Wrote this 4 months ago thinking I was about win but the finish line just kept moving out of reach. New goals emerged as I discovered benefits of gameplay mechanic I neglected in the past. 5 new updates game received during my 8 months long playthrough snowballed more new plans. Intended to be a brief overview accompanied by chronicles screen but grew too large too fast so please excuse lack of flow. Posting this because I couldn't find a decent review anywhere except for that 5yr old rockpapershotgun article which doesn't go into details or critique.
LIKES
Initial scope followed by immeasurable awe when research progress finally hits 1%. It's like 100 Sid Meier Civs fused into one single game. The feeling prevailed all the way up to 33% making my top 10 list.
33% to 66% is time of familiarization with all game mechanics and steady but welcome increase in complexity. Confidence grows as does planning and (micro)management.
66% onward repetition starts creeping in paired with poor UI support to handle the workload, gradually steering closer to working than playing. Unfinished WIP story arcs are encountered coupled with lesser quality of late game progress (Higher Studies+, less new goodies, just tech unlocks). Satisfaction relies on few new remaining but thinly spread missions to stir the settled waters and fulfillment of personal player goals. <- Only two updates later I'm convinced this is greatly improved already (except UI).
What remains awe worthy until the end are researched topics and is how well logically interconnected every item/tech dependency is. Even with my extraordinary nitpick levels I found only one improvement in 3k topics. As new updates came research tree kept getting subtle logical improvements which was mind boggling.
The writing I absolutely loved throughout. Whole Boccaccio's Decameron hides in XPZ deepths with ludicrous amounts of quality lore, imaginative item descriptions, and extensive gameplay mechanics explanations written in lore-style. I especially liked attention to details like Gas-Balls working only with a Pistol because they'd fall apart when used in Rifles due to increased pressure. Newer example is using 10th different armor value influence to describe effectiveness of Universal Refreshner. Innumerous more similar examples in between the two. Faction backgrounds and all that stuff are damn impressive. Whole thing does actually resemble faithful continuation of UFO/XCOM. In OG online ufopedia there's an official lore describing events that happened in between officially released games. Why for example they couldn't use Elerium-115 in TFTD, all logically explained. Easy to see how something like that would occur in our real world, giving credibility to official lore. Same quality is found in XPZ. Lots of small Sci-Fi details in there you only find in professional author's books. Loved that.
What I loved just as same is restraint of keeping some rare but excellent maps restricted to unique 1-off events, never to be seen again (Winter Palace, Siberia Base, Terminal, etc). Great looking maps of amazing quality only to be experienced once. Made them that much more memorable although I presume was a bitch to accept as designer. I guess in school essays you actually typed out densely typed text as opposed to rest of us who spread that shit, hehe.
Storage & money handling in the long run is one of the more ingenious ideas I've seen. Who ever thought of slaves mechanics in particular has my respect. Such a practical, believable, steady and simple form of reducing space/finance worries I cannot believe it exists. Funnily enough I long delayed researching slaves even though I knew the benefits because I thought they would take up living space. Glad it isn't the case!
Sound FX are the best. Reminds me of the '90s when devs were naturally gifted in creating sounds that just worked even if they weren't realistic per-say. Skullstrider walking sounds is super enjoyable enjoyable. Of the whole package I'd change only that blue outlined Cutlass (wtf is that sound lol), and recent interception music addition which belongs in some Monkey Island mini-game instead.
Music is great just the same, fantastic picks. Normally it must be near perfect for me to enjoy it. Joyful, rhythmic and all that. In sound department XPZ nails it (props for Find the Suspicious Brainer jump scare).
Extra effort put into color coding various in-game menus with own unique scheme really added flavor and atmosphere. Colossal improvement over those year old LPs on YouTube using vanilla colors. A fine example of low effort / high reward scenario. Felt like a polished game just by that subtle visual tweak.
AI. Dunno if XPZ messed further with it than OCX(E) but it's perfect. Kudos to AI coders. Near end of my last TFTD playthrough a sad realization emerged that I'll never get to experience true vanilla AI. Ever. OG games are full of broken path nodes, deployment slots errors, enemy weapon utilization, etc... so F'd even the community couldn't fix it all. Vanilla AI was the sole reason for sticking to Extenders but after the realization and later observing how faithfully AI behaves in familiar situations I became a devoted OpenXcom pilgrim.
AI truly makes a difference in long haul mission types. Without it XPZ would be bogged down, exhausting, and suicidally tedious experience. I wonder if it actually is with "Sneaky AI" enabled, only tested for 1 turn and immediately turned it off in fear of invoking last-alien-hiding-in-closet somewhere. Ability to run greatly improves combat as well.
NEUTRAL
Pirate theme was off-putting for years before I actually bothered to watch gameplay videos (thanks Starving Poet). Realized there's little of actual Pirate themes going on (wooden ships, swords and shields, boring shit) past initial philosophy of looting and plunder. It's all about wasteland to high-tech Fallout. Which is damn great.
Nudity is tasteful so I wasn't phased or distracted by it at all. Dunno why author left selected sprite fap-material marked with pixels but what the hell, we all done crazy things when young. Some of the art looks like placeholder material and needs to become uniform but is sufficiently serviceable. Hopefully that stuff gets a face lift in time.
Mutually exclusive Codexes. As a completionist it's not a favorite but I understand. What I'd do it make it easy for player to remove locks to allow for all Codex if he wants to (possibly other minor locks too). Maybe community releases a sub-mod in due time.
Abundance of items (to say it lightly) worried me of becoming a total cluttered mess, both on management and usefulness side. To me less is more. But it became apparent it's used to accommodate all different factions and mission types. Took about a month till I was being able to differentiate between the loot automatically without loosing time inspecting stats of every single thing. CTRL+MMB helped although I was made aware much too late. Took another two stressful months to finally determine which items can be safely sold once and for all.
As far building materials/components go, availability and mission rewards yield is pretty well balanced considering the scope. I'd make Force Circuitry buyable, maybe even Stasis Pods (defo increase availability in some way, solely because Cryo Prison). Increase yields of Shadow Orbs and make a relatively common late-game mission that always rewards them, especially with increased future focus on them in raw material role (better Box reward odds would do too). Something similar with Medallion of Entropy and Golden Apple because rolling for Smuggler > Arcane > Mystery Box > rewards is tiring even with perfected save-scumming method I devised.
NEUTRAL/DISLIKE
The single soul-crushing research topic for me was "Advanced Weapons Rumors". It came relatively early and burst my bubble of mysteries laying ahead. Bullets, Laser, Gauss, Plasma - that's it buddy. Felt awkward compared to existing mysterious writing style. What I'd change there is move "As far as we know" from begging to the end of article so it finishes with "...and those are only which we know about" (or something). It's gotta end in mystery at the very least.
In my early post I described first enemy Hideout assault in which I said I received a taste of end-game weapons the enemies used. One dude responded I ain't seen nothing yet but looking back I actually did. Eagerly expected to see more advanced stuff but what I got was bit underwhelming: basically only Plasma Schorcher redeemed itself and only against Hovertank & Sectopod. Magitech and other exotics feel too circumstantial to be of wide general use. Exception is Chort's Iron Wind which suits this gameplay style amazingly well.
Mid-game armors are kinda crappy unless TU/weight tradeoff is accepted. After Metal I only ever used Synthmuscle, Junkmaster (curiosity mostly) & Juggernaut (burning towns only), Brute shortly, then Annihilator. Problem is most other don't absorb damage well enough enemies at that time deal. As if created with sole intention to replace death with 24/7 hospital time. I later saw someone mention Assault Marine flies and has red shields which I completely overlooked so my view may be skewed somewhat. Problem is nothing tanks damage well until Annihilator. UFO has good mid armor but its problem was instant obsoletion, easily avoided in XPZ with sensible stat tweaks. The annoying thing was checking enemy armors and constantly thinking: why can't I just strip parts off and make-shift something similar? That's what Pirates do!
Vessel restrictions to certain missions was annoying as hell. Spent ludicrous amounts of time reading what the future brings so I could plan accordingly and minimize future mistakes. Constantly made me tense thinking if I made the correct call in designating a hideout/hangar for specific mission range. In the end I found equilibrium but the cost was broken immersion and dispersed mystery from all that reading in advance. Could be improved by having an updating in-game list as new vessels are researched to see which is allowed where. Getting blue-balled as I eagerly send the wrong but fully prepped ship for the first time sucks. Restrictions themselves are not the problem, lack of timely information is.
DISLIKES
Helpful #numbers topics should be revealed more uniformly, akin to "Myths: The Black Souvereign, Part 1-4" (maybe group few similarly related parts together before unlocking next batch), roughly following player's expected encounter with the mechanic (or couple months behind at most to retain some mystery and even healthy dose of frustration). For example I revealed you can turn off ship weapons well into 2nd year. Would be pissed had I not known about it prior. For uber essential stuff I'd attach a simple PDF in game folder, along with ALL keyboard binds including undocumented ones (CTRL+MMB; CTRL+ALT+H; ALT in minimap; CTRL+END; RMB on approach icon; RMB Vessel hangar reordering). It would make things much more newbie friendly without requiring any UFO/XCOM knowledge.
Prison Space shortage. Talked about it few times. Huge gripe that never goes away. I modded in 20 spaces per Prison for myself and it was perfect. Avd. & Luxury Barracks received similar treatment soon thereafter hihi. I assume it was set ages ago and not touched since but game became more complex for old prison to cope. 20 is perfect, increase building price if you must but do it.
Smooth out sudden difficulty spikes if possible. Early Bandit Pogrom are BRUTAL and can happen very early (delay Armored Cars bit later). In my game 1st SG Pogrom (Feb 2602) occurred 1 year before encountering 1st SG ship. WTF!? I wouldn't describe it as needed difficulty variety but design flaw. In case of insisting on current I'd let the player know in advance in some meaningful capacity so he could prepare by focusing research and equipping appropriately instead learning from unavoidable failures.
Accuracy predictor is the biggest lying POS madafaka ever. Accuracy varies from 100% accurate (clear LOS + no obstacles + before accuracy drop-off), down to 1% of stated accuracy (behind obstacle but shootable + no LOS but within accuracy drop-off). Turning 20% into 0.2% in worst case. It's not uncommon for the projectile to bug out and fly through the target 9/10 times depending on positioning (God forbid target is on a slope), further diving the above 0.2%. Been there OH YES I have...
I've read the explanation why this happens as well. My answer is remove the F'ing RNG firing cones then, or confine them to visible/shootable hitbox parts only. Vanilla did not have accuracy problem no matter how many obstacles there were between. The only place where OXC/E made a step backwards.
XPZ excels in making players adopt to multi role situations and yet the ships are cramped AF! Lets us build a proper Avenger/Leviathan for Christ's sake. Fast, armed, durable, and F'ing spacious. Factions fly whole cities worth of crew and we have to scrounge with a deadly dozen on average. No bueno. Early-mid should remain as-is but there no reason to keep it cramped for entirety of the game. This is further worsened by issue immediately bellow.
Player ships have the most illogical soldier ordering system compared to base listing order. I can't believe an actual human sorted this out. Every damn ship is affected except those 1-piloted ones where it's impossible to fuck up. Truth to be told haven't tried them all but of 80% I have, Devastator takes the cake as biggest offender. Read Discord explanation for this some time ago (occupying windows first) and I have to say it's crap for two reasons: you don't win by camping; Freshness was devised to prevent camping. Nuff said. Occupy spots by distance to exit door/ramp like in vanilla... Let the dumb player figure out which spot is by the window. In case player decides to bring 3 soldiers or less then the mission is easy enough no to warrant sniping. Fortuna is the only vessel with logical ordering, only because it has no F'ing windows.
Roll range of weapon damage becomes increasingly frustrating with time. Examples: Custom Lasgun [48] vs Acd. Drone - 6x consecutive hits resulted in no damage (happened twice). Heavy Laser vs ~10 armor Human - no damage (happens 33% of time). Eerie similar to enemy berserking with one-handed weapons, hitting your soldier every time across the map even though there are over 1000 viable targets (incl. random empty squares). Makes me believe faulty code is at play. I'd set all player weapons to never roll bellow 50% (100% for snipers) while leaving enemies as is. Should fucken level the playing field.
Seen Meridian go crazy over two consecutive no damage rolls in far more benign case in his LP. I swear on my mother he'd become a full blown serial killer in my shoes. No exaggeration. And people wonder why I save-scumm, lol.
Freshness cost of Gray Codex items and caveat use of available FRS restoration items. Before I said nr1 design flaw devs make is adjusting balance according to vocal top one-percenters who know how to exploit for all imaginable advantages. Result is always ruined gameplay for regular players. No better example than F2P crap where player retention is God. Can't remember what it was all about when I mentioned it but anyway it's not a biggie in XPZ if player knows what he's doing.
What is though is another design flaw: introducing a hail-mary item, long sought by the community as a burden lessening tool, only to finally come with its own set of caveats that greatly limit use. As if balanced just against itself, ignoring the whole picture why it was needed. There's no shortage of such items in XPZ, fixes one thing but instantly breaks another or that very same thing. Previously mentioned Universal Freshnerer is good example.
Gray desperately needs its on unique Freshness problem resolver. An item, a facility, or both. I only ever used FRS based items to train VS, and rarely out of curiosity. Nothing more. Heavy Plasma handles same situations 10x better and with 0 recovery days.
And finally (you know what I'm taking about)... the 99%/101% armor resistances. Yuck. I'd rather see the whole damn list with color coded green/red values for resistances/vulnerabilities. Allow a key modifier to show whole list while pressed if wall-of-text seems ludicrous. Leave straight 100s default colors. Shit kept messing with my head until the end.
* * *
That's about it. Other negatives stem from UI inability to handle the scope as progression expands available gameplay options, despite OXC/E devs' best efforts. A week in I was already becoming worried if my mouse button would break down from so much repetitive clicking. Thankfully Logitech makes great 5€ mice.
Hope no one takes dislikes close to heart, just my view after all, and I do get little salty thinking about them. If I could change only one thing it would be RNG projectile cones to behave as accuracy predictor shows. In the end Dio has my deepest bow of respect as he puts himself up there among indie elites. Borrowed asset usage makes no difference, it's how you use it. And is as close to perfect as we could expect. Not to mention lots of custom tweaks under the hood to make it all uniquely fit in.
