I though XCOM was bad but

[Kinetika]

the amount of missed shots in this game is something else entirely. The enemy always hits you, even from a mile away

[Lord Of Dorkness]

There's basically zero point in playing this game on anything but Normal or Easy.

It just BS inflates the numbers behind the scenes, and makes combat take longer. Nothing actually interesting.

Haven't played Lamplighter's yet, but at least Battletech was a huge step forward for Hare-Brained that way. A lot more actually interesting wrinkles to the difficulty if you want to crank it up.

[Kinetika]

Originally posted by Lord Of Dorkness:

There's basically zero point in playing this game on anything but Normal or Easy.

It just BS inflates the numbers behind the scenes, and makes combat take longer. Nothing actually interesting.

Haven't played Lamplighter's yet, but at least Battletech was a huge step forward for Hare-Brained that way. A lot more actually interesting wrinkles to the difficulty if you want to crank it up.

good to see i am not going crazy with this BS accuracy. Will try out battletech, i have it on my backburner still. Hopefully that is a little better :P

[tukkek]

These games are perfectly fine even for average gamers who are not into turn-based combat. I beat all of the trilogy on Hard on my first play, I won almost literally all fights on my first try and lost literally a couple of times only and when I did, I won on the first retry.

To be fair, I lost interest and didn't beat Honk Kong and there might have been a fight or two that gave me more trouble but what I said is generally true for 99% of battles in all 3 games.

Literal skill issue, try getting good. I'd be more charitable if you guys weren't blatantly whining.

It's a tactical game, if you lack tactics then by all means do play on easy mode. If anything, hard is too easy for veterans of the genre. Many tactical games are far harder, including all of he XCOM games (especially the original series), Divinity: Original Sin and Jagged Alliance.

No difficulty on Dragonfall comes close to the harder difficulties on such other tactical games widely considered masterpieces and yet you guys are in shambles over it. Get good.

[Lord Of Dorkness]

Originally posted by Kinetika:

Originally posted by Lord Of Dorkness:

There's basically zero point in playing this game on anything but Normal or Easy.

It just BS inflates the numbers behind the scenes, and makes combat take longer. Nothing actually interesting.

Haven't played Lamplighter's yet, but at least Battletech was a huge step forward for Hare-Brained that way. A lot more actually interesting wrinkles to the difficulty if you want to crank it up.

good to see i am not going crazy with this BS accuracy. Will try out battletech, i have it on my backburner still. Hopefully that is a little better :P

To be fair, the Shadowrun trilogy are all great games...

For their setting, plot, characters, and story. Gameplay is passable, but... yeah. Some deep flaws.

But still. Battletech is their best game yet as far I'm concerned. Have an embarrassing amount of hours in that one.

[tukkek]

The Shadowrun and Battletech tabletop games were designed by the same people in the same company (FASA). Their video-game adaptations were made by the same people as well, Harebrained, who were some of the people designing games for FASA back in the day.

It's a little confusing why anyone would recommend one over the other when they are quite literally branches from the same tree. Like, if you think the RNG is broken in one of them (see OP), why would you recommend another game made by the same people shortly thereafter?

I mean I get it, you might prefer one game over the other for several reasons but if OP hates XCOM and Dragonfall, what moves you to recommend them another extremely similar game?

[Lord Of Dorkness]

Originally posted by tukkek:

The Shadowrun and Battletech tabletop games were designed by the same people in the same company (FASA). Their video-game adaptations were made by the same people as well, Harebrained, who were some of the people designing games for FASA back in the day.

It's a little confusing why anyone would recommend one over the other when they are quite literally branches from the same tree. Like, if you think the RNG is broken in one of them (see OP), why would you recommend another game made by the same people shortly thereafter?

I mean I get it, you might prefer one game over the other for several reasons but if OP hates XCOM and Dragonfall, what moves you to recommend them another extremely similar game?

Because Battletech simply works a lot better. And was made in a completly new engine—that too be fair has its own weirdness and faults. But there's a lot more interesting options for mechanical difficulty vs just... higher numbers. Like needing to salvage more mech parts, or good mechs being much rarer. Even a mode where you turn off the story, and just run a mercenary company.

Shadowrun: Returns was the studios first game, and that engine is ROUGH. Like there's still a rounding error that sometimes eats too much essence with cyberware that never got fixed, because it only happens sometimes. And Dragonfall inherited quite a lot of those flaws, due to having started as a DLC.

So if you prefer tactical and strategic gameplay over story, as OP implies, Battletech is simply the much better game from the same studio.

It's like... both, say, Jade Empire and Mass Effect are both Bio-Ware games from their prime, and great games... but they still have a lot of different game play and story ideas. That sort of thing.

[tukkek]

It's two games designed by the same people in the same company, adapted as video-games by the same people in another company, using the same game engine (Unity). I honestly have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

[Cursed Life]

Git gud

[Lord Of Dorkness]

Originally posted by tukkek:

It's two games designed by the same people in the same company, adapted as video-games by the same people in another company, using the same game engine (Unity). I honestly have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Come on. Its called having a preference.

Your the one that doesn't make sense. They're different games, in different universes, with different rules and different generas. Of course somebody can find one interesting, while finding how the other works.... well, frustrating or outright unsatisfying.

Made at different times, too, incorporating lessons learned from stuff people didn't like the first time.

By that logic, EVERY person that plays Exalted should equally love Vampire: The Masquerade, because they were/are both White Wolf RPGs.

[Dethlane]

XCOM is far worse, you have 50-60% to hit in general on normal. Here on normal you usually have 80-90% to hit. Though bad luck is still a factor, you can easily get 5 misses in a row despite 90+% hit chance. And then, having ~15% to hit, score a critical. Such is random.

[Ylion]

I noticed this too, to the point that I made a tally chart during my last session,
and had more misses than hits - despite noting only my +70% shots.
At least this game is forgiving, unlike XCOM

[Pluvinarch]

Some good habits for battle:
1. Avoid sticking together (to avoid AOE damage from grenades and spells)
2. However do use AOE damage when enemies are near each other
3. Move from cover to cover, don't stay out in the open
4. Carry 2 guns. The second one is emergency backup when you are out of ammo
5. Seek abilities that apply AP penalties on enemy. If you can't kill enemy in one turn then make the enemy much less effective than you.
6. Beware of making Glory "Leroy Jenkins" in the middle of the enemy lines. She is better at finishing the strays or flanking since she is not a walking tank.
7. Drones/Spirits are very useful as extra combatants. Use them when the enemy tries to flank you and for scouting ahead.
8. Buy equipment. Buy grenades. Buy BuMona. Buy First Aid boxes. Your allies also come with their equipment restocked. So use them.

[Onkel Säge]

I have played a character that has no talents at all except being beefy and hit with melee weapons. Literally the only things i skilled are body, strength, close combat and 3 karma into melee weapons. I played on hard and the only tough fight was the tutorial because u start with 1 armor (not good for this type of character) and the final fight because i realized too late that i was on a pretty short timetable. Everything else was piss-easy. Ofc u sometimes miss three times in a row with 90% hit chance, that's what true random does. But sometimes you also hit 8 times in a row with 53% hit chance.

I don't think this game is too hard at all. If you want it super easy you play a rigger or a rifle specialist. Then you not only win every fight, but you win them super fast.

[Eminem]

Originally posted by tukkek:

using the same game engine (Unity). I honestly have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Unity is a very flexible game engine tho, bruh. PGA2k23 is running off Unity. who woulda thunk, wtf

[Dethlane]

Not really. This game is miles better in terms of hit chance than XCOM. Though rng can still suck, aye, I still remember missing 5 or 6 shots in a row with ~93% hit chance, fml. Well, that's what reloading is for. The game screws you with rng, you screw the game with time rewind magic.