My pony might be slow here, but if you name one of your guys "Sid Meier" or "Chris Kluwe"...

Picked this up during the steam sale. Gameplay reminds me alot of final fantasy tactics, but without the epic story.

I have to assume you're playing on easy then. Don't do that.

Easy was already too easy and then they dumbed it down even more in one of the first patches. The game really starts to show what it's about on normal and finally comes into its own on classic; with ironman it's even better.

I don't understand why they even added the easy mode. The story in the game is pretty much terrible and you can do a complete playthrough in a few hours. This game is 100% gameplay driven but the gameplay is just about as bad as the story on easy.

Easy mode is there so someone who doesn't like to feel stress/tension while playing games and isn't normally a gamer (my wife fits this profile) can sit down and enjoy the game.

Easy is there for the people who just aren't familiar with the genre or familiar with video games. It gives a new player long enough to get hooked on a game before moving up in difficulty. My wife does this with just about every game she plays... she starts off absolutely terrible at them, but if she gets shot up or otherwise killed in the first three minutes of gameplay, she's quitting and not coming back. If she can spend a few hours on easy to get the hang of it, she'll move up difficulty levels.

Especially for a game like XCom, not having difficulty levels can be really brutal. Can you imagine being forced to start on classic? Even if you did manage to master the very difficult combat, you would almost certainly hit a wall a few hours in where your base management kept you from being able to continue. If you weren't familiar with the game at all, I could easily see this happening multiple times.

If my wife played a game where she played for 5+ hours and then discovered that, due to her inexperience with the game, she had to restart the game from the very beginning, she wouldn't just be saying "**** XCOM" she'd be saying, "**** video games." That's not a good thing.

Right but I'm certain it goes both ways. I can absolutely see somebody playing the game for an hour or so on easy - thinking it's just a really lame version of FF Tactics with no story, boring skills and aliens. "Man I have no idea what all that buzz was about. Zzzzz... next!"

A game I recall that with was Blue Dragon. It was stupidly easy on the normal difficulty - to the point that after having been one of the very few games I day 1'd due to Sakaguchi/Uematsu - the game was so boring I packed it away after about 4 hours of just hoping it would become more interesting or challenging. It wasn't until months later that I downloaded some official hard difficulty update using a Japanese Live account that the game actually became fun. It seemed fairly clear that somebody somewhere had neutered the game difficulty for whatever reason as the game was actually well balanced and very enjoyable after the "hard" patch - but the damage was already done. Gamers were board, reviewers complained about the lack of any 'pacing', etc. All be it there it's a bit different as easy difficult was forced on players, but on the other hand - as started this conversation players don't always know what difficulty is appropriate for them. Maybe easy is good for your wife, for somebody posting on a VG forum on 2+2 with a working knowledge of FF Tactics - it's a joke.

I'm playing on classic. No idea why you would assume from my post that I was playing on easy.

It's not a knock on the game. It reminds me of a sci fi FFT. Without an epic story.

Because beyond easy, and especially on classic, I see 0 similarity between the games aside from the obvious cosmetic stuff like you move a team of guys around on an isometric map.

It's like a tactical strategy RPG without the RPG elements. Which is a roundabout way of saying it's a tactical strategy game.

I'm not so sure this person exists. If someone is going to put a game on the easiest possible difficulty setting, marked "easy," then quit because the game is easy, I doubt they have the intelligence to turn on a computer and operate a mouse in the first place.

Having difficulty levels that cater to all types of players seems far better than forcing everyone to play on harder difficulty levels because there's apparently people out there stupid enough to complain that a game is easy when they set it on easy.

I'm not sure how "moving a team of guys around an isometric map" is cosmetic, either. It's the key identifier of the tactics/strategy genre. That's like saying you don't see how Sonic the Hedgehog is like Mario at all... after all, the only thing they have in common is cosmetic stuff moving through a 2-D level while collecting power ups and avoiding enemies.

Seriously? You can't see the numerous similarities between these 2 games in core gameplay? The major difference is that FFT emphasized a story line outside of battles while xcom has you micromanage a base.

No idea why you are harping on about difficulty. This game is not difficult at all once you get past the first three months which can kind of be a crapshoot. Similiar to FFT!

The difficulty is pertinent as directly related to the focus of the games which are essentially opposites.

In FFT the combat is trivial and balance is basically nonexistent. The only way you're going to find a challenge is if you severely handicap yourself. The combat is meant as a compliment and 'pacer' for the story and pace does it. You'll be playing for weeks particularly if you decide to pursue hidden characters, side quests, etc.

In XCom the combat and balance is all the game is. The story is barely existent and the game can be "easily" beaten in a single sitting without speed running or anything like that. The entire game is basically just a complex board game.

Basically think comparing these two games is similar to comparing Dark Souls to Soul Calibur. After all they're both third person games where you control a single guy with a sword! Or more succinct would be comparing XCom to Fallout 1/2. After all they also had team based isometric turn based combat.

....what? In both games you spend 95% of your time in isometric turn based combat, which is the key component of the genre. Yes, there are different levels of character balance and quality of story, but that's a development issue, not a genre issue.

You may as well say Diablo 3 isn't an action RPG because the character classes were so much more balanced Torchlight, or that the original Dragon Quest isn't an RPG because Final Fantasy 7 had such a better story.

You're welcome to your opinion, of course, but your understanding of the genre those games fit into is definitely way off from the standard way they're usually discussed.

I'm sorry to burst your bubble but this game is every bit as flawed and completely unbalanced as FFT ever was. Its totally skewed at the beginning towards enemies with their absurdly superior accuracy bonuses and the only difficulty comes from surviving the initial few months. As soon as you get laser weapons+ skeleton armor the game is basically over. Mid game enemies do not scale fast enough - a few mutons and floaters are no match for you, and it essentially becomes a cash grab for resources until the end game which is made trivially easy despite upgraded enemies when your team is rocking plasma weapons+ broken game perks like squad sight/double tap/rapidfire/heatammo. When badass sectopods and berserkers are killed instantly in a single turn you know you have balance issues.

It follows FFT's difficulty curve completely. Disproportionally powerful enemies during the beginning making for a brutal start, smooth mid game grab for resources, roflstomp broken end game content(orlandu+ninjas).

I'm having fun with xcom but pointing to this game as a shining arbiter of balance is crazy. At least in FFT I had a great story and a gazillion different classes to try.

I like the idea that XCOM and FFT is a perfectly reasonable comparison on one difficulty level but completely different genres at others. Does that mean XCOM is 2 games in 1?? Actually there are 4 difficulty levels, maybe it's 4 entirely different genres! Because of something!

(I've never played on easy maybe it skips some steps, but there's no way beating a game of XCOM in a single session is common, right? It's like 8-10 hours per game I'd estimate, more if you save/reload)

Agreed. I'm kind of dumbfounded as to how someone can't see the simliarities. Xcom isn't so profoundly deep(imo not at all) that it escapes this comparison.

That Long War mod is great so far, it makes the start easier but the scaling later on seems much better, because perks don't have the insane bonuses like before

Ouch. Load fiending? You know - rambo your guys, get them all killed from enemies in a location you didn't expect, load and wipe out those guys. Or you move your guy out of cover to finish off a guy with a 90% shot. You miss. You die. You curse. You load. All that good stuff.

XCom is one unique beast. To really enjoy it you've got to be willing to kick yourself in the nuts, which is basically what ironman classic/impossible does. You can wipe out the difficulty of the game in a variety of ways outside the game, but all I can say is that you're missing out on an incredible gaming experience in doing so. As you've said you basically turn the game into FFT without the story, exploration or interesting classes.

To each their own, I guess. I've now finished it once on Iron Man Classic but not on Impossible (got distracted by other games) but I really think I prefer regular (not Iron Man) Classic. The difficulty is still there, but a wipe only eradicates the last 15-20 minutes of progression, instead of wiping out hours worth.

When I was on Iron Man I ended up spending a disproportionate amount of time on earlier missions, which is fine to a point, but I ended up doing them often enough that it got boring. Wiping after you're an hour in for the fifth time isn't fun imo.... it sucks playing the opening mission of the game 15 times while there are missions later in the game I've only played once or twice.

I'm glad I beat Ironman Classic once, but it's not where I had the most fun. The game is on the shelf at the moment (playing through Final Fantasy Tactics again and seeing it without rose colored glasses as much as possible, it's awesome at what it does well but pretty horrible at some of the nitpicky details) but when I pick up XCOM in the future I'll almost certainly set it to Classic mode without Iron Man. That's definitely where I had the most fun.

Just did iron man normal (and failed the final mission twice, lol, after basically acing the rest of the missions with only 3 deaths); my first complete play through. This long war mod sounds intriguing.

Pretty good game.

No(again). I don't play on easy nor do I save scum. How you came to this conclusion is really bizarre.

Feel free to keep trying tho. Its very amusing to me.

Watch out for the 1v1 vs wiegraf!

Yeah, it's probably my fourth (maybe fifth?) time through FFT, this time it's the PS Vita War of the Lions version. The game is the all kinds of great that people really think it is, but it's not perfect.

The bad:

- Long bits of story between the last opportunity to save and difficult battles, with no option to skip them or even really fast forward

- Spots where you can get "stuck" on boss battles that are extremely tough without a way to leave and level unless you use multiple save slots

- Despite this being god knows how many times this game has been ported and remade, they still can't seem to hire a copy editor to fix the spelling/typos/horrible dialogue, it's clear they changed it from the original FFT (which was horrible) but they didn't really make it any better

- The outfitting system (buying gear from shops) is totally busted, as pressing "optimize" for your characters gear does nothing of the sort

- The difficulty curve still sucks, with the difficulty of any particular battle totally unrelated to your progression in the game

The good:

- The job system and the method of gaining new abilities is still pretty much the deepest and most satisfying of any Tactical RPG

- The story is still rich and light years ahead of similar games sporting generic "save the world" plots

- They finally, bless their goddamn hearts, fixed the AI on the numerous protect/rescue missions so that the AI you need to save no longer habitually rushes into crowds of pissed off enemy units


Still definitely worth playing years later and a definite classic. Still makes me wish for a genuine Final Fantasy Tactics 2 where maybe they can apply what the industry has learned in the last decade or so and make a game that is really streamlined, but still with the depth of FFT.

enjoying xcomm and enjoyed fft back in the day.

i'm probably going to say fft was the better game, but xcomm is still great. FFT was harder. You could make an argument that it being harder was due to unfairness, but FFT was harder.
xcomm on classic ironman requires you to be extremely deliberate and make no mistakes, but there's no point where i feel its unfair. with FFT there were points where if you didn't have the correct build, you were just ****ed. and you were ****ed to the point that you might as well just start a new game.
love both games though.

An expansion for X-COM is going to be announced in a week or two. Rumors on the internets suggest it could be far more substantial than the DLC that's been released thus far.

Pre-ordered the bureau today, if that is what you are talking about. Looks entirely different, had crazy free stuff if you pre order, but I don't see it in my steam stuff yet.