Just finished playing through XCOM on normal. At first I was considering playing on classic but the bombcast made it sound like normal was hard enough. This is my first XCOM game but I'm pretty competent at strategy games, although I wouldn't call myself an expert. Anyways, towards the back half of the game I found it pretty easy. People would die every once in a while but it was usually only rookies or lower level guys. I feel like the mode is as advertised, allowing me to complete the game pretty much unhindered, but I would have liked a little more of a challenge.

Anyone playing on class wanna tell me how much harder it is?

There's a significant leap between normal and Classic. Normal is definitely too easy, to the point where I don't even see the point of the Easy difficulty.

if you was finding normal too easy why did you not just change the difficulty to classic. you can change it on the fly if im right.

It's fairly easy to finish the game without loosing any countries in normal, not so much in classic.

@dragonwizard: With all due respect to the bombcrew; they are do tend over exaggerate. Personally I would not use them as a means of judging how difficult a game is.

Especially if the way Ryan played the game on the TNT (I know it's live multiplayer and there is time constraints, but still) is any indication on his play-style. There are different difficulty settings for different people. That's the whole point. If it's too easy bump it up.

Classic is definitely a classic. Also, its a different kind of entertainment to see all your guys get murdered.

Post made In the short-lived memory of my childhood love Amiga "Shitty Shot" Commodore who I threw into the line of fire because she couldn't hit a thing, ever, and I needed to save two civilians. Thanks Amiga.

ya, I haven't played normal, only classic and I've restarted about 5 times :) Never made it past month 3 without things starting to go terribly wrong. The combat is ok but the meta game is far tougher. The bomb crew are not the best at playing this and blew the difficulty out of proportion. They also didn't seem to realise that games like xcom are made to be restarted, same as most strategy games. The first few games are to learn what you need to do to suit your play style and then you get stuck in for a serious game

I've been playing it on normal and have found it a decent challenge, though I'm not exactly well versed in this genre of game - I am loving it.

I'm definitely coming to a point where I'll wind up restarting soon, losing more dudes then I feel comfortable with but I'm fine with this.

Normal becomes 'easy' once your guys can reliably perform the actions you ask of them. Once you can actually rely on your shotgunner being able to hit a guy three squares away, your sniper to actually hit exposed enemies, so on... Yeah, it stops being brutally hard.

The difficulty in that game is almost entirely in that you can't rely on your own moves, so you can't plan anything. It would be like playing chess and telling your knight to take the queen, then you see "85% chance to take piece" and then "failed!".

Yeah agreed here. I pretty much was just forcing myself to iron man it without that on playing normal and still didn't have too many losses. I'm going to go classic next.

As for switching on the fly, I think it'd be much better to start on Classic then do that. Get warmed up to the difficulty right away.

I've beat the game twice, once on Normal, once on Classic.

Unless you're playing Ironman and something fucking crazy happens, the hardest part is the first two months. Once you get out of there, you should have enough cash coming in that shit just snowballs completely out of control.

It seems that (once your team gets good gear and levels up) the difficulty softens after the first third/half of the game and so the answer to "Normal is too easy and Classic is just brutal" is to start on Normal and then bump up to Classic when it starts easing up for you. Your own custom middle ground as it were.

For someone that never played XCOM or a game like this normal is a challenge for me.

Just depends how good you are at the game I guess. My dad finds normal pretty difficult, to the point he's restarted 6 or 7 times.

I also just beat it on normal and had pretty much the same experience you did, coasting through the back third of the game. I immediately started up an Classic mode and got my ass handed to me repeatedly. No joke, it felt like a different game. Within five missions, I think I had squad wiped twice; and even when i didn't, without the OTS perk to halve hospital time, I've had some vets that are gone for a long time.

To be honest, it's pretty frustrating, especially going from having a team of six colonels to being stuck with four rookies.

That said, I'm learning how to be a better player. Tactical decisions are a lot harder - I'm learning to flank a lot more effectively, and using grenades a ton; and strategic decisions are trickier because now there is the realistic chance that when i send a team to a location specifically to lower panic, they might be wiped and I just got screwed.

So...it's a lot more difficult, but it's also worth trying; just be comfortable with losing. I...yell at my TV a lot more now.

Classic is indeed a significant leap from Normal. Personally, and I'm an X-COM veteran, I absolutely hate playing the game on Classic. There's something about the number of dice rolls this game makes versus your tactical opportunities, especially early game, that will just see you have your ass handed to you on a plate repeatedly and you'll have done nothing wrong; You can have sectoids crit your best protected soldier from across the level and you'd not have a chance to save him.

Yeah, when you're just starting out, Normal can a decent challenge for the first 5-10 hours, as you figure out how the game works and how you should be doing stuff in your base. But once you're like halfway through the game, you'll probably have stuff more or less under control, and once your good soldiers have the better gear, you have almost no chance of ever losing or being challenged. The last third of the game on Normal definitely felt like a cakewalk.

Classic is harder because you never quite feel under control (well, certainly not as early as on Normal), and it is just far more likely that things go really south in your first 3 months because the game doesn't take it as easy on you with the panic levels.

I bought this game but haven't got around to playing it yet. It sounds so badly balanced and luck-heavy that I'm not sure I'd even enjoy playing it in it's current state... maybe I'll wait and see if they patch this stuff up before jumping in.

Normal mode to familiarize the game but it depends to a person

Everyone is different, especially with this kind of game. I play very few strategy games and normal is more than enough challenge for me for my first time through.

Normal is a good level to learn at. I've never played XCOM before (this game is so fucking good) but I can see how it can become too easy. It could be harder but frequent saves mean that you rarely have to lose soldiers.

Normal was way too easy. Made it through ironman with 0 casualties and only 2 lost countries. Now I'm on classic ironman and I've restarted probably 10 times.