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I don't know about that. The first terror mission with Chrysalids can be pretty brutal in the new one. They still one-shot your guys and convert them, plus zombies.

Chysalids still scare me....and I'm not even playing right now.

Yeah have to disagree there. I can't say there wasn't ever a time I wasn't scared of cryslids. They aren't as scary mechanically as the first because the reboot does soldier quality over quantity, but the terror mission most don't allow for a ton of LoS becore you are in kill range. The notable exception being the goverment building map.

Finally finished the campaign - must say that I was a little underwhelmed with the Temple Ship. Guess I'll go back and play it on Impossible instead of Classic to see what sort of craziness it brings.

Any of the Second Wave options that I shouldn't miss?

I haven't played with Second Wave too much.

Impossible is certainly a step up. The first few months are crucial with Imp.

Have they fixed the bug where you can't fire 2 laser rifles at the same time yet?

Eh? Not sure what you mean. Quick google shows there was a bug for overwatch and the game crashing? Or are you talking about something else?

Swan-of-War wrote:
Finally finished the campaign - must say that I was a little underwhelmed with the Temple Ship. Guess I'll go back and play it on Impossible instead of Classic to see what sort of craziness it brings.

Any of the Second Wave options that I shouldn't miss?

The last mission an ending to the game are terrible, period. They did a great job of the whole game... except that.

 pretre wrote:
Eh? Not sure what you mean. Quick google shows there was a bug for overwatch and the game crashing? Or are you talking about something else?

If you fire more than one laser rifle at the same time (only possible during overwatch, obviously), the game immediately crashes to desktop. I suspect that its a sound issue, similar to the laspistol bug in chaos gate.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 pretre wrote:
Eh? Not sure what you mean. Quick google shows there was a bug for overwatch and the game crashing? Or are you talking about something else?

If you fire more than one laser rifle at the same time (only possible during overwatch, obviously), the game immediately crashes to desktop. I suspect that its a sound issue, similar to the laspistol bug in chaos gate.

Hmm. Wacky.

I like the last mission and ending. It explains how all the races came into this bizzare crusade and it wraps up the story in a dramatic way.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I like the last mission and ending. It explains how all the races came into this bizzare crusade and it wraps up the story in a dramatic way.

 BlueDagger wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I like the last mission and ending. It explains how all the races came into this bizzare crusade and it wraps up the story in a dramatic way.

Spoiler:

Except for the fact that the missions is completely scripted, not terribly challenging, and in the end the "savior" may not even be someone that you gave a damn about. For a "final mission" it was a tad anti-climactic.

At that point in the game, nothing is really challenging. Even on Impossible, you have the tech necessary to trivialize most encounters. And isn't that always the way with saviors?

IIRC (and it has been a while) it was similar in the original. Once you get past a certain point of tech and squads, you own anything that shows up. (Short of gotcha Blaster launcher shots).

 BlueDagger wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I like the last mission and ending. It explains how all the races came into this bizzare crusade and it wraps up the story in a dramatic way.

Spoiler:

Except for the fact that the missions is completely scripted, not terribly challenging, and in the end the "savior" may not even be someone that you gave a damn about. For a "final mission" it was a tad anti-climactic.

Well ymmv I guess. My savior on my first playthough was my main dude. The only one to make it though the whole game. As for difficulty: I guess you're just too good at the game.

My next go-thru I need to take more advantage of the various toys - my end squad had Plasma Rifles, Titan Armor, two Heavy Plasma and a Plasma Sniper Rifle.

My lone Support had Ghost Armor and I used it once just for a lark in the final encounter. My Volunteer used her psychic powers for the first time in the final encounter too. Just didn't need them earlier on. I only had one SHIV too and think I'd like to give the Hover SHIV and Archangel armor a try too.

I only had three levels of the base built up - hardly any workshops or laboratories. Once you get all the satellites up, things were pretty smooth sailing - just lost Argentina.

Mind you, I was playing on just Classic and not Classic Ironman- at least I can crank up the difficulty some more.

Ironman is significantly more difficult.

Once you get to this, you win every mission pretty easily(IMO):
- 2x Archangel with Plasma Snipers. One has In the Zone; one with Double Tap.
- 4x Ghost Armor with either Plasma Rifles or role specific plasma weapons.

You win. It's that easy. Use ghost armor to find baddies one at a time, snipers destroy them. I know people don't like In the Zone and I didn't either until I tried it.

In my last impossible playthrough I had the whole base filled with Workshops filling up all the extra space (mostly in a huge block on the right). Adjacency bonus for workshops is absurd.

I usually try to get through the game as fast as possible. My squad usually doesn't have all the best equipment it could.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I usually try to get through the game as fast as possible. My squad usually doesn't have all the best equipment it could.

When you get to the harder difficulties, you need the equipment. For my impossible game, I ran 6-9 workshops to get cheap equipment and fast satellites and 1-3 Labs (sold towards the end) to get faster research. It made sure my folks were well equipped which is essential against the tougher baddies.

I tried to like the game since it's one of maybe two games I bought at full price in the last year... I couldn't do it. I'm kinda mad at myself for paying full price - I should attach a breathalyzer to my Steam account.

Ah well Bromsy, that's too bad. Maybe you'll be bored this summer and fire it up again and be like, "Wow, this actually IS awesome!"

Is it the turn-based aspect that's not floating your boat?

Anybody else laugh at some of the skin color choices in the game? I just think it's funny somebody i had from i think it was nigeria looked like they had a really horrible orange spray tan. Sometimes it's like they drew a white person or similar and just looked at some of the skin colors and were like "f*ck it!" The asian ones seem pretty decent as well as black people and similar. I suppose i can't fault them for doing a pretty good job with a lot of it.

I will admit the lack of different voices for different nationalities did kind of bug me though. No russian, british, german, etc. accents as well as other countries with languages far different that may have trouble speaking proper english in an english speaking squad. For convenience i assume during an alien invasion one language for squad communication is key. That would've been an interesting thing to touch up on though. Lack of a unity of countries would've made all this much harder.

I'm playing through on Ironman with the soldiers named after my
facebook friends. Unfortunately, none of my female friends have
approved use of their names and I've gotten decent Assault,
Heavy and Support soldiers.

The first time I played not a single Canadian appeared so I actually thought they didn't have Canada in there for some reason. In subsequent playthroughs I've named the first male Canadian after myself. Sometimes I live, somtimes I die. It does add a little bit of extra fun and suspense.

Swan-of-War wrote:
Ah well Bromsy, that's too bad. Maybe you'll be bored this summer and fire it up again and be like, "Wow, this actually IS awesome!"

Is it the turn-based aspect that's not floating your boat?

Nah, it's the simplified inventory and base management aspects, as well as the smaller squad size. I'm only really kicking myself because I think UFO:AI is better in pretty much every respect - and it's free.

I'd trade micro-managing infantry and squad size for cool abilities
for the soldiers any day, but that's just me.

I was thinking about sending a copy of the game to my niece. If
she doesn't like it, her husband just might. Are there any known
issues with the PS3 version of the game?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
http://www.gamespot.com/events/gdc-2013/video.html?sid=6406150

 malfred wrote:
. Are there any known
issues with the PS3 version of the game?

I have had zero issues with it aside from a very rare freeze.

Whoops posted in wrong thread. Can somebody delete this?.

I've been playing on impossible difficulty but not on ironman mode. The game was impossibly difficult to not do on ironman mode but after a point it got hard for me to die. I've lost about 4-5 countries but i'm trying to hold onto the rest. I did the alien base mission successfully in one try (i would've lost the game if i didn't do it considering panic level) but i had to face 3 cyberdiscs, 6 mutons, 6 chrysallids, a sectoid commander and 12 drones. That said only one guy died from a flanking cyberdisc and he was a squaddie i think. On impossible difficulty sometimes it's just better to completely stay out of 'line of sight' when reloading or when too close to enemies (generally even full cover at medium distance may be too close). The enemy health bars are ridiculous with 6 hp thin men, 4 hp sectoids, i think 18 hp for zombies from chrysallids and some other stuff. I think the other health bars from classic difficulty remain the same though. It's much harder in the beginning i think so use of smoke grenades is fairly needed and pulling back when you have to face too many enemies at once.

In insane difficulty it's also worth noting that countries you don't help can go from 2 panic to full panic if you don't help them in even one abduction mission or if you fail. Terror missions are helpful as well as council missions to decrease panic as well as satellites. I've even found some use in scientists and getting them to an extent. Making research faster makes me get better stuff faster so that's good. Nice to balance what you get but i think engineers are the first thing to get, then scientists or a soldier and finally a soldier or money might be good. Usually you won't be as hard pressed for money if you can stun enough guys for their guns and early on laser weapons help a lot.

Currently playing on Classic Ironman, Europe start.

Its insane! I have no money, and I have 3 countries in the red, and that's only Month 3. I'm having to do an early base rush to try to lower the panic to manageable levels, and get some loot.

Its great ^^

Also, you have to do the alien base in one shot; failing that mission is game over, iirc.

Just started playing Ironman and got Flight of the Valkyries on my first mission- just happened to have an all-female squad.

What's nice about Impossible is that I can fling grenades left and right without having to hear Valten's annoying grenade-lecture. Other than that, it's hella-hard!