XCOM 2 - Five Months Later...

Aubrielle

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun takes a look at the state of XCOM 2, five months after release.


Five months and one day, in fact. XCOM 2 was a big huge hit at release, and mostly very well-received – although, variously, there were complaints about performance, difficulty, time-wasting and the opacity of its complicated systems. The picture’s a little different now we’re here in July. There have been three DLC packs, a bunch of patches, a mod community and most of all, plenty of time for repeat visits to see how it feels now we know how all the pieces fit together. I’ve just emerged from the requisite sleepless nights to wage the main part of another campaign, and I have indeed found a significantly changed game – for reasons both good and bad.



I’ll start with performance, as I was one of those who was blighted by lousy and wildly-spiking framerates both at launch and after the initial patch. The good news is the worst issues have been resolved – where once I was seeing my frame rate drop to sub-30 on a GTX 970 even with most settings at absolute minimum, now I’m seeing it range between 40 and 60 when almost everything is maxed-out, and at 1440p too. (Full SSAO, as opposed to the lesser and not hugely different Tile SSAO still takes a big toll). It’s never dropping below 30, it’s smoother and I can get the magic 60 if I compromise on a few things. I can’t prove this, but I swear it looks a little prettier than it did too. Or perhaps I’m just able to appreciate it a little bit more now I’m not seething about jerkiness and worrying that my poor graphics card is running at the temperature of the sun.

The aggravating delays between certain actions have been toned down too, although there’s still an unwelcome amount of heel-dragging as various animations or reactions play out, maddening when one is keen to know the consequence or action a riposte. This is compounded by a sometimes unbearable-feeling regularity of interruption on the strategy map side of the game. Already a beeswarm of nags and forced deviations from one’s R&D plans, with the two story-led DLC packs (the third is purely aesthetic) in the mix it’s off the scale in the early game.
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Nice article.
Learned that those roguelike impossible to win early bosses are - from DLC.
Adds another example why I hate main game messing DLC and want only separate/standalone.
 
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The game is still slow in some parts, I hate it.
Few examples:
1. If your trooper find something that Central wants to comment on the game will "freeze" for 4-5 seconds and you have to wait for it to finish before you can give commands to other members of the team. And these situation happen at least once per mission.
2. Reloading animations kill me, your troopers cannot all reload at the same time and it takes sooo long. You can tell one trooper to reload, use Tab to switch to another and tell him to reload but he only starts doing so when first one finishes...
3. Game badly lacks Overwatch all command. Now you either need to press Y (overwatch hotkey), Tab, Y, Tab, Y, Tab... or Y, wait 1-2 second until it switches to next guy automatically, Y, 1-2s, Y, 1-2s... fuck!

As for performance, I need to try out this Tile SSAO, I am still not happy with performance on High details.
 
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I was playing some XCOM 2 again recently after not playing for months since release and was reminded of what an absolutely incredible game it is. So many excellent things about the game.

I can live with the little hitches here and there since they don't really take away from the overall excellence of the game. The game itself performs well for me on high settings - I don't really notice any issues like that.

I will say that I'm not terribly fond of the DLC. The ruler aliens are insanely powerful and having them dumped into already challenging (like timer based) missions is brutal. You can avoid them by never touching the first investigation mission that pops for them and I've taken to doing that since I don't care for it.

I was also never a fan of MEC troops in XCOM and was disappointed to see those return but a lot of people do like them so it's just more of a personal preference thing - I would've preferred a more human style new soldier type like how Long War added new variety to XCOM 2.

I'm also having a lot of trouble with mods since the DLC seem to break mods and authors either don't update or...no clue...I've given up on them for now. For ex there's a mod to deal with a lot of the delays in the game - if you can get it to work. There's a mod for overwatch all as well (I don't mind the lack of it since at least in XCOM2 overwatch is always the same hotbar location so at least you don't have to find the moving target like in XCOM).
 
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I will say that I'm not terribly fond of the DLC. The ruler aliens are insanely powerful and having them dumped into already challenging (like timer based) missions is brutal. You can avoid them by never touching the first investigation mission that pops for them and I've taken to doing that since I don't care for it.
Wait what?
Why didn't you say so 5 days ago?!

Okay, if I ever replay this game I'll do exactly that. And then activate the mission when I upgrade everything.
 
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Newly released mod packs from Long War Studios are awesome. I suggest people install them and play over. So much more interesting than the base game.
 
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