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Picked up War of the Chosen along with Chimera Squad in the steam sales. I had recently replayed Xcom 2 so I was still fresh with how to play the game. It had some interesting changes, seems to give you more to do in the early game with the factions. But the new chosen also ramp up the early game difficulty. After finishing it, it seems like it just steepens the game inverse difficulty curve. Early game is much harder than base xcom2 but the end game is a lot easier. The actual final battle with the first chosen is tough as nails but the item you get for beating them is a major boost. I liked the resistance covert missions, early game when you've few soldiers there's a real decision to make on who you can spare to complete them, and the rewards are nice offset against the games higher difficulty. But later as I had enough soldiers and wasn't worried about getting injured or ambushed I was just sending out unpaired soldiers to develop bonds, or taking the hack rewards for my top specialists, or dodge for rangers. Again the mechanic had a risk/reward choice early game but past the mid it was just all rewards. I also seemed to be way behind on my research by the end game, I think all the extra inspired research for weapons bonuses delayed my Shadow chamber progress. Usually I've just about gotten every continent and the final mission is ready. This time I had the whole world and was just running down the clock, doing alien facilities to level up my characters. I've never had that long a period of having effectively completed the game but not unlocked the final mission. The lost were cool the first time I encountered them, and trying to direct them to the advent was fun. But I was sick of the dozens of reaction shots my team would take on the hordes. I could go for a piss at the end of my turn and when I come back they're still taking reaction shots on the lost. Also I don't know if it was just the RNG but outside of the first few missions I didn't get many city missions where the lost showed up. I seemed to get a lot more of the rural map types. That was probably for the best who knows how long the game would gone on if more missions had the lost. Overall I enjoyed it as a change of pace after playing out the original. But I doubt I'd play it again. It's a harder start but the challenge is gone much earlier too. Once you've defeated the chosen you're nearly unstoppable. Yet for me that point came in the mid-game with still a lot of countries to unlock. I went onto Chimera Squad and if I hadn't bought them as a bundle I would have gotten a refund. I did not like it at all. The voice acting was cheesy. The levels seemed too small, limiting the strategy compared to Xcom2. I finished the intro and felt I knew enough of what to expect that it didn't interest me. It seemed like it was going to be a stripped back version of xcom2 with narrative driven game-play and less decision making for the player. Which meant no character deaths and that's half of the fun in xcom, losing guys. It kinda felt like an indie knock-off of Xcom2.
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Aug 15, 2023 03:05
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 19:43 |
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