XCOM 2: Lessons Learned

Chrysalids....now they kill your saves too!

Edit:  I started writing this post feeling really great about XCOM 2.  Last night that all changed when I encountered a huge bug that has ruined my first playthrough.  Sort of spoilers!  But important because it's related to the bug that is currently rendering my XCOM 2 unplayable.  I started a retaliation mission and things were actually going very well.  I had easily rescued 5 of the 6 civilians and had eliminated almost all of the aliens.  Then, I accidentally clicked on the wrong tile and sent one of my soldiers to a really bad location.  I decided to load up one of my previous saves only to have the game crash.  I tried it a few more times finding that every time I tried to load ANY game within that mission that the game would crash and I would get the Steam error 41 message.  I was very frustrated and took to the forums to see if anyone else was having this problem.  Lo and behold, there were several posts with many people describing a similar situation--they had played with almost no problems and then, suddenly, their saves wouldn't load.  The weird thing is that the problems seem to be linked to the appearance of chrysalids or the pods that they hatch from.  It is possible to play through the mission as long as you don't make any saves--no autosaves, no quicksaves, and even no manual saves--they will all become corrupted.  The downside is that any future missions that feature chrysalids and/or their pods will continue to corrupt your save files.  I could keep pressing on, but reading about people who got all the way to the last mission only to have their saves become corrupted...I think waiting for a patch would be the wise thing to do.  So, for now, my XCOM 2 experience is on hold.  22 hours played and now I'm on pause and slightly frustrated (not the kind of powerful nerdrage that I'm seeing from a lot of people--in the end it's just a game and it sounds like 2k/Firaxis is working on a patch)

The below was written pre-save corruption.  I do think that XCOM 2 is great fun, but am frustrated by the bugs.

I've been ravenously devouring XCOM 2 since it's release on February 5th and so far it has been a very enjoyable (if familiar) experience.  New classes, new aliens, new customizations...but with the same general tactical focus and random 85% shot misses as XCOM.  Ahhh, the comfortable feeling of swearing as one of my shotgunners misses a shot from 1 tile away.

I've learned some important lessons in my early XCOM 2 adventures.  The first lesson has nothing to do with the game itself, but more with my inability to resist pre-ordering.  I resisted almost till release this time!  I swear!  I made it a point to pre-load so that I could start playing almost immediately after I got home from work on Friday.  As I sat in front of my computer and eagerly mashed the "PLAY" button...and nothing happened.  The download said 100% but when I flipped to the download screen no data was being transmitted.  Ummm, it's broken!  I panicked and took to the forums to see if others were having similar problems--after some searching I stumbled across a post that stated that re-installing was probably the best option.  I promptly hit un-install (thinking that the download probably wouldn't take that long) and proceeded to re-download....only to realize that it would actually take four or more hours.  I continued reading the forum post only to discover that my game was "un-packing" and that if I had been patient that process should have only taken 30-45 minutes (although some people reported that this wasn't working either).  I didn't get to play quite as soon as I had anticipated but did manage to finally get it installed (I really feel like pre-loading never works--I should learn my lesson).  ...and now it's totally bugged.

Finally playing was very exciting.  I forgot how much I missed the challenge of XCOM.  After diving into the opening missions I learned about some of the changes to XCOM 2.

Lesson #1--Injuries hurt.  In XCOM I was willing to let some of my soldiers soak up some damage because I knew that they wouldn't be out of action for too long.  I even went so far as to outfit my heavies with extra armor so they could play a sort of tanking role.  This strategy is not particularly viable in XCOM 2.  After the first mission several of my soldiers had taken enemy fire.  I didn't think much of it until I scrolled to the soldier list and saw that they would be out of action for almost 30 days.  Now my most experienced soldiers were recovering on the Avenger rather than leading the next few missions.  My list of injured soldiers quickly became quite large...which brings me to my second lesson.

Lesson #2--Recruit!  Eventually over half my roster was injured and I was faced with the reality that I had barely enough soldiers to field a full squad.  In XCOM I had a very reliable A-team who were my best soldiers.  They went out on almost every mission...kicking ass and taking names and if one of them went down the only replacements I had were rookies.  XCOM 2 require players to have a much more robust roster and, at least in the early missions, taking a rookie along doesn't feel like taking along someone who is completely useless.  My current XCOM 2 roster features at least 2 backups for each possible role--this is a good idea in case your squad takes a lot of damage.  I also find myself trying to avoid damage altogether and frequently re-load one turn several times (save scumming ftw--maybe someday I'll grow up to the challenge of Ironman).

Lesson #3--Pistol skills for snipers aren't totally useless.  In XCOM 2 snipers are equipped with a cool revolver that is a huge improvement over the pea-shooter pistols in XCOM.  One other thing I've noticed about snipers is that they don't seem as dominant as they were in XCOM.  My double-tap snipers were killing machines!  Now, snipers don't seem as overpowered and I've enjoyed the lightning hands ability that allows them to take two shots with their pistol (at targets in short range).  These two shots can be useful for finishing off injured foes who with just a few bars of health left and conserving sniper shots for more distant enemies.

XCOM 2 has the promise of being a great game but not until it is optimized and patched to fix current bugs.  If you're reading this without having purchased the game...hold off!  Wait for a sale, wait for a patch, but don't run out and buy it until it's fixed.