squad fold in seconds if a xeno gets behind your line. There's also the matter of juggling Marines so you can rotate out tired or injured troops while still maintaining a full squad.
It's a tactical game, it is not a turn-based game outside the strategic base layer.
The final battle was pretty tricky.
I may go back and do the optional missions, but I will say that the bespoke puzzle missions are interesting, but don't draw me back for the replays. I tend to gravitate back to stuff like Into the Breach that can randomize every mission.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3348448747
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
The only thing is that the game is pretty brutal in terms of difficulty and it doesn't do the best job at explaining all the underlying mechanics, but I guess difficulty sliders exist for a reason!
Aliens: Dark Descent is actually one of my favorite real time strategy games! Commanding a squad of misfit marines to kill xenos was really well done and excellent. The biggest issue with the game is not necessarily the mechanics but the lack of replayability. With X-Com you at least have the illusion of playing in a different setting with every campaign, especially with the randomly generated tilesets.
Unfortunately, Aliens doesn't do any randomization. So if you decide to replay the game, you're just going to replay the same maps over and over again. Yeah, you get new game + and all that but it doesn't really shakeup or add that much new to the game. The research tree is also extremely small compared to X-Com so there's really not much progression in terms of discovering new technology. The game keeps it with the lore of the movies and as a result doesn't stray too far from what we've seen in the films.
The other major issue with the game are the scripted and unavoidable horde attacks. There are certain areas where the game literally tells you, "This is going to be a boss battle. Make sure you're ready." Boss battle could mean a giant Xeno, horde attack, or something else that's crazy. Although I appreciated the warnings, this unfortunately also added to the linearity of the game. If the game was a bit more freeform like X-Com, I'm sure I would be replaying it over and over.
One of the best mechanics is the feeling of utter terror you get when that motion sensor goes off. Is it a human walking around or a xeno? If it's a xeno and it spots you, it's going to call its friends. If you don't go back to stealth in time, it's going to call even more friends and more friends and more friends until you're all either dead, disappear, or evacuate. Also, your marines can get pretty damn powerful like X-Com soldiers. The sniper in particular can make it so you can stealth your way through most of the mission. But even with these powerful marines there is never a feeling of safety or complacency. Because no matter how powerful your sniper is or how many auto turrets you have, once you start running out of ammo or medpacks, there ain't no way you can defeat the xenos.
X-Com had a way of making your soldiers become super soldiers. They have unlimited ammo. Colonial marines do not. In X-Com you can clear a map and earn a victory. The Aliens map is never cleared because they create tunnels which spawn an endless amount of xenos. You can reduce the population but you can never exterminate them. And god help you when they send those swarms of face huggers after you.
Overall, a great game. Highly recommend.
https://www.thesilverninja.com
I like both strategy games and War hams quite a lot, but I remember a lot of talk about it being a broken buggy mess when this one came out (especially in relation to BG3). Is it worth getting now?
I haven't played for a few months because I'm waiting for the second DLC before I start a new game, but the game was pretty playable by the time I finished my first run.
It's a pretty iconic 40k experience; the best part is that it focuses on the cool society shit you don't see in the after action miniature war reports, and essentially allows you to shape your own experience in the three paths (dogmatic, iconoclast, heretic).
The characters are great, and the romances are all fascinatingly dysfunctional (BG3's bear scene has nothing on this shit).
*-that said my Iconoclast ending was the closest to moral good I think you can get
"Shoot, coward. You are only killing a man."
The big downside is that the character system is incredibly wordy and full of values that are derived from other values and combined to form more values, and every talent is a mathematical theorem. "Decrease veil degradation by willpower*(fellowship+carouse)/(2*momentum)% per psyker level" is a pretty typical looking tooltip, and the talent list is just. So. Fucking. Long. It's a great argument for cranking difficulty to the bottom and installing a party limit mod so you can just bring everyone everywhere.
I think when I played last, months ago, some of the tooltips were formulae and others were the solution/hover for formula. It was pretty inconsistent and good on them if they fixed it.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
Edit: also, its incompatible Steam Deck rating is a lie. It runs fine if you turn things down a little, the text is readable. Only issue is one not even mentioned in the rating - the controller input is a bit fiddly for movement inputs.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
That said, the new mission types in the DLC add some interesting wrinkles. Some find them annoying because your established strategies won't work, but I kinda like choosing my squad and gear specifically for those circumstances.
Mechanicus I never got into for some reason, despite buying it twice.
Daemonhunters I've already finished. It's fine but definitely had some noticeable issues. Repetitive in both maps and enemies for sure. It has a giant research tree that's largely pointless because the best stuff is generally right at the start (teleport your entire squad anywhere on the map? uh yes please) and then goes and permanently disables all of your Stratagems for the final act anyway just to drill in how much you wasted your time doing extra missions to unlock everything past the halfway point. The class balance is also kind of off; Purifier comes in as an advanced class and is basically worthless, being a class that specialises in flamethrowering large groups of enemies for middling damage when you're now at the point in the game where large groups of cultists/chump daemons have been replaced by 3-4 hardened plague marines/terminators and a giant mech. The paladin is just a worst justicar (and please, why give me a storm shield but no thunder hammer to go with it? Also where are the lightning claws!?). The apothecary I thought was essential (being the only healer) and then quickly realised he sucked and bringing actual damage was far more useful, similar with the chaplain where it's like, sure those buffs are okay but I could bring a second interceptor or purgator or one of these shiny assassins because straight killing power is just so much better.
Didn't like that the squad size never increase from 4, and then the final mission wanted me to field 8 people and I literally did not have 8 people levelled up because there was no need to. I played on hard and the hp penalty for fielding a tired marine was nothing compared to the power of a veteran marine vs a rookie, so I just kept using the same 5 marines for everything. Really thought the inquisitor lady would join missions eventually as well, but that never happened either.
This all sounds very negative but it's a perfectly fine game, it just badly needs more variation at a minimum and a balance pass preferably.
After doing the game on legendary I'm going to disagree with some of these.
The Paladin for one is fantastic, being the linchpin of a Stun focused group and easily supplanted the Interceptor for me - except for specific missions where I needed the extra mobility (which you rarely do thanks to the Librarian, for me really only the save the Servitors mission). Apothecary and Chaplain may not deal a super big amount of direct damage, but when their buffs are what allows one to clear entire maps in a single turn on highest difficulty without getting a single point of damage then I'd say calling them more than just "okay" is warranted.
And as for the Purifier...
automatically reloads when out of ammo, damage can go up to 26 with the right support
I never had a problem with only having four guys leveled because I swapped people out for injuries, circumstances (specific missions call for specific builds), and because my OCD doesn't let me "waste" XP by having a whole crew of max-level dudes on every mission. That's a shit idea in XCOM and it's a shit idea here. You gotta be doing contingency and succession planning, because, especially when you're doing Ironman/Grandmaster mode, you never know when shit is going to get real.
So maybe have one max level guy leading rookies or mid-ranks each mission. Keep your veterans' powder dry for emergencies.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
So they went into the same backpack as all of those potions in RPGs I was saving for a real emergency.
Garran Crowe, who like Kheldor Draigo is a big deal in the Grey Knights lore, OP by the standards of an OP faction. He got kind of screwed by the game design. Or maybe the Purifier class got screwed by him.
Crowe is bound to that daemon sword, so he doesn't use a flamer like all the other Purifiers. So apparently to support him half the class's talent tree is a mixed grab bag of stuff from the melee classes, while the other half is built around a specific weapon type that can't be equipped with a melee weapon.
Which on its face isn't that bad since short of grinding up a stack of dead dudes in boxes to mentor their replacements you can only fill about half the tree. But when you pull a character their first few talents are randomly assigned and half your purifiers have wasted them.
I managed to get some satisfactory builds out of the melee purifiers by speccing into grenades. There are so many great melee weapons that having a sword-and-bomb guy was pretty alright.
The "wasted" specs are a problem for a lot of classes, though. Do you really need soneone who is good at both psilencers and cannons?
The grenade spec terminator armor always baffled me until I put it on a Chaplain with the maxed out Empyrian Brain Mines and buffed executions and then went on an execute festival.
PSN:Furlion
How hard? Like Souls hard? Or like Super Meat Boy hard?
PSN:Furlion
I'd say the difficulty levels should be adjusted one level down. So Story Mode is basically Normal. Some of the difficulty is in unexplained mechanics as well, which adds to the learning curve.
Oh i will be reading/watching guides on how to play so hidden mechanics don't bother me. I mean dark souls is my favorite game.
PSN:Furlion
Star Wars XCOM from the art director of Midnight Suns and XCOM 2.
Announcement set for April 19th.