I've been doing it a lot on the original X-COM: UFO Defense (I recently started playing again after hyping myself up for EU).

If my personal, named, soldierman takes a searing hot plasma blast to the chest, fusing his Personal Armour into his thoracic cavity, I'll reload.

If I feel one of my sergeants was cheated out of life by two cyberdiscs hanging out right outside the LZ of my Skyranger at the beginning of the mission, I'll reload.

If I'm building up one of my bases and I mis-click the location of a facility, I'll also reload since the game D.N.G.A.F and won't refund any of your hard earned spacebucks if you cancel construction.

Rookies and Squaddies? I'll cringe and send the families my condolences, but they won't be given a second/third/fourth(>_>) chance.

On my first (Normal) playthrough I'm hammering the save/load options like there's no tomorrow. I see this playthrough as a warm-up and preparing me for upcoming Classic/Impossible Iron Man playthroughs, so I don't really feel bad about it.

I've been doing this too, reloading every time a unit dies. I was happy with it at the start but now that I have a full roster of ranked troops I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of the tension that makes X-Com what it is. I get the feeling that I'm at the end of my first game on easy anyway so after this I'll be playing again on normal and not reloading.

I was doing that till I reached the first alien base (those chryssalids are assholes). A couple missions after that I was asking myself what was the point of playing XCOM if all I did was quicksave and load. So I let my high ranking soldiers stay dead when they were killed and played more tactically. The game is a lot more fun now that I have to deal with the consequences.

Playing on Classic, I reload to save myself from squad wipes, because I want to stand a chance of completing this playthrough which is already precarious enough on the strategy layer. Other than that, any soldier is fair game. Twice I've lost 3-4 trusted veterans in a single mission and it hurts. Colonel 'Road Block' (my one guy left over from the tutorial), 'Psycho' Soto, Elen 'Wardog', 'Papa Bear' Nur, 'Bob 'Whisky' Spencer... all great soldiers, all GONE. They're GONE, MAN! For myself, I don't even need to customise their names to feel attached.

One thing that isn't getting mentioned is that reloading can create great moments which you'd otherwise miss. When I lost 3 out of 4 guys early on, I was stuck with a squad of 4 rookies to storm a downed UFO. I could have accepted the quick squad wipe that the game gave me and just restarted my whole campaign, but I restarted that UFO mish a few times instead. A great last ditch strategy emerged where I had one rookie sacrifice herself to distract the big bad, an Outsider, with point blank pistol fire. That left me with one rookie surviving, one who had just killed the last of 4 floaters through panic fire. The sacrifice enabled him to get close enough to the weakened outsider and capture it. A huge sense of accomplishment. That rookie went on to become Captain 'Whisky' Spencer, who was one of only 2 soldiers to survive the alien base - shot the head Sectoid, in fact - before he later died to some Muton aimbot BS. I raise a glass to Whisky, and to the ability to reload.

I had 5 soliders die from cars blowing up in a single turn of course I reloaded.

Ironman all the way baby.

I'm on my first game on normal/ironman, so no reloads except the few times the game has frozen. I had a terror mission that kept freezing at the end of the aliens' turn that I was only able to get past by somewhat recklessly uncovering much more of the map/chryssalids than I cared to at once.

I am OK with losing the game as I figure out how things work, but I've had 3-4 amazing missions where all seemed lost for 1 or more of my main guys before pulling off some heroics. It's the type of situation that makes you feel like a true badass, so, no, I don't plan on reloading any saves in the future and giving that up as those have been the best moments of the game for me.

Nope. I'm playing Ironman. I'm now haunted by the terrible loss of life....

I hate to admit it, but constantly. People aren't exactly dieing, but often I feel like I've made a bad move and I'll reload an earlier save.

I know people feel this defeats a lot of the challenge but for me the game is already plenty challening. Also I really like my squad, maybe I'll let one die near the end for dramatic effect but for the most part I want to try and bring the same group of dudes through the whole game.

I have 3 times. I try not to make a habit of it though. I also never save mid mission. If I'm gonna reload I do the whole thing over again.

@Sooty: Snipers are less accurate at close range.... that's what pistols are for.

@Anupsis said:

Only if my mouse fucks up and I click on a bad spot for my guys to go to that is in the open. Makes me tempted to go xbox controller.

Happens with the thumbstick too. I play with the controller on PC so I deal with this often.

Yeap. Even if one soldier dies, I reload it

@Sooty said:

Yeah quite often because the game pulls some bullshit on you at times.

Still find it ridiculous that you can miss point blank. With a sniper.

You realize that sniper rifles specifically say they are LESS accurate at close range? That is perfectly intended.

Yup I beat the game on Normal using saves. My dudes by the end were wrecking machines. I really enjoyed it. Started again on Classic/Ironman and man, that's a completely different game. Still loving it but scary as hell.

I'm doing it for my first playthrough, because I just kind of want to get through the game without having to restart my first time through. In the future, I'll play it on Ironman.

I've been trying to let it ride, but I've reloaded a couple times when I've really fucked things up. I did lose a pretty high ranking soldier and let it go... that was tough.

@Rayeth said:

@Sooty said:

Yeah quite often because the game pulls some bullshit on you at times.

Still find it ridiculous that you can miss point blank. With a sniper.

You realize that sniper rifles specifically say they are LESS accurate at close range? That is perfectly intended.

When the sniper is 2 feet away I don't give a hot damn. That is just dumb, nothing would miss at that range.

Yep. Only for a select few, who I if they died, I would be fucked.

No, I'm not a bitch.

It's not X-Com if you can just reload! That said I am guilty of save scumming in X-Com '94

But in all seriousness, the game is too easy if you can just reload if a mission goes wrong. It completely negates the "losing is fun" idea that the game is built around, and the suspense and tension of sending dudes on missions, knowing that if anything goes wrong you can just give it another shot. Going on a difficult mission 5 hours into a Classic Ironman run, with mutons and chrysallids being introduced, completely terrified at the idea that not everyone might not make it back, is what makes this game great.

I only reloaded when my main guy from the first mission died as I wanted that achievement for having one soldier survive every mission in a playthrough.

@CaLe said:

I played Ironman, but I noticed when the game would save, and it only saved when you ended your turn. So if I felt I was in a really bad spot and my guys would die upon ending my turn, I alt-f4'd that shit. The thing is, I got through over half the game without losing anyone, or alt-f4ing. So my squad was fully leveled up and I had 0 backup soldiers who were not rookies.. Losing any of them would have been a huge hit - one I wasn't willing to take. Which is why this:

That one soldier lost wasn't even a soldier. It was a SHIV I didn't care about. I don't have any global stats because I was using offline mode in Steam (I unlocked the game earlier than the EU release through VPN). Too bad because I'm interested in those stats..

Cheater.

No, I kid, I don't really care.

I only reloaded after game glitches, and even then, not always. There were a few missions that the game created that were completely unreasonable where I retried it 5 or 6 times before deciding that the mission was a wash and just packing everyone back into the plane and left. That turned out to be the right decision in a lot of instances.