Which is great, up until the endgame, which turns into even more of a slog. It even adds accented voices, so you can get English-speakers with British accents! Long War basically takes everything good and bad about XCOM and doubles it. Aliens build bases all over the world instead of just the one. Fighters can actually get shot down attacking UFOs. You can take eight of them into battle instead of just six. You start with 40 squaddies instead of a dozen. Should you take a few core characters through the entire journey, or should you expect huge casualties over the course of the alien invasion? Long War was a group of modders’ answer to that question: It’s a more strategic version of XCOM, built on managing a military machine instead of guiding a small party.Įverything’s bigger in Long War. Sure, the 2012 XCOM was good, but it had a fundamental tension: It couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a strategy game or a role-playing game. XCOM could have bodies on top of bodies, even in relatively successful campaigns. It’s fun! Games rarely allowed for that level of brutality: Death in RPGs was pre-scripted death in strategy games comes in faceless “units” and “roguelikes” - the genre most famous for permanent character death - almost always was based on individual characters. The potential for disaster: The neat thing about XCOM was that you could take a group of soldiers, customize them, improve them, become attached to them, and then watch them all die in a hail of alien plasma. It was simple, but it made sure the game was always about interesting choices. The key innovation of XCOM compared to other tactical games, whether Japanese or Western, was simplifying this, breaking each character’s turn into two actions, instead of dozens of action points. Straightforward-but-complex combat: In tactical combat games, character movement through space is the most important consideration, and character skill in more important than player skill (that is, you win by playing smart, not by clicking more or aiming faster). Mess up one of these, and you’re doomed, now matter how smart you play the other. Combination of strategy and tactics: XCOM is divided in half, with some time spent managing the alien invasion of the entire planet, and the rest in the individual battles.
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