Commander Lizwiz's XCOM 2 Resistance Emporium

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Scaly Haylie

Welcome, goons and goonettes, to XCOM 2! I'm not incredible at it or anything, but I like to name my soldiers after goons so here we are.

Set decades after the 2012 game, this one posits a reality where the aliens have basically taken over earth. This has caused countless arguments about the lore.

Like its predecessor, XCOM 2 features a tutorial mission that will only let you make the moves it wants you to make. It's pretty heavily scripted and thus annoying, but it's part of the full story mode tutorial package that teaches you how to play the game and I don't know the game inside and out yet, so we gotta live with it. :shrug:

Oh no, my favorite characters, woman from the tutorial and black guy from the tutorial, are dead. :geno:

This other lady from the tutorial got promoted. Basically, if a rookie soldier kills enough aliens they'll turn into one out of a handful of specialized classes, randomly selected. This lady always becomes a Ranger, which means she gets a sword. It's good!

Anyway, some plot stuff happens, turns out it was you, the player and commander of XCOM, being rescued in that tutorial mission, and you arrive at an airship where you meet all your XCOM friends.

Our airship needs a thing to fly, though, so we have to do another tutorial mission to go get it.

So! Time to learn how to XCOM. Each of your dudes can move and then take an action, or move twice, then it's the enemy's turn.

You may notice the "turns until destroyed" thingy up in the corner - most missions involve a time limit of some sort. In this case, we have to stabilize the alien thingo before it blows up.

Now let's talk about cover, our main line of defense. Being adjacent to cover makes it harder for things to shoot at you, and as you can see it's marked by those little shield icons when you're plotting out your move. Half shields good, full shields better. In XCOM, just remember your ABCs: Always be covered.

Help I'm Alive, our blue, pink and purple rookie, is going to use his second move to go into a position that affords him half cover from multiple directions.

ALSO IMPORTANT: the new Concealment mechanic. Some missions start you off undetected, and when you alert the enemy to your presence (by attacking, stepping into the red eye squares or jumping through a window like a loud idiot, they'll move into position and actually get ready to start attacking you. This is important.

Games poster C(arla)Jacobs is gonna cause poo poo to pop off by throwing a grenade. If you squint, you'll probably be able to see that the enemies there have red health bars divided up into segments. One of 'em is a grunt with three health, and the other is a smarter grunt with six.

Grenades are wonderful in that they A) never miss and thus give rookies the kills they need to get promoted, and B) destroy cover.

The surviving baddie immediately springs into action before we can do anything else, playing right into the hands of I Was The Fury, who we had set on Overwatch. This basically means having a unit is waiting for an enemy to move within their line of sight, whereupon they'll fire on said enemy. It's a handy tool in our arsenal!

All told, Operation Dank Knife is completed quite smoothly and all three of our rookies get a nice promotion.

I Was The Fury becomes a grenadier, armed with a grenade launcher and a gatling gun.

Help I'm Alive gets a drone which can hack things and provide a defense boost to his squadmates.

CJacobs becomes a sniper, which I should hope needs no further explanation.

And last, but certainly not least, tutorial sword lady gets remade into someone we actually give a hoot about.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2017 04:50

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 08:30

Scaly Haylie

For anyone else who wants in on this campaign, just post in the thread and I'll work you in as soon as an opportunity presents itself. First come, first served. Input on how you want your soldier to look is appreciated, but please note that I absolutely do not guarantee you'll get the class you want.

If you post in this thread, I will assume you want in and add you to the queue.

Scaly Haylie fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Sep 2, 2017

# ¿ Sep 2, 2017 04:53

Scaly Haylie

I Was The Fury posted:

Ah geez I really hope my dude didn't hurt that one guy too bad, I wanna save the world but I dunno if it's worth killing to do that. Why not just do a lot of property damage?

Glad you're playing this game, I enjoyed it but man am I bad at it.

Don't worry, you're the best guy at property damage now.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2017 09:13

Scaly Haylie

Iiiiiit's time to XCOM again! Our first order of business is having our boys down in the lab figure out how to attach all those scopes and fancy gun bits we find on dead aliens onto our own guns.

Next it's time for us to be introduced to ~THE GEOSCAPE~, a big ol' holographic globe from which we'll be doing stuff that doesn't involve directly shooting aliens. One of our main goals is to make contact with resistance cells, which will result in a steady cash flow.

Looks like we've found ourselves a mission!

Since it's listed as easy and I want to get a rookie promoted, I swap CJacobs out for Olive Garden Tonight, who's wearing the most anime hair I could find on the Steam Workshop.

Not only do we have to get to the thingy and hack it, but we also have to destroy all enemy units before we can skedaddle.

We encounter and then quickly Overwatch to death a sectoid, who might've done some psychic stuff if left alone.

Remember how I said cover is extremely important? So is destroying the enemy's cover when you can. Be liberal with those grenades!

See, your soldiers have item slots, and whatever you equip to them, they get one of per mission for absolutely free. A grenade unthrown is a grenade wasted.