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PaperclipPerfector  18hr ago (text post)   759 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 9, 2026

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Video game thread! What did you get over the holidays, what are you playing?

Having a blast playing Skyrim modded. Been playing a lot and also just looking through modlists. This is one area I've found AI to be extremely fun and useful to work with, which has been rare for me lately.

I was feeling an urge to play XCOM 2 over the Christmas break. When I opened it from Steam, I found that it gave me the option to play the War of the Chosen DLC, which I didn't remember buying. It adds so much new content to the base game that it's a bit overwhelming at first brush, but the base game is so addictive that I got into the swing of it pretty quickly, and I think I've logged a few dozen hours into it so far, having killed my first of the three Chosen assassins.

Any of you XCom fans tried Phoenix Point? It's a newer team shooter by Gallop, who did UFO Enemy Unknown which I loved so much but also XCom Apocalypse which I didn't.

Tried it, and found it a horrible mess. UX was bad, the free-aim gimmick didn't fit the grid-based movement at all, the campaign progression was very opaque, the troopers and items looked silly, the here-are-three-factions-with-one-unique-unit-each system seemed eerily similar to War of the Chosen, the DLCs varied from questionable to godawful...I didn't get far in it. I keep retrying it occasionally; there was a patch recently and a big old mod Terror From The Void ("The Long War of Phoenix Point!", they say), but every time I try it I just end up frustrated by the tactical layer and with no sense of direction in the strategic layer, and annoyed by the UX all throughout.

IIRC, @self_made_human enjoyed it, though?

Thanks that sounds like it has more of what I miss about the originals so I think I'd enjoy it. I'll poke around and see if I can find @self_made_human's review.

I've heard of it but I've never played it. The only XCOM games are the reboot ones, I've never played any of the originals.

The original is probably my favorite game. It wasn't as polished as the new ones, but I loved the time unit system (you could take actions as long as you had time units so someone who didn't need to move could shoot multiple times and reloads varied with where you had to get the ammo from belt was just a fraction of a turn backpack meant a good chunk of a turn but you could carry more ammo and some ammo only fit there).

But what I loved was the story portential it unlocked in me. Having an early terror mission go bad against the floaters when all of the sudden the rookie picks up a heavy weapon of another troop's dead body and blows through all the remaining aliens like butter. She eventually became a colonel and led the fight all the way to Mars. Her mental fortitude was the highest I think I'd seen in thousands of hours.

Or the time I blew up half my psyonically strong team when I brought a rookie to get experience (mind control let you move the enemy for a turn) so I was grouping a huge ship of etherials up for the rookie to kill and I missed one who mind controlled the rookie with the bazooka and oh no as the realization set in and I dusted off with a much smaller elite cadre.

I played the new ones I think I've played all the tactical titles in the series, but I think I'd changed and they never had that same feel.

War of the Chosen is great. @Southkraut actually just mentioned The Long War, have you ever heard of that mod for XCOM? It's also awesome.

I've heard of it but never tried it, I'm curious. Reading the TV Tropes page for it now.

Hah. Allow my partial disagreement - War of the Chosen is a complete mess, and if XCOM2 hadn't already jumped the shark on its and with its other DLCs, WotC would have been the final nail in its coffin.

Mechanically XCOM2 tactical combat is pretty good - the stealth mechanics for example are a nice addition. But the whole theme, plot and writing are superhero-movie-tier trash, the strategy layer is a mess, the visual design of the entire game is godawful, the character building has gotten far out of hand with mutiple overlapping systems, and the DLCs make it all even worse by adding more systems that barely fit together.

If I want a cartoonish everything-and-the-kitchen-sink XCOM game, I'l play X-Piratez, thank you very much. At least that one knows what it is.

I used to think that Xenonauts was too boring compared to XCOM, but after XCOM2 I actually found myself appreciating Xenonauts 2 for being less messy and more grounded.

Ultimately, my favorite turn-based tactics game isn't XCOM at all but Battle Brothers. Maybe Menace, coincidentally by the same developers, will be the go-to in the future...but that one isn't out yet.

XCOM:EW with LW is very good though, IMO. Showing its age by now, and they couldn't fix some of the base game's issues (pod mechanics, stupid-looking weapons), and the mod isn't perfect itself (too many MEC classes), but at the time that one was pretty much non plus ultra.

Ultimately, my favorite turn-based tactics game isn't XCOM at all but Battle Brothers.

I had a lot of fun with Battle Brothers. Have you had a look at Stoneshard yet? It hits a few of the same notes.

I have! I keep retrying it occasionally. But in the end, it feels to me like a game the dev really wanted to make, but not one that he really wanted other players to enjoy. The UX is terrible, the dungeons go on for far too long, far too much time is spent manually travelling and backtracking, the inventory management is onerous, and the combat is mostly a matter of stacking dozens of tiny 1% and 2% buffs to this or that stat in the hopes that it will tilt the odds just enough in your favor...

Yes it hits some of the same notes as Battle Brothers, but it has none of BB's streamlined elegance. Maybe I'll come around to it at some point, but so far I always found myself having decidedly too little fun for how much time it costs to play it.

Yeah I kind of agree. Its a lot of fun, but what isn't fun is having so many different stats (eg 'hands efficiency?') that you need to invest time in reading about to understand. Games are meant to be fun. If you need to go read a build guide outside of the game to make a decent build, something has gone wrong.

I am waiting until the final release before getting back to it as I hope it will have a lot of QoL polish by then.

Mechanically XCOM2 tactical combat is pretty good - the stealth mechanics for example are a nice addition.

I thought the stealth mechanics added to XCOM 2 were a bit half-baked and gimmicky. WotC goes some way towards addressing this specific criticism with the addition of missions in which the optimal strategy is to go the whole mission without being spotted.

But the whole theme, plot and writing are superhero-movie-tier trash

Agreed, although I can't really say this is a significant departure from the original XCOM: EU. I actually prefer the grizzled, bitter, shell-shocked Bradford over his flat, clean-cut characterisation in the first game, even if his new haircut looks preposterous. Shen is the archetypal Marvel girlboss Mary Sue, though, there's no denying that.

the character building has gotten far out of hand with mutiple overlapping systems

Agreed, almost everything in the tactical layer is far too cluttered compared to the more streamlined first game, and this is only exacerbated in WotC.

I thought the stealth mechanics added to XCOM 2 were a bit half-baked and gimmicky. WotC goes some way towards addressing this specific criticism with the addition of missions in which the optimal strategy is to go the whole mission without being spotted.

IMO the main thing stealth did for XCOM2 was offer an alternative to needing to overwatch-creep and just bumble into pods. Both are still in the game, of course, but with the stealth parts you get occasional relief from that.

Yes, I think the devs' main takeaway from the base first game was that the mechanics encourage an overly slow and cautious playstyle. Their attempts to address this both in Enemy Within (meld containers that self-destruct in three turns) and XCOM 2 were largely successful and mostly make sense in-universe. It's reasonable that XCOM, as a guerrilla paramilitary force, would have a limited window in which to extract its operatives before their transport gets overrun by enemy troops; it's not reasonable that ADVENT would attach explosives to a valuable asset and set them to blow up after a fixed period of time before they even know XCOM is in the vicinity.

If you just want to play it vanilla, the phone port is actually great btw. But otherwise I'd always recommend Long War at least anyway.

I've heard so much about Long War, and having logged more hours in the base game of XCOM 1 than anything else in my Steam library, perhaps I ought to check it out.

Fourth-ing (or whatever) the recommendation for Long War. Note that Long War: Rebalanced is made by different people and is pretty good but not the same experience.

The mods have mods? We need to go deeper.

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