@gundamguru: Yeah, I was being a little hyperbolic with the comparison talking mainly about what it does from a gameplay perspective to be accommodating to new players. I agree with you though.

XCOM 1 was made to be more accessible, and I think that's true in most ways. In some ways it is outright shallow and poorly balanced (for example, most times there is an easy choice between class abilities, and there are not really any choices to be made in the strategy layer as much as a progression you must just keep up with).

Anyways, they did leave it behind as much with 2 and the console focus, and that's because the game did not sell on console at all. It sold just over 100k copies in North America it's first month out. You say "just as well" and that sort of thing but the game didn't sell to console players. XCOM sells on PC, the first game has over 3.5 million owners on PC.

It was praised by the media and other media outfits did feel just like GB but again they don't do strategy much.

I give that they could have kept the game simpler but I'm glad they didn't, as a genre fan. It got way better with 2, and now even more so with WotC. The first game did not sell to a wide audience and I think maybe they could have tried again but I think you can definitely see why they didn't. 2, especially with WotC, is a way better game.

Mario is doing a more accessible version and I figure that is something you will see the GB guys all like way more than WotC.

I played Xcom 2 for the first time recently and it's pretty fun, but so many of the changes were negative for me. Enemies are introduced so quickly and unceremoniously, and then completely disappear for basically every mission after that (I encountered Berserkers in 1 mission before the final mission, Chryssalids were the same), which gives you little opportunity to actually learn how to counter them. There's also just way too many robots and generic soldiers that look like generic military shooter enemies, which is just boring in a supposed alien apocalypse setting.

I'm not a fan of the way basically every change made was to increase the difficulty. It was a frustrating game to play most of the time. There are some QOL improvements sure, and the difficulty fits the theme of being hammered down by the alien oppressors, it just didn't land as well for me.

Oh and yeah, years later the PC version is still fucked, with huge pauses (and occasionally just freezing) after half the actions, characters being able to be moved when incapacitated on the floor, enemies being on the roof suddenly appearing on the floor in front of your character to deal melee damage and then glitching back up to the roof again, sound cutting out, super unoptimized, and crashing in general. It's messy.

Started up Enemy Within for the first time after finishing 2, and it's all been way more engaging. It has a lot of the same elements as 2, but they're introduced smoothly and given time to breathe. Xcom 2 just wanted to throw everything at you all at once and deal with it all at once, instead of having a curve. It also plateaued about 50% through my campaign where they'd run out of new stuff to introduce and it was all getting super stale. I'll probably never play Xcom 2 again, whereas Enemy Within feels like a step forward playing them one after the other.

I don't know anything about this new expansion so bear in mind I'm just talking about my experience with vanilla Xcom 2 here.

Just a reminder that The Bureau was a real, entirely not-cancelled game that came out after Enemy Unknown. I mean, I don't blame anyone for thinking it was canned, given how it was an entirely forgettable, utterly mediocre game with a baffling plot, but I assure you it was a thing I spent my time on and very much regret doing so.

In anticipation of War of the Chosen, I made the mistake of finally installing and trying out The Bureau. I threw in the towel after an hour. The aesthetic they were going for seems cool, but it just felt so bad to actually play.

For the record though, I think @geraltitude was actually referring to the Hasbro XCOM games: a cancelled RTS (X-COM: Genesis) and FPS (X-COM: Alliance) and a very bad third person shooter that's maybe even worse than The Bureau (X-COM: Enforcer).

@arbitrarywater: The bat shit revelation towards the end of The Bureau was stupid enough for it to be almost worth playing.

You were actually playing the game as an Ethereal that had escaped from a suitcase and possessed the main character to escape being killed by a Russian with a dirty bomb. As the end of the game you go to space, possess a different character and the game gives you the option of shooting the ex-main character in the head.

XCOM 2 doesn't make as good a first impression as XCOM:EU did when it came out, and it was super buggy at launch (though I avoided most of those bugs somehow). The issue with GB sometimes (and hey, it's their opinions, so whatever) is that they can get fixated on one way of thinking or not re-visit things (and I understand - who has the time?), so I think they were overly harsh on their assessment of XCOM 2, because it is indeed a damn fine game.

What's interesting about that is War of the Chosen basically doubles the number of Advent soldier variants (presumably your "generic shooter enemies").

There was also some pushback against the change in tone and aesthetic from Xcom EU/EW to Xcom 2. Many units were made more stylized and/or anthropomorphic, like the infamous Tin Man -> Viper or Floater -> Archon, or the change to the Sectoid. Additionally, the Anarchy's Children punk-themed cosmetic DLC was poorly received for clashing with the game's look. Firaxis really seemed to be throwing everything at the wall with Xcom 2, looking to see what stuck. The game really lacks a focused vision in that regard, both visually and with the gameplay.

@chaser324: @arbitrarywater: haha that's right! Yes indeed I was not referring to The Bureau, which is real, and I have heard some people say not as terrible as is to be believed. In my head I was thinking of Alliance, but that's older than I thought, so I probably blended the Alliance / Bureau story. If you recall, after Bureau was revealed, it vanished for years, and many wondered if it had been cancelled. There was a lot of confusion around as people thought Firaxis' project came in the wake of that failure. But instead they were simultaneous.

@artisanbreads: nice, thank you for the data. As a genre fan myself I really love WotC right now. Too early to say for sure, but I think it is my favourite of the releases. There are things I enjoy about the original "more" in some ways, but, right now, playing them both at the same time, EW just feels like XCOM Lite. Which is nice, right. Different. XCOM 2 WotC is really scratching my thinking itch.

@gundamguru: It's a great question and I think XCOM2's concealment is an obvious mechanical correction/addition to attempt to rebalance/mix-up that system. I think that top-level it's not an easy situation to solve. If you think about it, 99% of all games we call TBS start out on a tiny map with all sides revealed. In XCOM, the game is built around not knowing where the enemies are. In the old old one, the enemies could shoot at you from across the map FOREVER while you figured out where they were. So I guess what they wanted to do here was make it so that Neither You Nor Aliens Know where anyone is. I think the movement trigger isn't terrible, but I always thought they should move *away*, not towards you, which would solve a lot of the weird Reveal & Murder loop, and force you to go out and meet them, as well as reduce the frustration when you are flanked & murdered yourself by a pod reveal.

@fatalbanana: I see what you're saying. I guess for me I feel we just haven't seen any TBS hit XCOM levels of mainstream success since then, maybe that's why it feels like that one was a bubble. I'm not saying 2012 was, like you said, a weird time that people had a thirst for TBS. I think XCOM just managed to attract more people than usual - especially people not into that genre - than has ever happened before, or since. At least that comes to mind easily.

@ssully: I loved X-Com "1". I bought X-Com 2 at launch and the game turned me off so bad because of the bugs and glitches that I completely stopped playing and never went back.

@gundamguru: i disagree with them throwing everything at the wall, i think they had a specific vision for the aliens in 2 compared to eu.

*Possible spoiler*

The aliens wanted to diefy themselves in 2 since they arent they invaders but the conqueror(xcom 2 assumes you lose). All of the aliens are designed to look god like except for the grunt soldiers. Advent look fascist in design, and sectoids look to invoke straight fear. The higher level enemies look like ancient gods. The game is a completely different tone from eu which is all about defending your home as opposed to 2 which is about exposing false gods and taking your home back.

I personally really dug it

Quick side question: Should I buy XCOM 1 or 2? When XCOM 1 came out all I heard was positive things. Since 2's release, all I've heard are comments on its shortcomings.

I had never really pieced it together like this but yeah, makes super sense. Nice.

They do get at that stuff in the story too, you just gotta dig in and pay attention. It's actually very well thought, contrary to some posts. There is some silliness to the initial idea of "they can just make themselves look like anything" but it is used in interesting ways, and is a real and interesting science fiction idea if handled seriously.

Like Oursin says, it's just different.

Fighting the human grunt types is nice for variety and I quite like it. Personally I would play a game with much more of that. They could make Jagged Alliance in this engine, where you are fighting mostly just regular ass dudes, and I would love it. It becomes more chess like. It's like someone mentioned earlier in the thread, it's more like Final Fantasy Tactics where you know enemies abilities and often have very similar units yourself. Anyways, with WotC there is even lots of variety in those enemies. The enemy variety in 2 rules.

@oursin_360: @artisanbreads: I resent the insinuation that I just didn't pay attention. Rather, I think the lore explanation is symptom instead of cause. For example, why change the Thin Man "because we don't need an infiltration unit" and then introduce the Faceless in the same game? No, I think the character designer at Firaxis just likes this look (see Beyond Earth, especially the Purity-Harmony hybrid units) and they used the game's scenario to explain the changes.

I don't see anything wrong with that, i couldn't tell you which came first design or lore but either way i liked it and it made sense within the game they designed. The faceless were a bit silly, i wouldn't doubt that was a unit developed later in the cycle to make the missions they appear in harder (otherwise they were a cake walk really). I like they tried something new with the design, i think another 50's theme would have made the game seem more like a rehash. I wouldn't mind seeing a return to that style in a 3rd game though.

XCOM 2 is a fantastic game.

However, I would actually recommend XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM: Enemy Within - can probably pick it up cheaper than XCOM 2 at this point and they are amazing games - once you've exhausted that, then move on to XCOM 2.

Xcom 2 is better than xcom "1" and arguably the best game that came out at all last year. Fight me.

Also, I barely encountered any bugs

@captain_insano: this is what I'm doing. Been playing Enemy Unknown. Once I feel I'm done with it I will pick up Enemy Within. And so on with Xcom2 and it's expansion. I did pick up Xcom 2 and it's dlc because of a PSN sale, but I'm going to wait to play it.

I may skip Enemy Within. Anyone have thoughts on this? Are the changes worth it? Should I maximize my time spent playing Xcom by playing every iteration, or should I just go to 2 once done with 1?

Honestly, i would have recommended just playing enemy within. I think playing them both so close together wouldn't be worth it and enemy within makes the game a whole lot better that it's best just to start there IMO. But since you are playing unknown first i say just go to 2 after you finish it.

@oursin_360: someone else, a while back, told me Unknown was the best to start with. Saying Within added too much for first time players. I hear both ways with Xcom 2 and it's expansions as well. People with a lot of differing opinions on this lol

@sloppydetective: i started on within and despite trouble early i beat it without much save scumming. And that trouble was understanding satelites which is just the core game thing.

@oursin_360: yeah, satellites are the real enemy in Enemy Unknown. My first run of XCOM 2 was far easier if I recall. I remember even dragging out time/grinding to make sure I was super ready for the end game, whereas EU was a scrap for survival. I was also better at XCOM by the 2nd game

@captain_insano: It's the one huge difference that makes the strategy layer of EU more engaging than XCOM 2. In EU you are forced to make tough calls in which territories you sacrifice in order to save others, protecting nations that provide high levels of funding while letting the poorer nations burn. When a nation pulls their support they're gone for good.

The Avatar project in XCOM 2 doesn't have any of that weight behind it and becomes trivial to manage very quickly into the game. Territories will never pull their support and you are free to let the meter build up knowing that you can wipe it out at any moment.

@muftyriots: @captain_insano: By the same token tho, countries pulling out is never a fear in Xcom:2012 unless you are just failing missions left and right. If you are playing decently on classic or below there is basically 0 chance that any country ever pulls out. That's just the experience of most people who played EU/EW for more then one run. It's a very stale metagame when all is said and done, a solved problem, that is only ever a mental task once, the first time when you are still figuring it out, at best. The strategy layer was one of the biggest criticized elements of Xcom2012 by the community, because you get to do almost no strategic decisions in it, just rush satellites and wait for missions to pop up. For a lot of strategy vets it was not engaging in the slightest.

Only on impossible where you are basically guaranteed that 2-3 countries will pull out on the first month because this is forced on you by the game mechanics being so skewed on the strategy layer. And even at that difficulty level you just don't loose countries after month 2.

But I do agree that the strategy layer in Xcom2 vanilla is also very much risk free. That's why one of the main changes I like with War of the Chosen is the Chosen being able to hit your income, among other things.

Enemy Within rounds out EU quite a bit, I wouldn't hold off on that too long.

@tennmuerti: War of the Chosen completely neuters the Avatar project. A resistance order removes one block every month and covert missions remove all of the progress of a random facility including the hidden base that you couldn't hit before. The amounts that The Chosen remove from your monthly take is just a deckchair off the Titanic in the grand scheme of things. Arguably they're more valuable alive as they're a constant source of ability points every time they're defeated.

My original point is to do with the first impressions that the strategy layer gives the player. EU/EW is stressful but rewarding in how it is balanced, XCOM 2 hides it's triviality behind an overly complex, over animated interface.

I mean, sure? But at that point Xcom2012 just hides even more meager triviality behind a much thinner veil. And even if there is little risk of global loss in Xcom2 just like in EU/EW you are still more involved and have more agency in how to progress things, what resources to go for, where to expand, what to counter.

First impressions are something very subjective and hard to judge I think. Especially when you are measuring the first impressions of a first ever experience with an Xcom like game a lot of people have had with the 2012 release, versus the Xcom2 to which more people came more prepared for. Also lets say you understand and figure out satellites in your first month unlike the GB crew, then boom most of that stress is just gone.

I guess the point i want to make is that Xcom2012 is stressful and balanced on the strategy 1 time only at best, and that is even if you bumble the satellites badly for some reason. So I just don't think it's balanced well at all, if just a small bit of understanding neuters the entire thing.

If someone played the game once and had that stressful experience, cool, I'm happy for them, but in the long run it made the game very passive and uninteresting at that layer. Which is a pretty big design flaw for a game made for more then 1 run, a flaw that the developers acknowledged and addressed in the sequel.

That's my perspective on it.

(btw Chosen decreasing income is a drop in the bucket in the lategame, but in the early game with 3 of them active decreasing your 200-300 income by 40-50 per month total going forward is a significant amount, almost as much as one extra territory, and early-mid game is where you're doing the money management bit of Xcom in every game, lategame when you're swimming in money its never the problem)