I thought the abbey in midnight suns was fine to ok, but I liked the campaign and legit got addicted to the combat. I didn’t notice a grind because frankly I would zone out and just play like 20 battles in a row without realising it. Don’t know what it was about the combat but I just adored it
I enjoyed the missions on Midnight Suns to the degree that I was playing them for the rewards, but not in a way that felt like grinding. I would eventually go "Oh, right, I should progress the story a bit," every once in a while, which caused some mild confusion:
When the time came for the team to pick a leader, I was genuinely confused. Every single character was already practically genuflecting as the Hunter walked past; why was this even up for discussion?
GNU Terry Pratchett
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
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Spoilered until images are unborked.
+2
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I picked up how grindy Midnight Suns would be about a dozen hours in and at that point I lost interest because it felt very samey and I didn't want to do all the chores in order to just unlock basic gameplay mechanics and cards.
It felt like an intrusion of pay-to-play mechanics in a game that I paid up front for, and after spending a few minutes looking to see if there were mods to solve that problem (there were) I kind of just stopped playing and didn't bother modding the game. A few months later I realized I hadn't played the game and no longer cared to play it and just uninstalled it entirely.
I think I have reached the point in my gaming maturity where if a game doesn't respect my time I don't respect the game.
I've never modded a game before; if/when I go in for a second playthrough of Midnight Suns, I'm definitely going to look into upping the currency drop rate, and tweaking the way card upgrades work so the actually good card mods show up more often.
Edit: as it turns out, Steam and Epic both have the season pass at 67% off right now, which per my cursory Internet search is the lowest price ever.
Every know and again I remember that Harebrained is gone so we won’t get anymore shadowrun or battletech xcom likes and it ruins my mood. I loved those games in some ways more then actual xcom.
The studio's not in an ideal state after the layoffs/separation from Paradox but Harebrained Schemes is still around and announced their next game a few weeks ago. However, it's a survivor horror rather than the usual tactics game they're known for.
Well it’s better than nothing i suppose! Had no idea
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Not to sound cynical, as I do hope for the best for the folks at HBS, but they are a shell of a company. Pretty much everyone involved with Shadowrun and Battletech are long gone. They've about a dozen or so people left working at HBS and essentially no money.
Either someone buys them or they shut their doors is the future I foresee.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
+1
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Not to sound cynical, as I do hope for the best for the folks at HBS, but they are a shell of a company. Pretty much everyone involved with Shadowrun and Battletech are long gone. They've about a dozen or so people left working at HBS and essentially no money.
Either someone buys them or they shut their doors is the future I foresee.
What the heck happened? Shadowrun was something of a struggle but Battletech did pretty well as far as I know. Did Paradox gut them or something?
Not to sound cynical, as I do hope for the best for the folks at HBS, but they are a shell of a company. Pretty much everyone involved with Shadowrun and Battletech are long gone. They've about a dozen or so people left working at HBS and essentially no money.
Either someone buys them or they shut their doors is the future I foresee.
What the heck happened? Shadowrun was something of a struggle but Battletech did pretty well as far as I know. Did Paradox gut them or something?
Pre-sales weren’t good enough on Lamplighters League so Paradox cleaned house before it even released.
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
I've never heard of Lamplighters League, so that tracks
Yeah that happens when you put no budget to promoting the game.
Worst part is the Battletech IP is still with Paradox so there' no chance we're ever getting another one.
Games Workshop is pretty loose with their IP. I'm sure the basic form could be adapted to, say, Collegia Titanica or Imperial Knights.
0
SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
Just started and finished the first act of Tactical Breach Wizards after my legend playthrough of Phoenix Point: Terror from the Void. Can confirm this game is great and hilarious.
Just started and finished the first act of Tactical Breach Wizards after my legend playthrough of Phoenix Point: Terror from the Void. Can confirm this game is great and hilarious.
When the worst complaint I can think of for a game is "I wish there were more of it", you know you made a damn good game.
Not to sound cynical, as I do hope for the best for the folks at HBS, but they are a shell of a company. Pretty much everyone involved with Shadowrun and Battletech are long gone. They've about a dozen or so people left working at HBS and essentially no money.
Either someone buys them or they shut their doors is the future I foresee.
What the heck happened? Shadowrun was something of a struggle but Battletech did pretty well as far as I know. Did Paradox gut them or something?
Pre-sales weren’t good enough on Lamplighters League so Paradox cleaned house before it even released.
Lamplighters League was also an incredibly broken mess of a game that still barely works, especially on Xbox.
Such a great premise absolutely wasted.
When you fire 80% of the development staff months before release it tends to release in a bad way and not get any kind of support afterwards.
Also I was wrong about the Battletech IP - they pitched Battletech 2 to Paradox and they turned it down because MS owns the IP and they didn't want to give MS a cut.
I've never modded a game before; if/when I go in for a second playthrough of Midnight Suns, I'm definitely going to look into upping the currency drop rate, and tweaking the way card upgrades work so the actually good card mods show up more often.
Edit: as it turns out, Steam and Epic both have the season pass at 67% off right now, which per my cursory Internet search is the lowest price ever.
I am still working at my first playthrough with one mod that lets you increase the drop rate from 5-20x and it's perfect. It let's you buy things without grinding, but not so many things that your rewards feel trivial.
Just started and finished the first act of Tactical Breach Wizards after my legend playthrough of Phoenix Point: Terror from the Void. Can confirm this game is great and hilarious.
How is Terror From the Void?
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SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
Just started and finished the first act of Tactical Breach Wizards after my legend playthrough of Phoenix Point: Terror from the Void. Can confirm this game is great and hilarious.
How is Terror From the Void?
It was okay to good I'd say. A big issue I have with most maps in Phoenix Point is the infinite reinforcements and then later on enemies affected by the void have a chance of getting an ability that also calls in reinforcements. Then stack that with late game acherons that can call in reinforcements or resurrects all nearby units and it can get really hairy. The big plus to this mod is that all the DLC of the game is better integrated storywise. Vehicles seem a bit better. Assaults losing dash kind of sucks but overall the class rebalancing seemed positive. The faction based perks were great, depending on your base class. Reverse engineering can also unlock their underlying research so you can more easily acquire some research normally blocked by faction rep. The behemoth isn't as bad, at least early on, because it will only harvest and not outright destroy havens anymore.
I ended up restarting once because I got to a point in the first playthrough where I was losing a base defense because I wasn't aware, or just forgot, how the base defense worked. The longer you wait to do the mission, the harder it gets, and I had waited until the last few hours. There was just too many waves of reinforcements that would spawn in here and there and myrmidons are still just as terrible as always. There's some revenant system you can unlock if you lose a soldier that I never interacted with. I think it eventually leads to a way to resurrect dead soldiers and possibly even fully mutate/cyborg them.
In the end it was a neat way to replay the game but some jank, like hits just missing and going through targets, is still there. I hope we hear something from Snapshot Games soon since they haven't announced anything since the final update to the game and a sequel could be appreciated while we wait for an XCOM 3.
I thought the last XCOM 3 news we got was that they had no plans for an XCOM 3?
Still slowly working my way through TBW, just got through Chapter 3:
"So you copied Zan's False Prophet? What do you call yours?"
"I'm not five, I don't need to name my spells."
"You don't call it Liv and Let Die?"
"...God dammit."
I liked the way you get out of that, too. Take the jokey explanation of the magic door and exploit it, nice integration.
Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
+1
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Uh, ahem, sooo the folks behind XCOM got the ax from Firaxis last year. They went on to make an indie studio under Jake Solomon.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
I'm aware of two new studios which have formed with ex-XCOM developers. Jake Solomon started Midsummer Studios which is making a life sim game. Greg Foertsch (art director for XCOM: EU & 2) started Bit Reactor which is working on a Star Wars tactical strategy game with Respawn. Both are in early production states as they don't even have public names yet.
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.
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)?
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.
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.
0
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Oh... that sucks.
Guess I'll have to get a gaming PC if I want my sRPG fix.
0
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
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.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Posts
Yeah Tom Francis makes amazing games.
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
It felt like an intrusion of pay-to-play mechanics in a game that I paid up front for, and after spending a few minutes looking to see if there were mods to solve that problem (there were) I kind of just stopped playing and didn't bother modding the game. A few months later I realized I hadn't played the game and no longer cared to play it and just uninstalled it entirely.
I think I have reached the point in my gaming maturity where if a game doesn't respect my time I don't respect the game.
Edit: as it turns out, Steam and Epic both have the season pass at 67% off right now, which per my cursory Internet search is the lowest price ever.
https://harebrained-schemes.com/blog/announcing-graft
Either someone buys them or they shut their doors is the future I foresee.
What the heck happened? Shadowrun was something of a struggle but Battletech did pretty well as far as I know. Did Paradox gut them or something?
Pre-sales weren’t good enough on Lamplighters League so Paradox cleaned house before it even released.
Worst part is the Battletech IP is still with Paradox so there' no chance we're ever getting another one.
Games Workshop is pretty loose with their IP. I'm sure the basic form could be adapted to, say, Collegia Titanica or Imperial Knights.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
When the worst complaint I can think of for a game is "I wish there were more of it", you know you made a damn good game.
When you fire 80% of the development staff months before release it tends to release in a bad way and not get any kind of support afterwards.
Also I was wrong about the Battletech IP - they pitched Battletech 2 to Paradox and they turned it down because MS owns the IP and they didn't want to give MS a cut.
I am still working at my first playthrough with one mod that lets you increase the drop rate from 5-20x and it's perfect. It let's you buy things without grinding, but not so many things that your rewards feel trivial.
How is Terror From the Void?
It was okay to good I'd say. A big issue I have with most maps in Phoenix Point is the infinite reinforcements and then later on enemies affected by the void have a chance of getting an ability that also calls in reinforcements. Then stack that with late game acherons that can call in reinforcements or resurrects all nearby units and it can get really hairy. The big plus to this mod is that all the DLC of the game is better integrated storywise. Vehicles seem a bit better. Assaults losing dash kind of sucks but overall the class rebalancing seemed positive. The faction based perks were great, depending on your base class. Reverse engineering can also unlock their underlying research so you can more easily acquire some research normally blocked by faction rep. The behemoth isn't as bad, at least early on, because it will only harvest and not outright destroy havens anymore.
I ended up restarting once because I got to a point in the first playthrough where I was losing a base defense because I wasn't aware, or just forgot, how the base defense worked. The longer you wait to do the mission, the harder it gets, and I had waited until the last few hours. There was just too many waves of reinforcements that would spawn in here and there and myrmidons are still just as terrible as always. There's some revenant system you can unlock if you lose a soldier that I never interacted with. I think it eventually leads to a way to resurrect dead soldiers and possibly even fully mutate/cyborg them.
In the end it was a neat way to replay the game but some jank, like hits just missing and going through targets, is still there. I hope we hear something from Snapshot Games soon since they haven't announced anything since the final update to the game and a sequel could be appreciated while we wait for an XCOM 3.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
Still slowly working my way through TBW, just got through Chapter 3:
"I'm not five, I don't need to name my spells."
"You don't call it Liv and Let Die?"
"...God dammit."
I liked the way you get out of that, too. Take the jokey explanation of the magic door and exploit it, nice integration.
So, the best we can hope for is a spiritual successor to XCom?
Unless Firaxis resorts to dumping IP on the market for a bargain price.
Battletech (turn-based) is the tragically dead one. Mechwarrior 5: Clans (FPS) comes out in two weeks.
Phoenix Point is about as spiritual successor-y as we have for now.
Though given who is behind it, I guess it's a spiritual successor to Original Recipe X-Com.
Has anyone tried Evil West 2?
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
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.
Guess I'll have to get a gaming PC if I want my sRPG fix.
Aliens: Colonial Marines is a FPS. The one you are thinking of is Aliens: Dark Descent, which is indeed excellent, but also not Gearbox.