I was just coming to post my post-completion review.
Reading it over it's all nitpicks so let me say it's a good game. It's a lot of fun, or I wouldn't have played it to completion. That said there's SO much stuff that is so frustrating that only the goodness of the rest of the game kept me going.
I got the Vampire Castle, and killed the queen with fire (she fell down the well in the entrance, there was no way to get to her), and all the knights soaked damage and passed out. So I couldn't research the queen's corpse (no knight corpse) and for whatever reason another vampire castle didn't proc until YEARS later. I kept seeing the vampire queen corpse in my inventory and assuming I'd permanently missed out. If you could prioritize the highest level mission on each critical path so it procs every month or two or three at the most, that would be good. I'm sure it's bad luck but holy shit. I was going to the moon before I got a second castle.
As to how to make the castle better - nerf the sanity drain. It's the only mission where sanity drain makes perfect sense, but it's just not playable as is. Your first three turns are leaving the tomb you start in, clearing the field, and running to the entrance, assuming ghouls aren't putting up fire from the ramparts and pinning you down. Then you need to blow the door, and then you can either camp and use the entrance as a killbox, or run into a room where you can be attacked from all directions including above AND below. Once that's clear, you will eventually have to send teams into all the tunnels to kill the last zombie or two wandering around by themselves, which can take tens of turns.
-More entrances, less windy catacombs, a less wide open killing field to take over in the first turns, or less sanity drain. And proc more. Or, put a knight in a hive or catacomb (whichever is bigger). I got 4 knights in an army-vs-monsters - far too early, Helicopter days, and had to run away, and never saw another till the castle, and then not another for literal in game years.
-The same goes for the UAC moon base mission, btw. I'm not sure when that's supposed to proc, but I only had a starfighter, and one power suit. Sent my best fighter up with a flying drone and even save scumming it was unbeatable. The rate imps spawn alone tells me its intended for more than a 2 man team. And even with a large team, by the 3rd level down, everyone on the team is going to be going nuts. Maybe don't let that one proc until there's a larger capacity space vehicle built. It gives the impression that it's a one-time-only mission so you're tempted to go for it way before you're ready.
Quick hits for the rest - SO much fun to start with and the midgame then it just kinda drags. You've got more research than you can shake a stick at early, then there's always a big project unlocking a bunch of new avenues, and then towards the end, it's just picking up a random rank of an alien you haven't grabbed before, who has nothing to tell you, while hundreds of scientists sit idle. I talk about it before but I'd just compress the end so you leave on a high note.
Hybrids are a lot of fun when you discover them, they're basically helpless against even cyber armor with their terrible armaments and their bases are extremely valuable. It's a nice break from the aliens, which at that point in the game you can barely handle a scout's worth of. That said, it gets kind of cheesy and pretty soon I was just sending new units with miniguns to spam-train 10 points of 'lucky' on hybrid missions. I think they should come around earlier, and be done with once you can recruit hybrids. Play it off as you started a civil war which stalemates the bad ones. I do recognize I save scummed so they would be valueable missions to level up replacement troops in a way I didn't really have to worry about, but thats about all. Eventually drowning kittens is no fun.
I got one single golden academy mission the whole time, right before Cydonia. And only then because their academy sent out an interceptor that got on my radar. Speaking of factions that should be retired early... Its zero fun to be chasing around Osiron guys with no armor, using gunpowder weapons after lasers and cyber armor are a thing, again, unless they're intended as baby food for new lategame recruits.
Not sure what delayed the promotion to golden academy, but if they're intended as a very late game enemy, I wasted their base no problem. The reinforcements aren't able to do anything against power armor, the new Osiron/Lotus units didn't seem that tough, and the only issue was running up the stairs, even with trained melees in synth suits it takes forever. Might be worth it if you can get more magical weapons. I loved the storm rose and flame glove and was bummed that I could only draw down my supplies after killing them off.
Which reminds me - please move the equipment staging tile to the BACK of the vehicles. Too many times a random rocket would just wipe out tons of valuable and irreplaceable equipment. There's no reason to have it up front, and it gives an enormous incentive to bug out on any mission there might be explosives involved and the placement isn't perfect.
I'd ask for more -explicit- info on what transformations block what others. Only upgraded one unit with Kyberism because I thought it would block Olympianism. Didn't give more than a few units Olympianism because it wasn't clear what that got me. Flying is nice but I had flying armors already. Only on the Golden Academy mission didn't I realize they get Psi Sense. Also, is +5 night vision for Kyberi correct (saw it on the wiki)? That's inSANE. I'd have run all my characters through that if I'd known.
I got a strong sense Ghosts were a WIP. Glad to see that's confirmed. It could be cool, the psi stuff is interesting. I never managed to use it more effectively than a turbo laser or a punch from a synthsuit.
As to weapons, someone mentions pulse chem ammo. I never tried it, sounds amazing. I only ever used the chemthrower cause I got invaded by MiB in a new manufacturing base and couldn't believe how it cut through enemies I otherwise had no way of hurting. Never would have really used it otherwise. If the 0% armor effectiveness on that weapon isn't an accident, it should be advertised, close quarters, low level, chem damage isn't all that impressive otherwise. I think Incinerator grenades do something similar? I one-shotted two sectopods in a row with them, might have been luck but even shooting them in back armor with tank lasers isn't usually that effective. I know grenades hit 4 times, but still. Anyway, be EXPLICIT with what makes the weapons special, there's just too many to test them all enough to get statistics.
I dunno how I feel about the shielded turrets on terror mission ships. Before I graduated to gauss/laser weapons, they seemed impenetrable - just blasting away with my whole squad using UAC rockets (multiple shots/turn x 4) and getting nowhere and retreating. If they're anywhere with a clear field of fire, every civilian is going to die while you deal with them. They're also really accurate and almost always have full TUs so lobbing grenades is about the only option and that takes literally forever. They are pretty well armored and have lots of health, I'd say that's enough without bringing shields into it. Playing peekaboo for four-five turns apiece, and spending most of each turn knocking down the shield that regenerated suuuucks.
Turbolasers seem like the weapon at which to stop on? Is that intended? The sniper rifle can fire 3 times a round, the scatter laser shreds sectopods. I get that making the plasma weapons more deadly is always gonna be a net negative for the human side through the whole mid-late game, just a bummer to finally get them and there's no real use case for them that something else doesn't do better.
I say this as a savescummer, I can't imagine what it's like to play the late game Ironman. The ethereals are WAY OP. I get they're the big boss but hear me out. They all have shields which are resistant to kinetic, laser and plasma, and mainly weak to stun. They also have crazy reactions, crazy accuracy, crazy time units, and seemingly crazy melee. They shouldn't be more competent at every form of combat than a Muton. They also rarely used psi, but as mentioned I savescummed so all my agents had completed training and had high psi scores, maybe that was why. Anyway, it would be cool if they were more of a glass cannon - highly dangerous psi users, maybe not so great shooting and definitely not hand to hand. Making every successive enemy just a tougher version of the last one on every axis is boring.
-If I send a guy to bomb them with a small launcher to stun their shields off I get reaction shot-blasted. If I send a synthsuit in to punch the shield off, I can -just about- (with agents I've savescummed since day 1 so they have inSANE TUs and Reactions) get close without getting shot, and if I don't seal the deal in two hits, they shoot me, CQC be damned. If I run a synthsuit up, then plink at the shield with rifles, I usually don't throw their aim with CQC and they hit the shooter.
- Basically, the whole thing about them is they've atrophied their physical shells to almost death. Make them weaker in melee so there's at least some tactics you can use besides wave attacks or save scumming.
Please make commanders of all races able to start the countdown to mars? Please make every alien base and colony have at least one commander? After fighting my way through a colony and not getting a commander (assumed I'd killed them), I mind probed a commander in a base, and he drew fatal reaction fire. Next base I ctrl-d ctrl-j and no commander. Same with the next colony. Eventually I got a species (I think Waspite Commander?) which didn't open up the endgame. Extremely frustrating, and again I was shortcutting. That's hours and hours of playing I skipped that wouldn't have paid off.
And the moon stuff, unless there's plans to build it out, ehh. It doesn't really add much except a fetch quest for one specific type of ethereal after another. And I was using Mind Probes but that is so incredibly boring to do for every enemy on those levels. There's so many! And knights and Speakers are both white, so it's not clear when you see a white one if its a new, third type of one, or if there are more green ones than just the keepers. Eventually there's nothing left to research but whichever ethereal you haven't got yet, so it's waiting till the mission, grabbing the ethereal, interrogating him in one day, and thats essentially all you're doing for that month - except a lot of busywork to keep your score from going negative.
Basically for cydonia, I crtl-d, ctrl-jed it. I felt like I'd already done that mission 2-3 times already. Green/white ethereals, sectopods and elite mutons, whoopdedoo. Which is a bummer! It shouldn't feel like the last turn of a crank you've been turning for several months.
Get us to the fireworks factory and take a bow. As I said up top, and you could be forgiven for forgetting, I really did like this game. It's a great rehab of a game I loved from my childhood that nevertheless probably wouldn't stand up to a replay on its own. It's a crazy amount of work and what you've clearly spent a lot of time on - the early game - is incredible.
