Is it me or is it really hard?

[Vapowa]

I find the game very good, excellent, but it's quite hard to win missions.

I play veteran since it's the recommanded level for people who played XCOM (and I've done its campaign once).

And it seems veteran is the medium (easy - veteran - impossible , if I remember well).
But I would rather say it's 4 on a scale of 5.

The easy missions are not that easy, I would say difficulty is fine tuned, losing 40% of times if I'm too confident.

The medium missions are really hard, once done but I'm really struggling with the other (one with six civilians to save on rebelion outpost).

I've tried a main mission, difficult, got wiped out quite fast once spotted.

So... I wonder if I'm that bad or if I missed something, maybe with the economy, better weapons would help but I couldn't afford them yet.

Is there any summary with what kind of team one need to build to succeed at which level during the campain?
The typical progression.

And do you often do quicksave or not?
I try not to abuse saves/loads. No save on many missions, a handful on others, and some mission will fail no matter how crazy I reload.

Thanks

[Tomato Juice]

If you play with WotC then yea it's hard play Vanilla XCOM2 first.

If it's XCOM2 then the problem is probly that you habve to play differently than XCOM.
They build the game in a way that manyt XCOM tatics don't translate that well into XCOM2

[Vapowa]

Hum... not War of the Chosen, AFAIK

I'm on the free week end, just starting XCOM2...

[kingts]

Vapor,

1. Big learning curve with X-com 2
First learn how to use Cover
One of the best tutorials on it and its fast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvbdkWc6oOM

2. Form your Squads for Balance and specific tasks
Have a squad for example that handles rescues, one that is demo based for attacks, or one that is great at defense. Several squads that fit the missions help you be more successful than just putting together soldiers that are all over the place skill wise.

3. Know what each enemy can do and cannot
A; for example-Sectoid is all psi, rasies zombies and rarily attacks unless your vulnerable-sollution Flashbang is your best friend with one, and grenades with others. A psi break kills the zombie easily, so never attack a zombie. Flash has long range if your guys are out of position and buys you time for an easy kill. That is one example only. Mutons, Snakes, Droids all do certain things so learn to counter quickly. B: Another example is if you see 2 Advent, 1. Droid. Get the soldiers first. grenade them. Never get into long shoot outs. Another never rush someone to a far away target. You will only invite more enemies too quickly and then your outnumbered.

4. Lean the class strengths of your own team. Mixing them is ok, but read each skill carefully. Some are better than others. If I am assault, Lightning reflexes is a good thing follow.

5. Timers-Get the task done, do not delay. If you have a party of 4, have your rogue or stealth sneak to it. If your other three are engaged. the enemy will go towards then or hold position. Always hack with a specialists. Get to a visible cover spot and hack the task from a far if you must. You want his skills to improve. So, getting the task done should be your goal.

6. Know how to use your heals properly. Each squad you should have one or two heals. I usually do a Sniper or Specialist. Specialists can heal using Gremlins and a Sniper as a last resort can heal if you have no choice. Usually your layout on a sniper early game should be Armor, Special Bullet, and Heal. He does not need grenades or flashes so far away, but if lets say one of your backline men is killed and is in bleed out mode. You can get to him.
Also remember it is one move and heal in another. AS I explained yesterday if your men is in bleed out mode. find his location first, he is not sometimes where he lands. You will see the icon glow. Then you can move up next to the icon and stabilize, but never put your healing guy in the open which is why the gremlins a better option. Remember you must carry him even stabilized off the battlefield on EVAC missions, leave him he is captured, leave him bleeding out, he dies.

That is just many lessons I can show you.
For all beginners who whine that the game is too hard or clearly do not understand it. Go online, plenty of wonderful tuturials to help you

Hope this helps and most of all
HAVE FUN its a game

[talemore]

Missions aren't necessary to win, what is important is to complete the mainquest of the avatar project without any soldiers dying which can be a challenge if you don't unlock easy mode by building a guerilla tactics school. We're talking about shooting fish in a barrel, that's how easy the game becomes once you have larger squad size.

[kingts]

Originally posted by talemore:

Missions aren't necessary to win, what is important is to complete the mainquest of the avatar project without any soldiers dying which can be a challenge if you don't unlock easy mode by building a guerilla tactics school. We're talking about shooting fish in a barrel, that's how easy the game becomes once you have larger squad size.

Yeah well if they don't know basic tactics. They will fail the progressive Avatar project anyway. I didn't even cover proper land expanding and how to build your buildings in a proper order.
New players do not have to do the assigned lab assignments in the order they get them, but they cannot also take their sweet time around it either. Figure they need to learn basics of the game. A lot to cover in a tread.

[Vapowa]

Thanks a lot Kingts for taking time to answer!

I didn't know there's such a learning curve for XCOM2, and maybe it has deepened a bit since XCOM.

I'll definitely read/watch more XCOM2 tutorials... once I buy the game ;)
Maybe I was rushing out a bit, because of the free week-end... :D

At last I succeeded my 2nd attempt on a difficult mission (still veteran difficulty) with no dead, but I did a lot of saves/reloads...

I've not seen beginers who whine about this game, and I surely don't: it's a great game I'm very happy to enjoy yet, even on that difficulty. Being able to finish it one day would be even more enjoyable!

[kingts]

Originally posted by Vapowa:

Thanks a lot Kingts for taking time to answer!

I didn't know there's such a learning curve for XCOM2, and maybe it has deepened a bit since XCOM.

I'll definitely read/watch more XCOM2 tutorials... once I buy the game ;)
Maybe I was rushing out a bit, because of the free week-end... :D

At last I succeeded my 2nd attempt on a difficult mission (still veteran difficulty) with no dead, but I did a lot of saves/reloads...

I've not seen beginers who whine about this game, and I surely don't: it's a great game I'm very happy to enjoy yet, even on that difficulty. Being able to finish it one day would be even more enjoyable!

Meant no offense, like I said, a lot to learn. I play legendary, so you think normal is bad wait,.
Then theres LONGWAR 2, best part of X-com 2...
You see a post, games too hard, sob, I missed, my men all died whhhhhyyyyyy, pout. Sounds like whiny to me...lol. I meant that in all light heartedness. Glad to help.
There are some fun treaders on here who have no issue helping.
but have fun or what is the point.

[Vapowa]

I'm glad that I've found enough material (tutorials, video, misc posts, ... and people helping here) to overcome initial difficulties and catch up with the learning curve...

I had to scrap my initial campaign because it really started with bad economy that I couldn't fix.

My second campaign is much more enjoyable now that I have the right build order and decent cash flow. Yet there's room for improvement since I passed over the mission that could have cut contact costs.

The game is still hard but I like it this way (veteran difficulty is what I play, no mod, not that many saves).
XCOM2 isn't one of those modern game that one will go through in the usual 10-16 hours to complete campaign right out of the box.
It isn't as hard as were the early video games, mostly with crazy timings and/or coordination skill requirements.

Among the pitfalls reported by many players since 2016:

a) I admit that the long series of bad luck is frustrating, but for me the long series of luck are also a factor that breaks the immersion. Some algorithm could mitigate this a little bit.

b) I was quite surprised to see shots firing through the buildings without destroying them, while the target (heavily affected) is largely covered. This applies to me as well as aliens, except that I do not think about it and AI does it easily. Maybe this could be seen more as a display or clipping problem? Well... the rules are still:
"As long as you can take a look and see a target, then it can also potentially shoot you, no matter what cover you have."
Once I admitted that, I felt better about it.

Anyway, I like the overall difficulty balance, winning missions where XCOM squad is way under powered and overwhelmed by aliens is very rewarding.

The last one was of "high difficulty" and very limited turns, VIP added to squad, exit to opposite corner.
I managed to only aggro the first two packs, clean them fast, get around all the others until the extraction spot, which was heavily guarded, pop up two mimic grenades and escaped on the very last turn before game over. VIP had to run every turns but two or three where he only made the blue move, yet a decent move.
What strikes me in this mission:
Even rushing to the shortest path, there is at most 3 turns to spare on handling 5-6 packs of the highest alien classes seen so far!
My question: don't you think that this kind of mission was really meant to be done the way I did? (avoiding most fights)

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Vapowa:

My question: don't you think that this kind of mission was really meant to be done the way I did? (avoiding most fights)

The entire game is designed around the idea of you linearly killing all enemies within each mission. If you try to avoid enemies it will far more likely end up biting you in the ass when the enemies you avoided come into range while you're fighting other enemies. You're far better off killing everything you see so that you only see one group at a time.

[Lienhart]

I've put 84 hours into this game, and around 4~ attempted playthroughs.

I finally just beat the game yesterday.

This game has a MASSIVE learning curve. The game becomes immensely easier once you understand the systems and what to expect. Going in blind is literally 80% of the difficulty.

The early and mid game are always hard. However, if you've bult your squad up to mitigate risk, the end game becomes far easier.

I had at least 2 Soliders for every role in case one ended up Wounded and I needed the same role. My teams usually had a Reaper because scouting greatly reduces the difficulty (and those really bad moments when you aggro 2 packs at once lol)

Im being vague intentionally btw...half of the fun is going in blind, figuring out works, and then finally winning. Hell, I felt like I actually saved Earth.

[Martial.Lore]

The greatest challenges lie in the earliest missions. Once you're up and running you can play on forever (with WotC). https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1393270740

[Vapowa]

Originally posted by Martial.Lore:

The greatest challenges lie in the earliest missions. Once you're up and running you can play on forever (with WotC). https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1393270740

more than 22 turns left on everage for missions with count down ????

[Martial.Lore]

Originally posted by Vapowa:

more than 22 turns left on everage for missions with count down ????

It's an advanced gameplay option: "turn timer" which doubles the length of the mission timers. As you might imagine, I didn't doodle around the maps and didn't really ever need the extra time much or often. I also utilized the option to increase the length of time for the Avatar Project and my favorite: Beta Strike, which increases the HP of everyone, aliens and XCOM for "longer" engagements.

[Martial.Lore]

I think you might need to have War of the Chosen to access the advanced gameplay options: I didn't see the toggle for them when I just now brought up the new game menu for XCOM vanilla.

Also, WotC employs a covert ops element that helps keep the Avatar Project down more easily than in vanilla so you don't feel pressured to rush through the campaign in order to win.

[Timbermaw]

Starts hard but gets pretty easy by end game