New XCom game: Chimera Squad

[Montag]

I am annoyed with the timed secondary objectives. If I have three rounds to get a cache and clear the room in 2, I should get the extra round to heal and get the secondary objective instead of going straight to the next room.

[NickAragua]

Got a hold of an "epic weapon" in my last play session. It's a plasma rifle, which sounds pretty awesome until you realize it has the exact same stats as a regular rifle.

Only difference is that this one has an ability that lets it unload into a bad guy until he dies or you run your clip dry.

[coopasonic]

All of the epic weapons are of that mold. They give you one ability from XCOM2. Shotguns with Run and Gun, Pistol with Fan Fire, SMG with Chain shot, AR with Banish. There are two of each type based on what I saw, but NOTHING for Zephyr.

[Archinerd]

I am annoyed with the timed secondary objectives. If I have three rounds to get a cache and clear the room in 2, I should get the extra round to heal and get the secondary objective instead of going straight to the next room.

Zephyr makes those easy to get.
I agree though, the timers are too short.

[NickAragua]

So far, I've yet to fail a secondary objective. I usually either eliminate the hostiles and get it auto-completed or dash some semi-expendable individual to the area to get it done. I guess the main philosophical difference between Chimera Squad and the main-line X-Com games is that you're not expected to kill everything on the map. In fact, in a lot of cases it's highly discouraged because of the endlessly spawning reinforcements. Just get in, get the job done, and get out.

[coopasonic]

I guess the main philosophical difference between Chimera Squad and the main-line X-Com games is that you're not expected to kill everything on the map. In fact, in a lot of cases it's highly discouraged because of the endlessly spawning reinforcements. Just get in, get the job done, and get out.

Also, your guys are going to get hurt, but don't worry because it all goes away by magic with the occasional, very easy to remove, scar.

[Lassr]

Also, your guys are going to get hurt, but don't worry because it all goes away by magic with the occasional, very easy to remove, scar.

Yep, that is the one thing that is keeping me from loving this game. Been a few missions where I breach and realize after I miss my shots and the aliens do not miss on return fire that I'm screwed but so what I'll just have to replay it. So you go in and see how far you get before the retry. Once I made it through to the next breach though with a little luck. But there is no drama really because I know I'm not going to lose my best soldiers.

[Zarathud]

A few missions and bad order in the breaches will lead to soldier loss in the multi-part missions. I’m taking Zephyr because of his ability to clear a room of minions, and the one time I trained him up there was a critical mission where I really needed him or another crowd control character. So I died ALOT before limping through.

[jztemple2]

I've gotten 13 hours in and I'm starting to burn out a bit. I finished the first faction at 12 hours and I'm a few missions into the second. What is weird is that every mission I've been offered on this second faction sequence has been listed as Very Difficult (playing on Normal difficulty) yet most of them have been fairly easy. I'll keep playing a while but I don't know if I'll grind all the way to the end.

[Lassr]

I've gotten 13 hours in and I'm starting to burn out a bit. I finished the first faction at 12 hours and I'm a few missions into the second. What is weird is that every mission I've been offered on this second faction sequence has been listed as Very Difficult (playing on Normal difficulty) yet most of them have been fairly easy. I'll keep playing a while but I don't know if I'll grind all the way to the end.

I've also finished the first faction and all mine are very difficult on the 2nd and also "Not Very Difficult"
I'll finish the game but not sure it's one I will replay, just not enough variety in the missions (as in space to strategical move) and preset soldiers. I've had several crashes now (about 5). Don't get me wrong, this is well worth the $10 I paid, a lot better than several other cheap games I've bought.

[Sawyer]

Fortunately for me, my son bought this game and shared it with me on his Steam account. He likes it, I don't. Possibly, there are some preconceptions clouding my judgement here, but the things I was worried about not liking are predominately the things I don't like.

I don't like the characters. The classes are interesting, but the fact that we have pre-made characters for the purpose of having annoying voiceovers is a no for me. I really don't care for the not-entertaining banter.

I don't like the reused assets. It's like someone at 2K said, "hey, we have this tactical engine we payed to develop, what else can we do with it?" When XCom 2 came out I was fine with the style, but it just feels played-out now (of course I have hundreds of hours into XCom2). And the new assets they do have, the cutscenes etc., I especially don't care for. I might like them better if not for the annoying voices. Hard to say.

What I didn't see coming though was the fact that I don't like the tactical layer. For starters, the maps are too damn small. I see from the thread that some people like this, but the tiny, segmented maps go against my XCom DNA at a fundamental level. More annoying is the "big change", breaches. In theory it's a good idea, but the execution (haha) is poor. The first time through a breach, shooting multiple baddies and them hitting the floor is cool (I can look past the fact the entry team shoots through each other). But the uncontrolled placement of soldiers after breach is just a huge negative for me. The maps are like playing chess puzzles with preset pieces. The interplay of the new skills is interesting and I surprisingly liked that. I also didn't mind the alternating turns, though I hope XCom3 doesn't switch to that. For the small maps, the alternating turns works and you can plan two or three moves ahead.

So on the whole I'm glad I didn't spend my money on it. Though, truthfully, I'm tempted to spend $10 on this myself just so I can thumbs-down it on Steam.

[Lassr]

I've gotten 13 hours in and I'm starting to burn out a bit. I finished the first faction at 12 hours and I'm a few missions into the second. What is weird is that every mission I've been offered on this second faction sequence has been listed as Very Difficult (playing on Normal difficulty) yet most of them have been fairly easy. I'll keep playing a while but I don't know if I'll grind all the way to the end.

I've also finished the first faction and all mine are very difficult on the 2nd and also "Not Very Difficult"
I'll finish the game but not sure it's one I will replay, just not enough variety in the missions (as in space to strategical move) and preset soldiers. I've had several crashes now (about 5). Don't get me wrong, this is well worth the $10 I paid, a lot better than several other cheap games I've bought.

I may have been wrong...I may not finish this game. Now it is getting very difficult. I've already reached burn out and a little frustration, too many crashes now, and how is it fair that I get 1 soldier turn then the enemy gets 4 turns in a row. I've replayed this encounter 3 times and the 4 turns is too much to overcome as I lose at least 2 players during those turns due to low health from previous encounter. Then there is this Ronin guy who gets some extra turns and its mission failure.

[Archinerd]

Okay, so the honeymoon is over.
I like this game, it's easily worth $10, but I was wrong. It is not better than the "real" XCOM's.

That is all.

[coopasonic]

I may have been wrong...I may not finish this game. Now it is getting very difficult. I've already reached burn out and a little frustration, too many crashes now, and how is it fair that I get 1 soldier turn then the enemy gets 4 turns in a row. I've replayed this encounter 3 times and the 4 turns is too much to overcome as I lose at least 2 players during those turns due to low health from previous encounter. Then there is this Ronin guy who gets some extra turns and its mission failure.

First, Ronin's suck. I think I may have been lucky in choosing Sacred Coil to take down first so they were easier when I faced them. Second, are you targeting aggressive and alert enemies on the breach? I am pretty sure I never faced four enemy turns in a row even with the Ronin cheaters. I know aggressive get a shot off and alert get a scramble action, but I wouldn't be surprised if they both also got initiative boosts.

[Lassr]

I may have been wrong...I may not finish this game. Now it is getting very difficult. I've already reached burn out and a little frustration, too many crashes now, and how is it fair that I get 1 soldier turn then the enemy gets 4 turns in a row. I've replayed this encounter 3 times and the 4 turns is too much to overcome as I lose at least 2 players during those turns due to low health from previous encounter. Then there is this Ronin guy who gets some extra turns and its mission failure.

First, Ronin's suck. I think I may have been lucky in choosing Sacred Coil to take down first so they were easier when I faced them. Second, are you targeting aggressive and alert enemies on the breach? I am pretty sure I never faced four enemy turns in a row even with the Ronin cheaters. I know aggressive get a shot off and alert get a scramble action, but I wouldn't be surprised if they both also got initiative boosts.

I target the ones i have the best chance to hit; usually 70% and above. Got tired of missing too many breach shots.

I just read an article where Sid was a proponent of the interleaved turn system. I hope that doesn't mean it will be part of XCOM3. It's different and I like the idea but it's not as fun to me. I like the ability to choose which soldier I move in what order based on their abilities and current situation. I feel so limited with the interleaved turns.

[Lassr]

I started the whole mission over, and was able to get to the last encounter with less damage and had better shots on the aggressive soldiers so I only had to deal with 2 enemy moves after my first move.

[Newcastle]

Ronins do suck. I am on my last faction now, but sacred coil were faction #2 I hit.

1 Verge's CC's - he has 2 CC's per turn, use em. I would pick madness for a unit who has enemies between it and me. Stun the one you like or most dangerous.
2. Healer Drone Chick [not robot controller] - Forget her name, but she has an ability called cooperation, which allows a PC another turn. Use it.
3. Zephyr has a AOE attack that can take out small groups of low HP.
3. Use the Team up judiciously.

During breach phases only the #2 slot can you drop a debuffs [stun/disorient]type of grenade CC' and the buffs s/hit bonus grenades/crit grenades; use it. I would often split up my teams into 2 sets at times so I could use dual "cc" breach slots.

I also would have a macro battle plan also. IE i will use a disorient on the first breach, heals on 2nd, and aim bonus on 3rd breach. This way you could also time your abilities that have CD's...IE i will use lance shot early on my first go, so it will pop up by breach 2.

[NickAragua]

Another tip for the Ronin is to use the viper's poison attacks and any other DoT effects you've got (fire, acid, etc). If they decide to do that bullshit move where they start activating more frequently, well, the guy takes damage every time he activates, so it's going to cost him.

[Lassr]

Stunning for 1 round is completely useless. Not sure what the point is. I stun, if it is for one turn then the enemy reactivates as soon as my turn is over, ends up being a waste. Maybe they do it as a negative effect like if you try to hack and fail.

[NickAragua]

Stunning for 1 round is completely useless. Not sure what the point is. I stun, if it is for one turn then the enemy reactivates as soon as my turn is over, ends up being a waste. Maybe they do it as a negative effect like if you try to hack and fail.

Yeah, it's not great, because it still lets the stunned unit take one action. Normally, they move and shoot/activate an ability, but having one action usually just means they forego the move and shoot at you.

[Lassr]

Well, I could be finished. Ran into a bug after a crash where no reinforcements show up so it's an endless cycle of waiting. Tried to load an earlier save and the load screen just hangs.

[Lassr]

Well, I could be finished. Ran into a bug after a crash where no reinforcements show up so it's an endless cycle of waiting. Tried to load an earlier save and the load screen just hangs.

Had to head back to a save at the City screen and start the mission over. Got through it and dealt with the GateKeeper. Onto the next faction.

[NickAragua]

Yeah, I got beat on that gatekeeper mission too. I'd have done a lot better if my grenade guy hadn't gotten dogpiled by a bunch of andromedons and knocked out in the second section, his grenades would have come in real handy dealing with all the jerkwads in the final section.

[Lassr]

Yeah, I got beat on that gatekeeper mission too. I'd have done a lot better if my grenade guy hadn't gotten dogpiled by a bunch of andromedons and knocked out in the second section, his grenades would have come in real handy dealing with all the jerkwads in the final section.

Got to make sure you have some AP rounds for the gatekeeper & the Volt Chain (or whatever it is called) was nice at damaging the gate keeper and knocking out about 50% of the zombies around it.

I never would have made it through the mission with the team I had before the crash so starting it over would have been my only option, crash or not.

[NickAragua]

I tried it again last night, and barely made it. I had (sorry, forgot the names) the snake chick, the hybrid with the shield, the grenade guy and the medic. Got through the first area without a hitch - it's a lot easier knowing that the Ronin are going to come out of those doors and not shooty guys, so I didn't bother taking cover, just hooked up 2x overwatch on each door. Ronin are really vulnerable to poison - that and the shield guy's shield ability kept my guys more or less healthy for the second part.

With the second part, I rushed the shield guy and the snake chick down to disable the gate quick before they summon in a bunch of extra guys, which is what did me in last time. Also focused down both the ronin and the boss guy (who's basically a souped up ronin). Despite all this, the snake chick bought a small piece of the farm and had to take a nap. An amusing bit was that the grenade guy went into overwatch at the start of the scenario, so when the gatekeeper showed up, it ate a shotgun blast which shredded some armor, weakening it for the next fight.

Third fight, I knew was going to be rough. Started out by eliminating the ronin and the android. The MEC and Andromedon teamed up on my shield guy, knocking his ass out, but their commando decided to toss a smoke grenade over my grenade guy, protecting him from zombie attacks. The grenade guy worked on the zombies while the medic and robot took out the MEC. Eventually, the Gatekeeper came out of the lab/zombie nap area in the back and started destroying our cover and raising more zombies. Since fighting the zombies is a losing proposition, I focused the gatekeeper down with everything I had and took it down - with it went the zombies, and then it was just mopping up an andromedon and the stupid commando with one hit point left.

[wonderpug]

Anyone know about how many hours this takes to beat?

[coopasonic]

Anyone know about how many hours this takes to beat?

It took me 25 hours but generally I am a bit faster than most so maybe closer to 30 depending on how much time you spend save scumming (I spent a decent bit of time with that damn takedown mission everyone is complaining about).

[NickAragua]

Heh, I'm definitely not complaining. It was a good challenge.

I'm just glad I wasn't playing Ironman.

[Archinerd]

Anyone know about how many hours this takes to beat?

It took me 25 hours but generally I am a bit faster than most so maybe closer to 30 depending on how much time you spend save scumming (I spent a decent bit of time with that damn takedown mission everyone is complaining about).

It took me 36 hours on Expert. I'm generally a bit slower than most, so around 30 is probably right.
I didn't do any save scumming, but I did have to restart one final mission because of a bug that wouldn't let me advance to the next Breach point.

[Montag]

No crashes until the rooftop on the taking down Atlas. This really sucked, I was doing very well. An adder pulled Godmother into the middle of a group of bad guys. Her reflex grip, auto reload, and untouchable with team up and cooperation was going to unleash serious carnage.

[Montag]

Fortunately the last autosave let me resume right when the game crashed and i was able to finish the game. 37 hours for $10 is a good return. I do not anticipate playing it any further.

[Lassr]

Completed in 22 hours

[NickAragua]

Got clobbered in the last mission of the uh... alien mercenary faction investigation. The one where they have Praetorians.

For those who haven't gotten there yet, a Praetorian is an armored Muton with a shield and a plasma rifle, and when you hit them, their armor goes up by 1.

There's a part where you have to take down *two* of those, including a boss Praetorian. First problem was that I let the boss out from behind his force field too early. Should have killed all the flunkies first, as there wasn't a timer.

Second problem was that the Dominators kept locking my guys down with stun and mind control.

Third problem was that two of my guys got KOd, so I went into the surprise third section with just two people and an android, so I had no chance at that point.

I might try to delay the mission for a day so the grenade guy can get out of training and I can use him instead of the zapping drone french woman with robot legs. And then focus down the dominators as soon as possible.

[Archinerd]

No crashes until the rooftop on the taking down Atlas. This really sucked, I was doing very well. An adder pulled Godmother into the middle of a group of bad guys. Her reflex grip, auto reload, and untouchable with team up and cooperation was going to unleash serious carnage.

Intersting, my crash issue in the same area also involved Godmother and a snake.

[Lassr]

A world of warning on the take down Atlas mission, it says 2 encounters, so the first time through I used all my 1 time abilities during the 2nd encounter, and then after those 2 encounters the game continued with another mission and all my abilities were used up. I lost. So the next attempt I saved all my abilities as long as I could, made the end mission a little easier.

[Lassr]

So thoughts on the new features in this game.

For a mini game they were fine but if these were to be used in XCOM3 then a definite NO on pre-made characters. That would be deal breaker for me. The interweave turns is more realistic but the injuries and wound recovery would have to be altered. In XCOM2 I could often get through missions with No or very few injuries but that is just not possible with interweaved turns. It was very rare I made it through encounters without an wound in Chimera Squad. So something would need to be done to speed up recovery a LOT. The abilities to team up would need to be revamped. They were limited in Chimera and really removed a lot of strategy from the game for me. It was all about saving those special abilities for the right time and then just repeatedly using other abilities over and over.

I personally hope none of those changes go in XCOM3, but interweaved turns may work with a lot of work.

[NickAragua]

Finished it up. 25 hours, apparently.

I had to re-try three or four missions, including a random hostage extraction where I got sloppy and some muton killed the hostage. They even had a big "I'm going to shoot the hostage" icon over him and everything, I just forgot. Whoops.

Last series of missions was a pain, but, heeding Lassr's advice, I saved my special abilities and one-use items for the last couple of encounters and managed to squeeze out a victory. I had to take the medic in with an HP-reducing scar because she got knocked out during the first encounter of the previous back-to-back mission (city hall).

Here's a list of top three annoying enemies that I prefer to target as soon as possible, in no particular order:
Ronin - this jackass weeb activates an ability that makes him get more turns than your guys and runs around, hitting with melee attacks then ducking back to cover. Can inflict a lot of damage if you don't take him out. Also immune to the first overwatch shot at him.

Praetorian - big muton with a shield and a plasma gun. In addition to dealing plasma gun damage, he also armors up buddies, armors up when attacked and declares duels.

Dominator - mind control and stuns your guys. These are probably the number one cause of my squad members getting knocked out and losing missions.

Overall I had a lot of fun, but yeah, this is "X-Com lite". I don't want to see the interleaved turn order in a mainline X-Com title, or immortal pre-made characters (stuff like the psionic woman or the triad gangster in the first X-Com is fine though). Although, to be fair, I wouldn't mind some mission kills being converted into non-fatal but permanent injuries that you have to sink resources into fixing (e.g. have to get the guy a cybernetic limb replacement or something). I did like the breach mode, so I'd be ok seeing some proportion of missions start with that. Having aliens on the squad is a fun change of pace as well, so I wouldn't mind seeing some of those guys again. Thematically, it's cool to see the other alien species having a little diversification in their roles as well. It was definitely worth the ten bucks.

[Blackhawk]

So, I loved XCOM EU/EW. Finished it multiple times.

I tried three or four times to play XCOM 2 and never enjoyed it. I hated the way the only real viable strategy was to activate the enemy and eliminate them before they could act, effectively eliminating firefights (and flanking, and cover, and suppression, etc) from the game entirely in favor of that one style of play.

Is this more of what I disliked about XCOM 2?

[coopasonic]

Is this more of what I disliked about XCOM 2?

I'd say the opposite, at least to a degree. There is no way to eliminate the enemy before they can act with the interleaved turn system. You may take a few out in breach mode before the real engagement starts, but there are generally more of them than you even after that. I still think it is a puzzle to solve rather than any kind of realistic tactical engagement. It's just a different puzzle.

[Archinerd]

I never had any issues with the Ronin.
Dominators and Guardians gave me a lot more trouble in general.
And then there was escort the VIP mission I had to play 3 times because I couldn't keep 3 beserkers at bay.