Finished the game today, no crashes or really messed up bugs, just a whole lot of frame rate drops and minor glitches.

Overall I liked the tactical stuff and the progression, though I wish there was maybe another tier of weapons and armour stuff to research / buy. I went into the last mission with 2000+ supplies and nothing to spend them on.

Like a lot of people have said, Mind Control and Hacking felt really overpowered. I had a Gatekeeper controlled for 90% of the last mission drawing entire turns of enemy fire, then getting healed by my Specialist AoE heal thing.

First of all, not all missions are timed, but they have been frequent. Secondly, Firaxis actually did build gameplay mechanics to support this style of play, which maybe the thread hasn't fully explained (I haven't been following the entirety of it). This is Concealment. No enemies will attack you until you enter into one of the positions marked as being in their line of sight. This means you can dash at first without being too worried about running into and triggering enemies. You can set up ambushes and can even avoid enemy groups completely sometimes.

Now if you play the game and it does start to bother you (or if you just don't like the idea at all), there is the option to download a mod that will remove the timers, as I saw someone else mentioned, and play just like you did in EU.

Finished it today.

Overall this game is just plain better then Xcom:EU in almost every way. Just the depth and breadth of strategic and tactical options, the balance, the variety, the destructibility, the procedural maps, the base management. About my only major complaint is the lack of later game armor customization visually. And I do miss my archangel and stealth armor too :P Oh and yea performance could be better.

I've started playing around with the Tactical Quick Launch, and stumbled onto a few things:

• There's a fair amount of units that were planned (or at the very least left in the code) and cut. The squad select options include a "Shadow Shen," our pilot Firebrand, two references to the Ethereals (including an "AngelisEthereal"), the Speaker you see in some cutscenes (along with the similarly named PropagandaAnnouncer and ADVENT Spokesman), the Councilman, "Denmother" (I assume a Resistance leader you make contact with), and a Prototype Sectopod, which is the only one to actually spawn a controllable unit. (It works and looks exactly like a normal Sectopod, just with less armor and health.)
• It's possible that the game requires these to be listed in the same class as playable units for the purpose of displaying them in the tactical map (there's references to ADVENT Troop Transports and "Ship AI"), but some of the above never seem to make an appearance anywhere that I can tell.
• You can equip weapons to normal soldiers that they wouldn't have otherwise, such as the Andromedon cannon. It gets modeled on your trooper and everything, but their body meshes seem to have a real freakout whenever you try to use one:

If you want to have fun messing around with this stuff (including rolling a squad of Sectopods out and just tearing shit up), go into your Steam library, right click XCOM 2, open up Properties, and add -allowconsole to your launch options. When you get to the main menu, hit ` (tilde) and type in "open TacticalQuickLaunch" without the quotes. Be warned that it has every unit in the game in it, so you will get spoiled if you haven't seen them all.

Just beat it. Game is awesome, but it needs a patch asap. Glitchy as hell and runs like shit.

I'll wait until they optimize it a bit before starting a new game. Loved my playthrough though, shout outs to my MVPs of the run Elliott Smith(Specialist), Grimes(Grenadier), and Nicole Dollanganger(Ranger).

The underlying game, beneath the performance, bugs and balance issues, is fantastic. I was troubled by it at first, I think I hated it for at least 4 hours but eventually I started having endless amounts of fun. I'm one of the lucky ones who can get it to run pretty stable, it's completely smooth in isometric view but any up-close shot immediately chugs.

I am stunned that Jeff thinks it's "dull" regardless. Maybe that's the real reason why I don't Like Giant Bomb anymore, Jeff seems to be getting more angry and miserable as time goes on when you'd think it would be the opposite.

While I have seen a few issues (dropped frames, weird clipping, graphics glitches), the game has definitely been playable for me.

I followed some of these tips https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/44idsa/psa_things_you_can_do_to_improve_xcom_2/ when I started playing the game, so perhaps anybody with significant issues might want to take a look? By the sounds of things, a lot of the options in the graphics menu are highly unoptimised, so there's loads of settings you should turn down or off entirely.

Granted it's a PC game, so the 'it works for me, so why doesn't it work for you' argument doesn't hold any grounds - and I've been running it on my rather beefy machine (AMD Radeon R9 390, i5-4690k).

I think that its easy to end up thinking that but Jeff is just one guy, with his tastes that have maybe changed over time and whose opinions are are only just his opinions. I am only a couple of years younger than Jeff but my taste in games has developed in very different ways to his... so I don't think it is an age thing, I just think it is an individual taste thing. None of us *need* other people's opinions to be the same as ours when it comes to video games... and it would be a very dull hobby if everyone did. XCOM 2 is a great game. It definitely isn't just a 3/5 game for me, but then (much as is the case with The Witness) I wouldn't choose to recommend it to everyone even though I liked it plenty because clearly neither game has universal appeal. Very few things do.

@death_burnout said:

WAIT- you mean to tell me the guy who was rolling ALL-HEAVIES-NO-MEDKITS in Enemy Unknown didn't get into the base building?

love jeff, but he's the last guy on this site i'd expect to be enjoying xcom2. lately- perhaps justifiably- he's super critical of jank (which xcom2 has no shortage of), and he's never struck me as the sort to appreciate the sort of games that represent shooting guns as dice rolls. xcom2 in many ways (and i would argue, to it's great benefit) complicates the formula- and i just can't imagine a dude who previously rolled a team with no medkits having a fun time.

so yeah- take a game that even struggles to lock 30fps and has bigger swings on the risk/reward components- it makes sense jeff would effectively say "no thanks."

Doing an autopsy of a Andromedon should give me acid grenades right? Because I did it and they are not in my item build? do I have to hope I get it in proving ground?

Ummm, wtf is this? -3 days?

@iodine: ye, it's just random experimental grenade.

@nevergameover: There's a bug that can happen while you are scanning; if an objective changes or is added but the pop-up doesn't fire, everything goes haywire. Back out of the map and see if it goes off, if not you may have to reload a save and see if it works correctly this time.

@ares42: ah I figurede it was probably that, I really want that based on the quick look

Man i'm just not sure if i'm making progress at all in this game, every battle too many of my soldiers get gravely wounded (even if they don't lose much health). Then they get shaken and their will drops to 0(really 0?) so they essentially become worthless. I encountered my first Codex and oh boy did that go poorly, first time in my xcom life that I completely wiped on a mission(I did still get the objective to evac at least). I mean wtf, this enemy completely breaks all the mechanics of xcom, and i'm sure there is some strategy but it came out of nowhere literally and teleported around and cloned itself while one shotting everybody. Makes me wonder if the difficulty in this game is actually based on me playing poorly, or the game just trolling the shit out of me lol. I did kill that fucker with my last guy though.

I guess on my second play through if I fail this one, I may have to actually look up strategy for this game as I'm like 3 months in and still don't 100% understand what the right thing to do in the meta game is. My troops seem way too weak to take on any difficult missions, (the mission I wiped on was classified as easy lmao) since they are all rookies, squaddies or broken vets lol and the enemies seem to be able to do whatever the fuck they want

Does anyone else have the leadership mod installed? I have 3 guys who have been on the first rank of it and have leveled up in their normal progression just fine, but I am still on level one leader with all of them

@nevergameover: I've had that same issue once. Eventually it somehow corrected itself, but I'm not sure what (if anything) I did to make it happen.

@iodine: You need to send them back to leader training to level them up more. It works the same way as psionics.

@oursin_360 said:

Here's some tips to help you fight that enemy:

1. They lose half of their current HP when they clone themselves. This makes a unit with multi-target abilities like the sharpshooter a great choice to have with you.
2. They will clone themselves every time you shoot them, assuming they aren't killed in one shot (or aren't killed by multiple overwatches as they won't clone until they finish their move) or are down to 1HP. This means it's often a good idea to blow up their cover without damaging them first, as that gives you the best chance to take them out in one shot.
3. Disorienting the codex (via something like a flashbang) will prevent them from cloning.
4. They have an AoE disable attack which makes you lose all of the ammo in your weapon, forcing you to reload. This means that autoloaders are useful, as are pistol Sharpshooters and Rangers. The AoE will explode and deal damage on your next turn, so make sure to move out of the way before you reload.
5. They have a bad habit of teleporting out of your range, so a Sniper based Sharpshooter is also a useful unit to have.

Anyone else really disliking the visual design of the Archon? It looks completely out of place. It just seems like someone created a completely unrelated character model and then tried to shoehorn it into the game. I thought there might possibly be some reasonable narrative explanation, but there's not. It pretty much just boils down to the aliens being all like 'hey, let's create this floating torso with gaudy, ornate decorations because, I dunno, why not...'

So basically luck, loot drops and a high leveled squad. None of which i had or have atm lol. I did kill it, just mad i lost a whole squad doing it, i think i still had 4 man squad at the time.

I feel bad for people in the review thread. I guess I just got luck of the draw on performance or something. Have seen one bug that I know of, no crashes, performance isn't fantastic but it's perfectly fine, and I'm having a blast with this game. Love the changes from the first game. The classes are much more balanced to me and you just get so many options. Plus the enemies have so many that the whole thing is just so complex and fun. The strategy layer isn't as overwhelming as it seems at first (I was very close to losing but all at once managed to knock the AVATAR project back a to like half way from the brink of losing by righting the ship).

I was just feeling like "Oh no this may be too easy" but just hit a new wave of enemies and the challenge is back.

The only bug I know I saw is the one that was posted above with negative values in scans. Some other event triggered and fixed the issue though and retroactively triggered the negative values to complete.

I haven't been following much pre release coverage, but I believe there are more enemies that look like it later? So it won't be as out of place. I think the idea with them is that they are twisted forms of the human ideal you would see represented in something like a statue the aliens would see. There's some of that with the design (the Advent soldiers that look like a statue esque male jawline but hey crazy warped alien head at the top are a more simple example). There's also the Viper's of course.

I find it to be an interesting design but I do see what you mean some. I believe there is more of that later though.

The first chrystalid mission glitched such that none of the nonchrystalid enemies moved or attacked. Still lost half my team before I realized. I'm save scumming it, to be fair to the aliens.

yeah, this is exactly where i'm landing. i just successfully completed my first run, and i had a tremendously fun time. yes- the performance is poor and needs to be improved- but even a few crashes to desktop and generally slow framerates didn't detract from the really, really smart tweaks they made to the formula. and i say this after finishing an Enemy Within run just a week before xcom2 released. i'm genuinely excited to start my first ironman mode and future dlc- i think they have a fantastic base here that they can tighten up.

also- speaking as someone who loved to turtle in enemy unknown- the timers are a non-issue. they ask you to play differently, and from a guy who enjoys learning strategies outside my comfort-zone- that's just satisfying design.

pretty much- from what i understand (and anyone feel free to correct me if i'm wrong), the archons are the latest version of floaters from the first game. the nouveau-egyptian-god-look was an alien response to the complete revulsion of humanity at the floater's original design- a grotesque fusion of organic and inorganic material. as the lore goes, i think the aliens (and in turn the game artists) wanted to create a underling that inspired awe/grandeur in the general populace, and also served as a herald for the ADVENT troops.

granted- it does stick out relative to the designs of the other aliens and enemy unknown (so do the vipers for that matter)- but i think the general idea is that the elders are just collecting genetic material to re-purpose for specialized tasks as they see fit. if their overriding purpose is domination, i could see where a consistent design aesthetic amongst their goons is not a priority. also- they acknowledge in the first game that many of the goons they keep hanging around are 'failed experiments' - which partially explains why it's such a hodgepodge of races and designs.

@oursin_360 said:

They're definitely tough and frustrating to fight the first time you meet them. I liked that in a way because it made for a good, "Welcome to XCOM, suckers!" moment. But after that mission, they don't show up too often and in my playthrough they soon become less of an immediate threat and more of a distracting fly after I started using upgraded equipment.

My second play through it coming down to the wire. 20 days until alien win and I need to take out an alien facility. Last time I tried this facility, I lost 4 guys and had to evac.

@artisanbreads: Man, you must be one of the lucky ones. I have a ton of people on my friends list playing XCOM and we all talk about crashes pretty much daily. Things have gotten a little better since I reduced my texture quality to High, but I still can't do more than two missions without a full PC restart or the game will either crash or Windows will bluescreen.

Despite all the technical problems, it's still one of the best games I have played in years. Love it.

@viggynash:Well that's good to know at least, it was an amazing moment but it also felt a bit cheap to me. Also they should have named this game Enemy Unknown and named the first one something else lol.

@mike:What OS are you running? I have noticed this game likes to hog up a lot of system ram in windows 10, similar to arkham knight it takes up both ram from he EXE and an additional 1-2gb from the system process. And arkham knight used to crash in windows 7 for me. Xcom has had some stuttering in spots but no crashes, yet anyway *knock on wood*

@oursin_360: Windows 10. Some of my crashes are "Windows is running low on memory" even though I have 32 GB of RAM, but when they happen I still have well over 20 GB free.

@mike: wow, i dont know maybe i havent played long enough at one time yet but ive definitely set up auto save just in case.

On another note i feel like I'm too underpowered and out gunned. I just encountered another one of those enemies plus about 6 more and then reinforcements. Had to evac before i wiped again. Im almost ready to just start over, i think i made some mistakes in researching stuff.

Rated moderate? Lol

Just had very odd bug in a retaliation mission. I ran my sniper out to shoot someone with there pistol, and they hit their target, but at the same time every explodable object on the map blew up - including a car that my squad had spawned around, nearly killing my grenadier. Fortunately it only killed 1 civilian...

I think I'm out of commission for now. Did a hard save before the final mission, and got 10 minutes into it. The game randomly crashed, and now none of my 5 autosaves work and when I use the hard save to start the final mission, it crashes once I get into the actual mission

I've tried to play on both a laptop & PC, after checking file integrity on both to no avail. Unfortunately I no longer have any saves before you get locked in to where the only destination is the final mission. Here's hoping for a patch.

@thomasnash: I've had things like that happen too, although not everything in the level exploding at once. Sometimes random vehicles will explode when they haven't taken any kind of damage at all. During my last mission, a vehicle exploded off screen and two Vipers took damage. I've also had things like glass breaking when running along a wall even though the character didn't jump through it.

@bezerker285 You deleted all of your previous saves?

So, uh, I just had a round where none of the enemies moved. At all. I ran right up to them and shot them in the face and they just pointed angrily.

It also happened to be the mission which introduced the Gatekeeper. And, tactical genius that I am, I ran all my guys right up to it and started wailing on it until it - well...

e: And apparently it's not just that mission. Even the next mission bugged the hell out. Welp, looks like my save got screwed.

@mike: Yeah man I must be. Like I say only seen one bug and no crashes at all. I tend to have good luck with PC games I think but this seems particularly lucky I guess. My system is pretty modest at this point too (mid, some high settings).

Glad to hear you like it though. I've been sifting through talk about the game now that I'm further into it and felt like I saw enough for myself and it seems all over the map. Some are critical of the game proper but I also think it is outstanding. I find it way better balanced than the first with soldier progression and classes, there is a perfect balance of tension in battle and on the strategy layer, the enemies are fun and have kept me on my toes, and stuff like the customization I am a sucker for.

They justified the alien designs in the last game. I guess it's a spoiler, but it's really not a huge thing. I'll spoiler block it anyways. The gist is the aliens aren't one race, but a mixture of different species from different planets that have been taken over and controlled by one superior species. So with this justification the alien designs can be nearly anything they want; hence the vipers just being big snakes.

I really wish that scientist research could progress the same as engineering, by that I mean researching more than one fucking thing at a time. I really don't like the wound system in this game either, there should be some sort of clear system between lightly and gravely wounded, not a dice roll. It's silly for a guy to lose 1 health and get gravely wounded and another to lose half health and be good in 2 days lol. I think that's what's killing me right now, just having to run to many missions with squaddies and rook's and not having enough funds/research/engineers for better equipment. I finely got a new set of armor, but the guy wearing it took 2 damage (one armor) and is back gravely wounded again. Like yup, wtf is the point of it.

I want to beat this as vanilla as possible, but some of these new systems really bother me and just make the game feel more random than it should be.

I didn't realise that was what it was doing, that is stupid! I'm pretty sure that it did work your way in the first game as well, so that seems like a big step back. It's annoying because it makes so much more sense to punish you in a way that is commensurate with how badly you fucked up, although I'm starting to think that that is just not how they see the game.

It totally doesn't work that way though. You get wounded based on the percentage of health you lost. So if Rookies lose 1 or 2 health, they will most likely be Gravely Wounded since they only have 4 health. If a Major or Colonel loses 1 health, he'll absolutely be Lightly Wounded, since they have like 10 health.

More like, basically tactics? Just shooting a Codex with anyone is a bad plan. Just Flashbang them if you don't have the power to take them out in one hit. Or deal one massive hit, like with Deadeye, then use Combat Protocol or Stock or Explosives to kill the remaining two Codex's that should only have 1 or 2 health left.

@zevvion: no need to be aggressive and it does work that way. "More likely" is a dice roll, i just said an example 2 health off capt in heavy armor gravely wounded.

I didn't have access to any of that equipment or abilities at the time either so how is it basic tactics? By the time i realized what it could do "break all basic game mechanics" 3 guys out of 4 were dead! Literally 2 turns on first introduction. I killed it both times i played, second time it had 6 man backup (one heavy and then backup with another heavy) but always heavy losses.

I would say this game is more like Poker than Chess, accept you don't have access to all the rules and odds in the beginning to make the best decisions.

Corrupted save 20 hrs in- fine by me, I was looking for a reason to quit. Loved it while it was good, but as with the first one it devolves into this weird mix of both tedious and stressful? I just resented having to actually go on missions after a while.

@oursin_360: I'm not trying to be aggressive, it just sounds like you don't understand the results of your battles are not entirely (or even largely) dictated by RNG, but mostly by your actions. You have access to Flashbang grenades since the start of the game. By the time you face them, you should also have access to higher damage weapons. XCOM is also about the possibility of loss. If you progressed through the game losing soldiers left and right, never getting anyone who got promoted stay alive, then you are going to lose because your squad won't be capable enough to deal with the increasing alien threat. If you're only using Squaddies when you face the Codex, then yeah, it's probably going to be a tough time.

While randomness is obviously part of the game, it's not like you're completely reliant on RNG for every single action. For instance, you say you lost your entire squad to the Codex twice, but you're probably just not seeing the better solutions to deal with them. And there is a good number of ways to deal with them. They have an ability to clone when they survive any damage and they have an ability that allows them to teleport. Therefor, you should think: 'I should either kill them in one hit, kill them in two hits and be ready to kill the clone it spawns, or disable its abilities to stay safe'. And you can do that.

1. Flashbang grenade disables its abilities.
2. Insanity disables its abilities.
3. Ranger may kill it in one hit when flanking. Especially reliable from concealment with Shadowstrike and Laser Sights.
4. Sharpshooter with Deadeye may kill it in one hit.
5. You can remove its cover with Demolition or a grenade and kill it in two hits, then kill off the clone.
6. Gunslingers are able to dispatch of pretty much any clone spawned, even if it creates 3 or more, because they get reduced health.
7. Explosives are able to dispatch clones guaranteed.

I get that they can be incredibly overwhelming when you face them for the first time and do not understand what they do. But getting those crazy enemies to show up is part of the game. It's what I loved about the Andromedon a bunch. And when you do know what they do, you should be able to deal with them relatively easily using one of the methods I described above.

I had maybe a corporal, sqd's and rks on the first encounter. Honestly flash bangs were useless in the first game so I didn't bring one, even if I did I probably would have already used it by the time it hit since I defeated a squad right before it jumped in. Also I wouldn't have guessed a flashbang would work on a light creature . I believe it was triggered by the skulljack which you have access to early, and I didn't have any advanced weapons or armor as the research is super slow and doesn't seem to get any faster like EU did. Don't get me wrong I enjoy the game, even though i'm probably about to fail in a few more turns, but I think it's too random. The reason I have/had all sqd's is because the dice rolls for damage are so skewed towards gravely wounded that I never have a full squad. If/when I fail i'll probably try a new approach to research as the meta game is honestly not clear at all this time around until it's probably a bit too late.

I just got magnetic weapons because I didn't realize (game didn't tell me) once you buy one everyone gets an upgrade. I mean something so different from the last game probably should have been explained in some fashion, i'm trying to balance money so buying a mag for one soldier just didn't make sense. I guess I would probably cope better with the randomness if things like that were explained better upfront, hard to have strategy without full understanding of the game mechanics. I mean, even stuff like being able to evac after dashing I had no clue about. Sure I could have checked online, but I tried to do this as solo as possible lol.

@oursin_360: If a lot of people have beat it their first time through on Ironman Legend, it definitely isn't too random. It's just a learning experience and not really intended to be won by everyone the first time they play it, just like Enemy Unknown.

I'm towards the end of the game on Commander and have only lost one soldier so far. At this point I am finding the game to be almost trivially easy. You'll get there, just keep learning and researching.

@mike: I think my big mistake was not getting weapons sooner, realizing that every troop gets the upgraded weapons is literally a game changer for me. Completely changes how i see the game now, i played it to much like the first game i think. I will see if i can make a comeback though, Avatar is pretty high so i may wipe in a few missions.

After digging in the ini files, I've found that the game is skewed pretty heavily in the player's favor on every difficulty other than Legend, where it finally evens out. How? There's a number of things (most of which you may already know, like enemy health changes, increased xp requirements and extended wound/build time), but here are two of the more interesting ones:

Aiming is stacked in the player's favor on anything but Legend, where it evens out. That's going to sound hard to believe, but the numbers don't lie; on Veteran, you get a flat 10% aim multiplier (so a 50% shot is a 55% internally), a miss gives you +10 to any 50% or better shot until you hit (turns a 70% into an 80%), and a bonus to hit/enemy aim penalty if you have less than four soldiers, either due to deaths or you just bringing less people on that mission.

Commander just gets the 50% shot aim bonus after a miss (although the code indicates it's a +15 to slightly compensate for the removed aim multiplier), Legend gets nothing, and easy gets better, bigger versions of Veteran's bonuses.

The other is pod movement. Legend is the only difficulty without an engagement threshold, i.e on every other level, an unactivated pod will try and path away from you if you are already fighting a certain number of aliens, with that magic number determined by your difficulty level. Legend also has an extra pod on it per map, but that's just how EU worked.

That's not to disparage anyone's struggle, but just letting you know what those settings actually mean, and why your missed shot streak is actually even more unlikely than you imagined.

There's more that I'll try and surface, but I'm doing this on my phone so it'll have to wait. That also goes for spell checking as GB's form doesn't play nice with my browser, but you can get the gist even with a few typos.

10 Days to go on the avatar countdown clock. Only 8 soldiers left. Assault on an alien facility. This is it. Attached all my upgrades. Poured all my supplies into this run. Started out great but things turned sour. I pop a pod a little too early and all but two of my guys are wiped out in the scuffle. Pale Rider, my best and only remaining sniper. And Austin Walker, the only living Giant Bomb member -- with two health. They call in reinforcements. There is only one option. I send Austin sprinting into the building and set my sniper on overwatch. Austin arms the bomb, reinforcements called in, and I evac my sniper. Now Austin Walker is inside the building with two health and there are three advent outside. Shield bearer shields everyone because that is what he does. The other two set up right next to Austin and overwatch. Only one way out, Austin leaps over a console and sprints out the door, dodging every shot and makes it to the evac zone, a god damn hero.

If the real Austin was here right now, I'd shake his hand. And he'd be very confused by that.

@oursin_360: Always save up your flashbang for either sectoids, vipers, codices, or gatekeepers and don't try to use it prematurely on other kinds of enemy types. The other tip I can give you is to almost always bring two grenadiers. They have bad aim and knowing that they're primarily role is pretty much to stock up on grenades, including flashbangs. Later on, once you get guys like a psi-operative in your team it makes things easier.

cc @austin_walker

@mirado: Dude, you should make a full write up on that. This stuff sounds better suited to have its own blog or thread.