Hey, remember Phoenix Point?

Open the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the crab
My all-in-one reference doc: pastebin.com/xvFZM0cW
Twitter: / rycluse
Channel art: / bruno_desn
Music in order of appearance:
Riot - Hunter x Hunter OST
Intro 1 - John Broomhall and Roman DeSimone
Intro 3 - John Broomhall and Roman DeSimone
After the Deluge - John Broomhall
The Entertainer - Scott Joplin
Geoscape 1 - John Broomhall and Roman DeSimone
Geoscape 2 - John Broomhall and Roman DeSimone
Mars - John Broomhall and Roman DeSimone
Extra footage from Valde and the official Phoenix Point channel

[@SovereignTurkey]

one of the problems I've noticed with the game is the conflicting design, you are given the the capacity to operate a dozen aircraft and a hundred soldiers, but you are never given the rescores to actually build up those troops and equipment, you only have enough to maintain what you have most of the time.

[@SMthegamer1]

Latest update rebalanced the resources, this has somewhat alleviated the issue

[@uccidere1939]

Originally, in XCOM UFO defense, you could easily replace soldiers, this was BECAUSE the risk of casualties is extremely high. Even in modern XCOMs its easy as hell to get a new soldier as it remained a highly lethal game. Why Phoenix Point never seemed to have even considered this idea is perplexing to me.

[@SMthegamer1]

@@uccidere1939 ​ @Uccidere It takes like a minute to get new soldiers in Phoneix Point, I don't understand your complaint.

[@uccidere1939]

@@SMthegamer1 The issue is twofold, soldier in Phoneix Point are both harder to come by, but also are considerably more expensive then your typical rookie and the XCOM games.

[@SMthegamer1]

@@uccidere1939 Harder to come by I'll disagree with all day, there's usually 3-4 near me at any time via havens, and you can recruit directly from your base if you're willing to make armour/weapons (or have spares). As for cost, if you've been doing your job you should have plenty of resources to trade for whoever you need. Only times I've been short are when I over-extended and at that point recruiting was pretty low on my list of problems. This is all part of the gameplay loop and simulation, you're not a well funded superpower like XCOM, you're what's left of a faction nobody really cared about, you need to work hard to build up a decent fighting force and reclaim the planet, whether that's through diplomacy or supremacy.

[@Avresem]

My relationship with Phoenix point ended when I was greeted with a mandatory agreement to send my data to other countries that have different privacy rules. WHY does a single player game need to send my data ANYWHERE?

[@4crafters597]

Can't you "just unplug" the internet? Sure it's assholey of them to do but afaik it's entirely playable offline

[@HalIOfFamer]

@@4crafters597 fuck that if I have to do anything other than press disagree then the deal is off.

[@4crafters597]

@@HalIOfFamer yes but you use youtube, right? And Netflix, Amazon, Tiktok, any one of these probably has way worse implications for privacy than whatever data Phoenix Point can scrape. Not saying it's excuseable, just saying that you never have a choice and having a disagree button does not mean better privacy

[@HalIOfFamer]

@@4crafters597 only KZbin. And EVEN then only Vanced with inbuilt kinda VPN. It's my little disagree button. But for video games to try and steal my data is a step too far and that's why I got mad.

[@4crafters597]

Just to drive that point home: (This is my understanding of the privacy policies following, not fact. If you want to check it yourself, the steam page of either game shows third party agreement in the right sidebar, in which the privacy policy is either embedded or linked to) While Snapshot games has a pretty blanket statement privacy policy, which boils down to "We share your info with Analytics/Advertisers and store that in maybe a different country (US, most likely, but the policy allows for other countries too) to yours", Take2, which is Xcom, Gta, Civ, blatantly states that they sell your information (and did so in the last 12 months) as raw data, user profiles, ids etc to advertisers (i.e. Data brokers) and can do that in every country too, just like Snapshot says. Nevermind games like bethesdas Fallout and Skyrim Series have a privacy policy that allows them to collect your olfactory profile (i.e. Smell) And if you don't like that you won't like Google, and with that KZbin, Reddit, almost all Newspaper Websites, everything from Tencent or basically anything connected to the web. Let's also not forget you ISP can do exactly what the games do in many jurisdictions. Oh and your phone, unless you use a Degoogled custom rom, it sends away all your data too. And free vpns may sell data too. (If they are not just malicious anyway)

[@irthatkid]

I think the most underrated aspect from the original Xcom game are the heavy horror vibes. Nobody seems to talk about them but I think they are what is missing and makes every other xcom-like feel flat to me when compared. The music, the blasts of guns and screams of victims dying in the shadows (hopefully not to chrysalids), seeing an alien walk into your vision for a moment before vanishing again. It all works together to instigate a feeling of fear.

[@Crystal-dl9ks]

Only similar thing to that is Xenonauts 1 and 2, instead of screams is gunshots of weapons you've never heard, and you gotta ready for what ever new threat awaits you in the darkness.

[@BlazblueFan]

The amotsphere of the original Xcom is absolutely superb.

[@Punished_Trump]

Yeah, The new xcom didn't have that apprehensive factor the old games had. I think it has something to do with the old school UI and presentation

[@lylejustinegay7810]

Xcom 2 always seemed so flat compared to 1. I couldn’t put my finger on it for a while, but then it hit me-the original creates a feeling of tension like no other, while the sequel takes the Michael Bay route. Ironically the first game made it feel like you were fighting a superior enemy more, whereas in 2-where you were a literal guerilla force fighting an overwhelming army-victory almost seemed… guaranteed? And there was little to no tension at all.

[@Franky566]

this is a straight up remake of the classic X-Com sequal "terror from the deep"

[@Deathblade90]

One thing I have noticed in Phoenix Point is that the equipment progression is lateral, while enemy strength (especially armor) is linearly up. This causes the game to become a slog when enemy armor goes over certain threshold. Why would I even use Synedrion equipment, which become useless with 20+ armor, when Jericho will work deep into mid game. Add to that the simplest possible way to make things challenging: Infinitely respawning enemies.

[@Aiveq]

this lack of progression what killed it for me. i kept expecting some MK2 version of gear and it never came and that what i love most about alien games, tech advance into some weird shit

[@snagsTS]

Snipers become a huge crutch mid to late game because they're almost the only consistent way of crippling limbs. The Deceptor from NJ is great for shredding armor, but by then you're talking multiple bursts at suicidal range. I love the challenge this presents, which makes me lean more towards PP than XCOM, but it does become a massive slog and there's never a point you feel your operatives are anything more than competent and decently equipped. PP doesn't really play into the power fantasy that XCOM does. I remember the MECs from Enemy Unknown. If you knew what to do with that thing it was a true juggernaut on the battlefield. It never felt like PP ever gave you that kinda of powerhouse on the battlefield. I still have at least one playthrough every month or so though just to see what combinations of classes, weapons and tactics work well together.

[@nalivai4862]

You use Synedrion equipment because with the little help it's the most overpowered, cheesy, and broken (in a good way) way to make the game your bitch

[@gothicfly]

There are different roles for different weapons. Synedrion stuff in general is more about being long range precision tool. You use synderion stuff to target the weak points or disable certain body parts. Although you should also have someone who can deal with high armor in your team.

[@gothicfly]

@@Aiveq Well to be honest there is some progression even if it might be hard to see since most is more or less side-grades. Anu shotgun is just a straight upgrade to phoenix shotgun and any shredder shotgun is in practice an upgrade to the previous model although it deals a bit less damage to unarmored targets. Synedrion and Jericho sniper rifles are just upgrades to phoenix sniper rifle and Jericho piercing sniper rifle is pretty much an upgrade to the previous model. Synedrion and Jericho assault rifles are also upgrades to the phoenix AR. Then there is the special acid AR and then there are the Ancient Weapons. But changing the numbers on weapons is fairly easy to mod. There are some pretty fun mods to try out.

[@aslag94]

I've had Phoenix Point on my mind for a while despite not ever playing it. I suppose I've just been waiting for a fantastic video like this to explain what the game is all about.

[@disposable1911]

I have it on Steam, It's not perfect, but pretty damn fun. Don't be afraid to die a bit. If that's a problem, you can scum save.

[@JakeTalksGamesYT]

@@disposable1911 save scumming as you learn is the most fun way to play your first playthrough of any XCOM model game I've tried

[@outlaw8425]

I'll say don't buy any of the Dlc, except Blood and titanium. And maaaay beeee something about ancients dlc

[@prussen9889]

I was debating on picking it up when it joined games pass. I’ve just started my first playthrough and am enjoying it so far. I’m currently towards the end of the prologue atm

[@classicfrog80]

It's not too bad of a game, really. The way it handles shooting at the enemies, with manual aiming, compared to pure percentage chance in XCom games, is worth checking it for that reason alone. Visually it's miles behind XCom, though, just so you know what to expect. That being said, avoid two DLC's: "Festering skies" and "Corrupted Horizon". They bring absolutely nothing of value to the game, and what they do bring is annoying as hell. Also, ignore what the author of this video said about factions. You absolutely can, and SHOULD, ally with all 3 of them. It's quite simple, actually, as every time you defend their territory you gain reputation with them. You do lose some reputation with other two at the same time, but it's always a net gain. Also every time you destroy enemy nest you gain reputation with all three factions as well. Spend enough time assisting them, never ever attack them unless it's part of the loyalty missions, and you will have access to all their tech research in no time.

[@alphajackal6648]

For me, the big disappointment, aside from the Epic stuff, was how they touted the evolution system, and how it would respond to how you built, but it ended up just being linear enemy upgrades that aren't at all affected by what you favor on the tech tree. It really took the wind out of my sails.

[@Self-replicating_whatnot]

And yet hey still display "enemy that procedurally mutates and evolves new forms in response to your tactics" on their website. Shameless bastards.

[@ArtekGeneral]

Well, this one is actually partially true. But it's a feature almost fully exclusive to Tritons. They steal any freshly developed weapons for themselves, particularly sniper rifles and shotguns. They won't start fielding armor-piercing weapons, paralysing weapons or harrower shotgun until relevant research has been completed by respective faction (or you). But there is indeed no response to any research completed by Phoenix themselves.

[@czarkusa2018]

During pre-launch marketing I was under the impression that evolution was not said to counter your technology but to counter your tactics such as body parts you frequently target, enemy types you prioritise etc.

[@ricwalker6600]

Huh? They do evolve according to what you do to them: shoot them in the legs more often than into other regions and they get additional armor. shoot them often in the head and they field cloaking abilities. stay mostly at far range in the missions and they field more meelee sprinters. bring mostly meelee dudes and they bring more ranged units with escape or counter strike abilities. it is there, most people just dont see it, because they miss the details and dont analyse their own playstyle.

[@Self-replicating_whatnot]

@@ricwalker6600 Uhm, no? I am killing mission after mission after mission with melee terminator right now, and the enemy still fields the same mix of troops they always did.

[@LemonRush7777]

As punishing as the original Xcom was, you had ways of countering aliens right out of the gate. Like the mentioned ramp shots - you can skip the first turn or throw a smoke grenade at the ramp to safely disembark. You can also look through the windows by simply turning around to see if there are aliens right outside waiting to murder you on Overwatch. The rookies cant shoot for shit, but you can either flatten aliens with high explosives at the start, carefully approach them and shoot them in their faces and so on. Night missions are a pain? Dont discount flares and smoke 'nades. Motion trackers can help you locate enemies so you aren't caught by surprise. And once you get at least laser pistols (which happens pretty fast), everything gets MUCH easier and you can start your initial money manufacturing farm. It's unforgiving at first, but that's just a product of not properly exploring the whole arsenal of toys at your disposal.

[@CaptmagiKono]

Motion sensors were my favorite tool honestly. Even though some people apparently hated using them in all forms.

[@LemonRush7777]

@@CaptmagiKono I wasn't a big fan, but always had at least one on me. It had its uses.

[@neilcampbell7375]

Wait, this entire time. You could've just looked out of skyranger's windows?

[@iwatchyoutubealot]

tbh you don't even need the explosives unless you bump into a cyberdisk on the first terror mission, accuracy is overrated when you have volume of fire

[@LemonRush7777]

@@neilcampbell7375 Yep. Try it!

[@gauthel]

I did a complete playthrough early when it landed on Windows store. Remember getting frustrated because of overpowered enemies and then finding absolutely ridiculous class combos that allowed wiping out entire map in 1-2 turns, often without your enemies even noticing your forces. Finished final mission without any major injuries. So difficulty felt like it was either impossibly brutal or a complete joke. Talking about it on the forums made me realize that devs don't really understand what should they do to actually balance the game. So they just catered to either few who steamrolled through highest difficulty or many who couldn't get past the initial hurdle. It felt like design decisions were depending on the weather outside more than actual planning.

[@HelgeHolm]

Yeah the balance ruined it for me too. They focused on making it balanced for the manic min-maxers, which made it unplayable for anyone else.

[@Nenral]

@@HelgeHolm Not really. The problem is they didn't balance the game at all. The pace of the enemy is soly dependent on the player. If you research certain weapons, the aliens will get the same weapons (and therefore new unit-types) one week later. This punishes players who (like in other xcom games) research fast and are not able to equip there squads withs new weapons right after their inventions. Another problem is a bug of the difficulty rating which changes the stats of your humans and the enemy humans in the same direction. If you play on the lowest difficulty you get better troops but the human factions too. So there is one of the three starting missions outright impoossible because of the highly geared human enemies. If you play at the higher difficulties this heaven mission is by far the easiest of the three. One of the easiest way to beat the game is to play on the second highest difficulty and farm the human heavens while reasearching slowly though the research tree.

[@PunisherLex]

6:30 To explain this for anyone who didn't get it [Yes, I'm being that guy.] - Synedrion is effectively the guerilla warfare faction, their equipment generally focuses on moving undetected and scoring reliable hits where possible, buffing both Stealth and Accuracy. Synedrion guns have the longest effective ranges in the game alongside the largest ammo pools within their available weapon classes all the while not sacrificing much or any damage potential from their Phoenix Point Counter-parts. In my experience you'll often find yourself finishing missions in the early and midgame without ever reloading your Synedrion rifle. Synedrion also has all of the ranged options (as far as I'm aware) for capturing the "Crabs" and a glorified hover ambulance with enough anesthetic [READ: Electro-shock therapy] to put a herd of elephants into a collective coma and enough medical supplies to cheat death several times over. The only major downside is that as a result most Synedrion armor has about as much protection as independent counterparts in most cases (assault torso is an exception) leaving them with the lowest armor stat in the game aside from Anu Berserker armor. TL;DR playing with Synedrion for a run you're probably going to either be feeling like how the early game Sectoids in UFO probably felt shooting your guys from out of your perception range, or alternatively, how I imagine the average W40K Tau player feels.

[@Liquid_Rigel]

T'au still get a 4+ save compared to a guardsman's 5+ save. But hey, at least it isn't paper mache!

[@martenkahr3365]

I saw that potential with Synedrion... but in reality too many missions required you to rush toward something, preventing a cautious stealth approach. Mist towers, civilians, and facility defense are all missions where you can't effectively leverage the perks of Synedrion. And by the time Scyllas start showing up, enemies are getting too fast and too numerous for your troops to be able to slowly kite away at them from stealth. That said, the Synedrion paralysis pistol is an amazing tool in the hands of a sniper that can shoot it three to four times a turn.

[@WadeStar]

This is exactly the comment I was looking for. Thank you for being that guy.

[@benjaminlee985]

Don't forget you can mix and match. Give Synedrion's good guns to someone in NJ armor and you've got some real chunky boys that can still do good damage at range.

[@PunisherLex]

@@benjaminlee985 Generally speaking this works fine until about the end-game, as from what I can tell, most of the community's problems with Synedrion as a faction is simply their lack of good anti-armor capability as opposed to their contemporaries rather than their overall armor stats, (For Example: New Jericho weapons in the latter half of the game ignore armor entirely and they have a lot of explosive options as well, Disciples of Anu seem to have the same problem as Synedrion until you consider A: they have a shotgun made for shredding, B: many of their weapons deal acid damage which melts armor over time, and C: They have mutogs, almost all of which deal either acid or shred in high quantities, the mutogs of which are even more viable to use now as the devs reduced their slot cost in particular from 3 to 2 with the release of kaos engines, a change which I would personally think is a buff the Synedrion vehicle should've gotten as well given their currently limited use case due to having the lowest HP and Armor among vehicles in the game and the second lowest squad member carry capacity, while also requiring to be in melee range to use their equipment and still costing 3 slots to bring.) as the Scylla becomes an almost impassible roadblock for a Synedrion-primary run, to get around its genuinely ridiculous armor scores as Synedrion your only realistically (purely theoretically speaking) viable option outside of either changing the faction you are working with entirely or pumping a dangerous amount of explosives down range and hoping the target is softened up enough, is to dual class all participating soldiers into Infiltrator and unlock sneak attack so that you can tranq through full armor & Echo cybernetic heads to stay in stealth for as long as possible pelting the Scylla with tranquilizers from outside of visibility range thanks to the silent weapon effect.

[@Ikcatcher]

It really feels like a fanmade XCOM game, despite being made by the guy behind XCOM

[@DinnerForkTongue]

Because Gollop is not a good game dev.

[@Beakerbite]

@@DinnerForkTongue OG X-COM had some serious design flaws and major bugs. It still did well because of a great premise but Gollop didn't do it any favors polish wise.

[@DinnerForkTongue]

@@Beakerbite No he didn't, definitely. If anything, Gollop was *carried* by the other developers, above all Sid Meyer for the MicroProse UFO Defense and Jake Solomon for Firaxis's Enemy Unknown.

[@SBBurzmali]

@@DinnerForkTongue To be charitable, Gollop has Molyneux-itis where he has grand visions of a game that is awesome but realizing that vision is best left to someone else.

[@abaddungeonmaster7622]

@@SBBurzmali Ah, so, seems very much like a George Lucas sort of guy, then? Has some really cool and amazing ideas, but hot damn, you gotta have someone there to help refine/curtail/focus him, or else, shit gets wild?

[@MW-qt9ts]

For me it really is the confusion between the game wanting you to have a hero squad but also have them be made of paper. Even the character customization feels like it wants me to change up the characters and build up a connection with them, but also having a huge lack of customization options and ending up having the patchwork grey/green squad, again. Plus, honestly what's the point of saving the world if I can't do it in bright pastel colors.

[@tensorflaw]

Remember when you had to capture a live deep one in TFTD and the window to encounter them was so short that when you got that terrorist mission with them you sacrificed half your team to taze one and literally hot potato its unconscious body back to the ship only to abandon the mission and leave all the civilians to die because you couldn't risk the deep one regaining consciousness on your ship? Remember when opening a ship door for the first time was almost always suicide so you gave your rookie a bunch of primed grenades so if they were shot in the door they would take out the welcoming committee with them? Remember finding that soldier with insane strength and making them a human trebuchet, launching grenades half way across the map from the top of your ship? Remember suicidal sectoids that would fire point blank pulse launchers in the lower sections of alien bases? The original XCOM and TFTD was a gem. I should try xenonauts.

[@WesternHypernormalization]

=]

[@KopperNeoman]

I remember the PS1 version of UFO that added an "open door" button.

[@salt_factory7566]

Heaven forbid you interrogate the deep one before you autopsy it or the tech tree locks and you lose.

[@Interesting_Failure]

The Epic exclusivity model nowadays more or less seems to be "Epic for early access, then release on Steam once the game is done". It's possible that the game would have done better had it released on Steam simultaneously with this big update.

[@adamstull2436]

Have you looked at Steam? Half the games seem to be early access.

[@newironside]

@@adamstull2436 And were most of those Epic exclusive? Which are the only games this comment is talking about?

[@Fireclaws10]

Eh, the Epic money means they managed to develop for this long. The game would never have enough sales to be worked on past the initial release without Epic money.

[@jmmywyf4lyf]

The EGS exclusivity is THE reason I refuse to buy it.

[@waltblackadar4690]

@@jmmywyf4lyf For me it wasn't just Epic but that the devs specifically spoke about Steam during their KS and then changed the distribution platform once Epic showed up with bags of cash. That was a major thumb in the eye to the players who wouldn't have KS'd an Epic game at all. I pulled my money out of the Kickstarter and was very glad I did so.

[@eduardorojas1770]

For me the fact that every time you complete an investigation, the pandorans get one upgrade too, makes the macro game stupid, its better to do nothing or it get extremely hard super fast

[@dj11o9er]

tbf, if you wait long enough, the factions will erupt into war with each other, and then you're stuck defending havens so you don't lose the game via the human race just killing itself off. The game is a literal race against time, so you have to do stuff or you just bone yourself. Kinda like I did in my first try.

[@istvanvincze7411]

10:20 You missed one thing, official mod support. I know it's not part of the integral design and review of games these days, but there is a reason why XCOM 2 was one of the most played strategy games on steam years after it's release, and why it has an active community to this day. Modding is a colossal, like, I can not express with words how enormous of an aspect it is for a game when it comes to replayability. As good as the base XCOM 2 game is, there is no other feeling like booting up your 100 mod campaign, and I am on the more conservative side. Regardless of the quality, XCOM 2 will continue to be the most played and most popular game, simply because there is a lot to do with the mods on the table. Seriously, it has a massive effect on replayability and XCOM 2 would be the same case Phoenix Point was without the Steam workshop. So, so many people asked for mod support for Phoenix Point, and for a very good reason. It's a shame it didn't get added. The game ONLY benefits from it. And seing the success of Firaxis's counterpart, and the fact that their target audience mostly converges with that of XCOM, I find it very hard to understand why wasn't it implemented, as it would have been game changing. The XCOM / Phoenix Point formula just cries out for the support, it's just that mod friendly, it's basically the Skyrim of strategy games. Phoenix Point is a good game, but if it or it's potential sequel gets mod support, people will talk about it very very differently, and I mean it in a good way.

[@gothicfly]

I think this is indeed a major flaw. It seems like this was due to PP being developed by a much smaller studio that didnt have resources to fulfill its vision. So it seems like a lot of none essentials where scrapped during development and they tried to just get the game launched. Probably also because it was released on epic at first adding steam workshop support was not the most pressing thing on their minds. Thats why the game is still in active development as they are trying to fulfill the vision that the game was supposed to be. Maybe once they are satisfied with the product we'll get some more mod support? So far it is not known how long they will continue to add more stuff.

[@solowingpixy9367]

@@gothicfly they had crowdfunding money plus the epic games bribe if both of these wasn't enough i don't know what else is hell xenonauts did better with less funding and it has offical mod support

[@gothicfly]

@@solowingpixy9367 well making AAA games takes a lot of money and Phoenix Project clearly tried to make a modern 2010s game, while Xenonauts set out to make a 1990s game. So what they tried to do was kinda different. I actually havent played xenonauts. If I love the new XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2 and Phoenix Project then do you think I would like Xenonauts? Or is it more for the old school people who love the original XCOM and dislike the remakes?

[@solowingpixy9367]

@@gothicfly well i say give it a try but i would recommend reading some guides or watching a tutorial video before you start as for difficulty well xenonauts is indeed for old school players but don't let that scare you though compared to old xcom games xenonauts is much more smooth to play and learn you'll have fun once you figure out the game and as for mods avoid the x division until you have mastered the vanilla game

[@nivekakninblarg8076]

You can't put mod support when the game has epic game drm.

[@PyroMancer2k]

The troop leveling/class system is complete antithesis of the original X-COM games. Sure characters could improve slightly from doing more missions in the original X-COM games but it was just some stats to give slightly better performance, it didn't unlock new skills/abilities which the game now has to try and balance around. This results in a case where your progression is linked to your characters level and thus if they die there is no way to get the new guys back up given the progression of the game is a slow build up to a final fight and you don't have dozens of spare missions to level grind them on now. Sometimes even the original developer doesn't know what made their games great so when they want to try something new with the mechanics they don't realize how it undermines the original feel. The original was as much a logistics game as it was a tactical game. Developing the R&D for that new weapon was meaningless if you couldn't afford to produce it. But once you had the new weapons you could give them to any soldier to get similar performance on the battlefield. Sure Vets might have slightly better accuracy, movement, HP, and etc. but it doesn't fundamental alter your combat abilities the way having rocket launcher, double shoot, additional move after kill, and so many other skills/abilities do in X-COM remakes and those that follow suit. This sort of leveling mechanic ends up making the game more punishing because progress is tied to characters and thus one bad mission could mean an unrecoverable game as a full squad of rookies just can't handle the current enemy levels. Where as in the original X-COM surviving with 1-2 soldiers left felt like pulling through a slim victory and even total team loss was not the end of your run. Just hire a bunch of rookies and give them the latest weapons and off you go. But in this video and so many others you see where someone losses a character and they get upset with a "Time to reload." comment. The result is these sort of games encourage save scumming rather than playing straight through while rolling with the punches.

[@Subjagator]

I don't think I ever managed to keep a single original soldier alive until the final mission in any of my original xcom or tftd games. With the remakes it is a regular occurance to have multiple soldiers survive the entire campaign and then even the final mission. For me though they are entirely different types of games and difficult to compare directly. The original xcom felt like in each mission you just wanted to finish it and there was a *lot* of wiggle room for acceptable losses. Sacrificing half your team to secure a single alien capture was fine because every soldier was replaceable. An enemy turn could result in no casualties if you were lucky or half your team getting killed and that was also acceptable. With the new games the goal for every encounter seems to be about eliminating every enemy as they arrive in the fight by picking the correct combination of magic spells your guys know to either kill or disable them all and it is practically a failure if the enemy troops have the opportunity to even shoot at your guys. In the original if an enemy appeared from your flank and kills a couple of people during the enemy turn it was your fault for not covering that flank, for not making sure you cleared out that area etc... In the new games if a pod randomly wanders into the fight and engages your soldiers then you curse for getting screwed by the games rng and will often feel justified to reload the mission. The remakes are much more tactical and much tighter in their design with much more hand counters to the alien threat, which is great if that is what you want, but they don't carry the same more fluid like combat that the original games often had and which drew a lot of people to them.

[@EmperorSigismund]

The new Xcom games feel more like tactics RPG than a sim. You have to have leveled up characters or else you'll never have the damage output to kill whatever big climactic monster they throw at you for the final mission. I remember Xcom 2's final mission being ridiculous. You HAD to kill every wave of reinforcments the moment they appeared or you'd be facing down multiple mind control attempts and/or dead troopers every turn. There was no substitute for having a full roster of max level soldiers with all the fancy abilities.

[@lorenzocassaro3054]

@@Subjagator Oh please, don't speak as if RNG wasn't a pain in the a** in the original as well! You cannot imagine how many times I couldn't keep my flanks covered because THE GAME decided my soldiers had to shoot like they had cataracts, while the Muton-Master-Race just roflstomped me from half the map away Save scumming was part of UFO-Enemy Unknown just as it was in the latest X-Coms, with the exception that nowadays soldiers are no longer nameless cannon fodder

[@lorenzocassaro3054]

@@EmperorSigismund I mean...it's called "final mission" for a reason...you are supposed to send your best in the grinder

[@warwickthekingmaker7281]

Dude, just make a base with like 4 training centers or whatever the building is cled and slam a bunch of rookies in there. I'm not even sure how you manage to lose lots of soldiers since I find it very rare that a guy will die in a single turnz and if he doesn't I can patch him up. But if you did what I suggested you can now replace the dead soldiers with a level 7 rookie. Still going to be a downgrade because they'll have less SP but it's not that big a deal

[@pragmaticpuppy2715]

Now that song deserves a round of applause. Thank you for that wonderful art

[@pressqtoquaff]

came here to say the same

[@jollyredgiant203]

I played this game all the way through and the thing that drives me nuts is the cover system. You put someone in cover, they lean out to shoot, AND THEY JUST SIT OUT THERE WHILE THE ENEMY RETURNS FIRE. It never stopped making me want to drop kick my computer

[@Self-replicating_whatnot]

Phoenix Point doesn't have a cover system. Not in a sense that XCom players would think of one. All your cover does here is it blocks the line of sight, and consequently line of fire. Usually partially. When you lean out of it to shoot be prepared to being shot back at.

[@dj11o9er]

it's almost like that's kinda the point of the return fire crap.

[@warwickthekingmaker7281]

I don't get it. Isn't it obvious that the return fire perk is intended to happen at the same time as you shoot the guy basically? You lean out to shoot the guy and he shoots back. Its just divided into two parts to show you each event individually.

[@Subject_Keter]

I love how when you hear "That pos monster that wiped out all your men" you could hear a pen drop lol. I swear to god that first goddamn Sectopod on Xcom 1 still gives me nightmares

[@Rycluse]

Sectopods are the one enemy I thought got substantially scarier in 2, even on lower difficulty they could squad wipe if you aren't careful

[@Subject_Keter]

I havent played Xcom 2 in a long time but I usually got Bluescreens to take out the Sectopods but in Xcom 1, it took me a eon to find out Snipers disable weapon workes on it but.. i still was scared to trigger the two sectopods at the end lol. Also i like the big metal chicken look over legs for days

[@crabstack5488]

@@Rycluse definitely scarier. The EW sectopod felt like it had more health but damn does the 2 sectopod not mess around in its damage output

[@lioninjawarloc]

@@Rycluse sectopods suck in 2 compared to EW what?

[@theviewerofart]

I keep trying this game. I keep wanting to love it. But it's just so brutally difficult. And any time I go into the forums to make suggestions for changes that would be more enjoyable to players like me, there's the same few tryhards telling me the game is too easy as it is. And based on the direction of the DLC, I think those are the people that the devs are listening to. All in all, I think the game has built itself around a certain audience, and contrary to my expectations at launch, I am not that audience.

[@Subject_Keter]

Reminds me of the Inscryption Forums where like 4 guys are saying a rare card to find makes the game "too easy" when the issue is you got to actually acquire the cardm

[@OpickHidayato]

People say this game is too easy because they know about the exploit. And becuse of the exploit, developer keep rebalancing to the point it's not balance anymore, player skill keep getting weaker, etc

[@incelliousthewizard7883]

@@OpickHidayato what exploit?

[@WarpGhost92]

@@OpickHidayato idk, know nothing about exploits. Game is easy. May e I spend too much time in turn based games, but I can hardly name it challenging.

[@willworkforfood7028]

That seems to be the case for a long time. People either thinking the game is too easy or too hard. I think the problem is you have to play "smart" / "optimal" or you will struggle a lot. My suggestion is this: Try new strategies. The sheer amount of options you have to deal with specific situations is immense. Hate getting ambushed? Be friends with Syndication and get a infiltrator, their spider drones are amazing expendable scouts, or use vehicles or use the tactical shield. Snipers? Use vehicles or tactical shields as mobile cover and rush with Assaults. Heavy armoured crabs with return fire? Sniper rifles and target their gun limb, indirect fire with grenades, melee doesn't trigger return fire. Those stupid mind controlling siren? They stop when their heads are disabled. Or just let them mind control your crew, eventually she will run out of willpower and lose control. Virus damage helps. This isn't even getting into the stupidly broken skills and combos.

[@Bi0mega]

It's one of those games I've always wanted to like. I mean, I backed it on Kickstarter based purely on the pedigree. But they still haven't quite got a game that flows, and they've made some really baffling design decisions along the way. Like, how long did it take for them to implement looting corpses post-battle? That was a mod for way longer than it had to be. And the fact that the modding scene is basically non-existent probably doesn't help either. I really feel that a stronger mod community, or even just something like Steam Workshop integration, would make for a much better game overall.

[@teecee1827]

Being an epic exclusive for one year hurt them very badly since the modding scene was heavily set back.

[@ultramelon3960]

Steam workshop support is coming this summer. Here’s to hoping for some quality of life mods!

[@whatisbestinlife8112]

One of the issues with PP taking the Epic exclusive payoff money, on top of the devs now helping Epic try to bully gamers into using their z-rate storefront, is that the PP devs outright broke their word and deal with their long-time and loyal backers to do it. It was a fairly craven betrayal of the individual gamers who had put up their own money long before to help the game out. Then PP devs dumping them to jump to Epic when Epic waltzed in late and waved their big money around. Yeah, Julian "got his" out of it. But he badly damaged his own reputation as a beloved elder statesman of gaming in the process. There's an old adage that is basically a good reputation is hard to earn and easy to lose. And Julian Gollop found that out the hard way. Some important intangibles were lost by taking the Epic bribe money, and they won't be easily earned back. Some of it will never return.

[@VampireNewl]

I think the shear level of not giving a shit after the backlash hurt them pretty bad as well. A lot of people felt like they had been used and discarded, I think they could have still turned it around if they didn't try and act like the victim while downplaying there error.

[@MrMaltavius]

What the hell? Do you realize what a mess of a game we would have if the DIDN'T take the Epic money? The game is basically not what was promised even after 5 DLC and a fair amount of patches

[@whatisbestinlife8112]

@@MrMaltavius Gosh I guess there was no games or games industry before Epic started bribing developers. Dunno what we've been doing for the past several decades but apparently it wasn't playing scores of brilliant, genre-defining, complete games that weren't built from Epic's money. No, devs do not need Epic money. Many, many great and complete games, genre-defining games, were created without Epic's money. In fact, ALL brilliant, complete and genre-defining games that we have spent decades playing and loving were built without Epic's money. And before anyone says "Fortnite", Fortnite bandwagoned onto an existing and already exploding genre that was due to other devs' inspiration and brilliance. It was originally a base/tower defense game that they quickly hacked into a BR game when they saw the exploding popularity of the genre. Epic's bribe money is not necessary for anything.

[@Dream146]

@@whatisbestinlife8112 grow up, epic games is not doing anything that every other player in the games industry has been doing for over a decade or more. Exclusives? Talk to Sony, Nintendo, Steam, EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Activision-Blizzard etc. The fact people have chosen Epic Gamestore as their hill to die on in the anti consumer BS of the games industry is laughable.

[@whatisbestinlife8112]

@@Dream146 Naw, you're too naive. We're not talking consoles here. That's just silly comparison. Epic store is utter trash. Which is whyy we see people debating and talking about the game on Steam forums when it's still on Epic exclusive, for example. Along with a host of other customer service functions Steam offers. Hell, even GoG offers a vastly better service to their customers and they have a tiny fraction of revenue stream compared to Steam and Epic. Epic is simply trying to bully gamers into using their store instead of providing a quality competitive service. Why? Because that's hard work that has to be built up over years of dedication. Epic just wants to jump to a fatter slice of the pie for themselves without putting in the work to build a legitimately equitable or superior service. Always interesting watching consumers defend corporations that are actively manipulating and abusing them. It shows how completely indoctrinated so many of our society are by blind worship of corporations, and the resulting lack of critical observation and thinking.

[@josemg14]

There is another thing that you didn't mention about the drama on release. The devs got in contact with the community and they released a web page were anyone could submit ideas or recommendations, afterwards anyone could see and vote on the ones that they wanted to be implemented. The problem was that they took this ideas and they made them into a paid DLC. This was specially terrible when they release the first DLC, because the difficulty spike was extremely broken at launch and this DLC had tools to fix this issues. So basically they were saying, if you want to be able to beat the game without any glitches or if you want to check out your cool ideas, you need to give us more money.

[@fischyfischy7532]

feel like the dlc are one of my biggest problems. the augmetns and living armor was fine while slightly disapointing but the ancient dlc added painful aliens and to combat these you get wapons that are locked behind multible quests then a search for them what costs resorces and time then you have to liberate them against completly unbalanced op enemies that nearly all of them have near perfect aim that will crible you quickly no matter the armor or range or cover while they get to ignore cover because they get a shield and when you take them over you have to extract the ressorce what is a time dump and you have to protect them and then you notice you have to refine these ressorces located at a diffrent site. festering skyes just makes the game harder for nothing in return

[@teecee1827]

The new corruption mechanic they added is also pure ass. Enjoy having operatives that do 10 % more damage but have max 5 willpoints

[@classicfrog80]

@@teecee1827 Very true. I've played only once with that DLC on and will never ever enable it again. That being said, I ended up with an infiltrator with several useful perks, so I left her at 100% corruption and never healed, even after discovering the cure, and she was dealing massive damage with her PDW and sniper rifle.

[@fiendishrabbit8259]

In terms of Phoenix point DLCs Blood and Titanium: +So much cool gear that opens up new playstyles and strategies -Introduces one of the most annoying factions in the game, which is not only heavily armoured but also have defensive energy shields. Legacy of the Ancients: +- It doesn't intrude on the main game really and its weapons and resources pretty much makes the game easy mode after that initial investment stage of resources&manpower. The weapons are a bit too OP that this is a fully positive thing, but overall the DLC doesn't have any major drawbacks. Festering skies -Why even bother? It introduces another menace to complicate your life and gives you minimal returns (almost all payout is for making the Festering skies Interceptor minigame easier. And it's not even fun). In essence it only a DLC you activate if you a masochist. Corrupted Horizons +Introduces cool enemies +Introduces mutoids, which is basically disposable soldiers (since their levelling is basically just "pay mutagens") and a much more flexible resource than the Anu "vehicle". -The corruption mechanic is basically just a way to keep you from having access to a lot of mutagens before you finish the DLC storyline.

[@Self-replicating_whatnot]

I would contend that Legacy of the Ancients made the game easier, to the point that i currently turned it off as to not be tempted to use it. And if you have trouble dealing with ancient site guardians, i would humbly suggest luring them into close combat after you located and disposed of the resident Cyclops with focused fire(snipe his beam cannon first, then proceed to legs). Hoplites are not that scary and require 2 shotgun blasts max to go down, and close in you can dash around their shields easily enough. Start with protean mutaine, build Rebukes. Once you have a couple the rest will fall to sustained bombardment(infinite ammo, baby!). By the end, you'll have more materials than you'll know what to do with, too, what with those ridiculous 1k payouts for each and every site you clear.

[@kpmh2001]

The Epic Games exlcusiveness killed it for me. I never even gave it a second glance until your video.

[@disposable1911]

Play it on Steam

[@TGMvideo]

@@disposable1911 It was more the fact that they did the kickstarter thing and then "whoops lads, its going to be epic store only" that ruined their reputation for me for eternity.

[@-Zikade-]

@@TGMvideo Yeah, to start a kickstarter and then suddenly go "lol actually it's epic store exclusive". That's such a douchy thing to do that even when I wasn't one of the backers, it soured my opinion. I've been eyeing the game once it was released on Steam though. Maybe some day when I get bored of re-playing Xcom for the 125th time.

[@GeneralArmchair]

Epic Games Store exclusives are basically a red flag that the developers themselves consider the product to be shovelware.

[@turk88]

You said it in the beginning, Gallop got an interest free loan from the backers, then told the backers to get fucked and got his bag from Epic. He laughed all the way to the bank and didn't have to give 2 shits if the game ever sold another copy as he already cashed out. I was one of the FIG backers and now will never bother with anything from Gallop or his company or Epic ever. I wouldn't even pirate this .

[@masonhill5157]

He didnt really say get fucked and ran to the bank with the money you know. When the deal with epic was made known and everyone who was reasonably upset about it voiced that. He and the company actually offered to fully refund all the money back to those that wanted a refund. didnt matter what they paid they where able to get the money back easy. Also for those that stuck with it we literally got every single dlc for free that came out within the year so it was not as bad as your making it out.

[@turk88]

@@masonhill5157 The game was pushed and bits and pieces were cut out to fit the release, then released later as DLC . Just check the steam page, there are still bugs and development is all but finished. No, i completely disagree with you. If you make a pledge to the backers to develop a game and then with the game half way done, get a new deal and tells the original backers who gave you money to develop the game that i no longer need your backing, accept this new deal or get out , then that is a You can get fucked original backers. just look at the page, years after release that free dlc was ORIGINAL content cut out. There are still bugs unfixed and the game is all but done. I still stand by my statement of the game, once Gallop got paid, he could care less if he delivered a game or not because he was already paid in advance.

[@vladimiravich7260]

I've been playing this game on and off since its beta and my thoughts on it are... Complicated?! I love its complexity and attention to detail. This is the only game where you can bash a dude to death with a medkit or have one guy successfully protect a haven with the help of an insanely fast Armored Car. But the game struggles with balance and scarcity of resources. For every DLC they add the game gets a new gimmick to worry about but hardly provides the resources necessary to handle the new threat. Scarcity is super important to the games theme and you are suppose to be struggling from start to finish, but often times its not enough. Often times it seems you can't win without resorting to looking for ways to cheese or break the game. On top of that this is a very slow game. In order to win you have to be cautious and thoughtful with your approach which can drastically throw people off. The difficulty is also all over the place. I play exclusively in Legendary and there comes a point where some weapons become nearly useless without the right synergies. There is alot of really cool ideas but they are implemented in ways that don't make them fun. Personally I would like to see soldiers be easier to replace. More resources from festering sky air battles to make the air game more worth while, and a huge nerf to the fucking Flying Locust bug things that have an absurd amount of health, are hard to hit on account of being small, and explode upon death. The only easy way to deal with those fucking things is to taze them in melee. 😠

[@guardianof2fort964]

For Chaos's sake they don't even come with their own gear unless we recruit them from the havens which is overall cheaper than outfitting new recruits anyway! What's even the point of using that menu?!

[@Grichmann]

Phoenix Point feels like an older, more experimental game, one that would feel right if it came out around 2002. The overall design always feels a bit off, like elements don't quite fit together as well as they should. Take the cover system as an obvious example: a covered position can often do more harm than good, blocking your own aiming and interfering with overwatch. Or how locational damage starts out strong, but largely devolves into attacking weakspots for massive damage. And that's on top of the regular layer of jank. But the payoff is that the pieces are much more complex. You find comboes between the four factions' equipment and classes, you adapt to using the resources and stretegic layout you have available, you still consider what you're shooting at and from what angle. Most importantly, you do not go into a death spiral after a single mistake. Even if you get overwhelmed and have to abandon a mission and sacrifice a haven. And then the DLC feels like optional challenge modes, which is cool, but makes the game even harder to get started with. ...also you speak of faction relations like Apocalypse and Aftershock never happened.

[@jamesz1003]

I must have played through this game 4 times. Absolutely love it

[@spasminos]

Dude I had such high hopes for that game and then played it and it was just all over the place. It was a hard game to get into the groove with, and I couldn't be persuaded to buy the DLC. The air combat one looked like it should've been in the base game anyways

[@Rycluse]

The last DLC to come out was like "here's a new alien to completely brutalize you also some missions and a class or something pay up for more pain". So yeah, not any talk of the DLC in this video lol

[@CharackBane]

I have found it fun and enjoyable. Missions can get a bit routine, but there's enough storyline, mission stress and variation in playability that you don't get bored. The different ways you can use soldiers abilities really mixes it up. With whole different strategies arising out of the skill sets you randomly drew. Can't promote it enough as a squad based game.

[@RoseDragoness]

I played it then stop when I realizes it get tedious, slow, and all the enemies doing at that point was adding more armor. I heard great things about xcom series and these seafoods looks cool, so I wondered if the story is cool too. The story wasn't enough to keep me trudging over a dozen of quests that feels not going anywhere. Maybe I did something wrong.

[@shikniwho7215]

it is quite tedious, if they just simple add an auto-resolve button like X-com then that certainly help you getting bored from doing random battles.

[@dj11o9er]

@@shikniwho7215 Since when did XCOM have auto resolve? Let me guess, the original XCOM game?

[@shikniwho7215]

@@dj11o9er then maybe i just remember the mod someone made in X-com 2.

[@vine01]

@@dj11o9er never. not Ufo:EU/Xcom UD nor TFTD nor Apocalypse

[@HappyAspid]

9:15 - it is possible to be friends with all factions. It only takes shit loads of time to do so. Right now phoenix point is a decent game I have spend a lot of time at. But early Epic game deal and very low quality release managed to completely remove any semblance of reputation.

[@Maioly]

Yeah no, I gave this several tries just got repeatedly more and more burned; I think I last played last december, and even then the balance was absolute garbage. Still vividly remember going into a raid mission, only to start it off right in front of an enemy soldier; and then having all the other enemies in the map start raining down explosions on us, even from completely across the map, before I even had the chance to properly move and position my troops. Add to it often getting seen (or shot through) walls; The vehicles being downright useless 90% of the time due to the way the maps are built (specially hives and shit) and how... unsatisfying research feels. And that is when the game is not being hilariously easy instead (hello there, steal research mission were I literally spawn right next to two terminals I need to go for and with no enemies anywhere nearby) You mentioned it being vertical as well as horizontal... and I did not feel that at all; There was never any real vertical progress, just horizontal stuff stolen from other factions ... Basically, I am trying to say I had quite a shitty experience with this game, overall.

[@Rycluse]

My defining experience with early Phoenix Point was walking into my first base mission and getting rocked by two sirens (who I had never encountered before) as they mind controlled a new soldier every turn and my weapons did nothing to their armor. So everything since then has seemed pretty tame lol I was originally going to say the tech tree was entirely horizontal, but there are a scant few items in the game that are direct upgrades, like the synedrion assault rifle being just the phoenix one with better range, or the late game anu shotgun just being the phoenix shotgun but it'll shred your balls off. So I threw in the vertical part so no one would complain about that.

[@Maioly]

@@Rycluse I see That does sound like a high bar of misery And i get the research stufd Still feel like that is the worst inplemented part od the game, as it just drains any feeling of progression on your part. Sorry for typos, replying on phone.

[@Dcook85]

Okay, your ragtime saloon summation of what I essentially know as the "X-COM experience" sold me on your channel.

[@marxxplaysgames]

Phoenix Point has been the first X-Com like game I have really sunk my teeth into and I'm loving it! I have been battered and bruised, but now I have crab people of my own

[@failmaster1017]

Your comedic singing bit has won you a new sub. Excellent job, and great video overall.

[@eviljoshy3402]

Unlike most of my friends who said "I'll wait for the steam release" I actually waited for the steam release. I loved the old xcoms and the reboots so I wanted to check this game out. I did not like how they took the epic deal. That put me off it but after hearing about the bad launch I'm kinda glad I waited. After the various updates the game is in a good state and I enjoy it. I still think WOTC is better by far but PP (lol) has some things I wish xcom had. If you were to combine both these games I think it would be amazing. The thing that I am really sorry for is they didn't open up PP to steam workshop. The modding community for xcom is amazing and there just isn't any mods for PP. I think I have 4 and 3 of them are made by the same person. In WOTC I probably have 200+.

[@PaulDozierZZoMBiE13]

I tried with this one early on. I was pretty salty about the Epic deal, but it came to GamePass for PC not long after and I grabbed it then. Gave it a shot, but it just didn't grab me. And I have over 2000 hours in both Enemy Unknown and XCom 2, so I kind feel like I was their target demo on this one. Still, seeing all the additions that weren't there when I played makes me curious to give it another go, for sure. Thanks for the video. I'll consider replaying this one and give it another go.

[@matthewsammut2881]

Well done for the summary . I only played PP early last year with dlcs and really enjoying it so far feels like the natural successor to war of the chosen ( didn't like chimera squad). I love how the Pandora virus is constantly one step ahead of you and every battle is a tricky challenging one. No OP soldiers on this one.

[@gigabake]

As a supporter of the original Fig campaign and fairweather apologist, I'm impressed at this summary. Gollop is in some ways like the other auteur game devs of his era; less bombastic or absurd than Molyneux, but still tied to a pattern of lofty ambition and shaky landings. I'm quite happy with how Phoenix Point turned out. It's weird as hell in ways you don't expect, and it still has its issues... but it's doing things that no other game of its type is really doing. I hope other devs in the genre are paying attention. Anyway. Great vid. Subscribed.

[@doogong]

I love the song! Very clever lyrics

[@fukuoka-musician]

I enjoyed your calm, analytical approach to reviewing this game. +1 subscriber.

[@g.r.4372]

I just enjoy all of them. As a XCOM fan I'm just grateful we have OXC keeping the OGs fresh three decades later, Firaxiscom, Phoenix Point and Xenonauts, not to mention all other titles fitting in the specific tactical-rpg subgenre inspired by XCOM that I got introduced to via XCOM 2 in 2018. Heck, I'm happy we even got a Mario/Rabbids crossover, out of all things, two games no less. Now we XCOM dads (well, future xcom dad I guess) can initiate our younglings in a kinda nightmare-free setting, plus it's a pretty good game itself. To think there's even a Persona 5 XCOM-like now on my back catalog...

[@tommysedin]

I was an early supporter (got in before they announced the Epic exclusive). Forgot all about it until well after the Steam release. Played about an hour, but there was just something that felt terribly off - I didn't even finish the first mission. Maybe I should give it another go, if nothing else to see if I can figure out what felt so wrong..

[@PartisanGamerDE]

"Remember Phoenix Point?" ... no.

[@Shauddi]

Great review/reintroduction. Earned a sub, and I'll give Phoenix Point another try at some point based off this review!

[@Bruiserjoe]

Whenever you upload I always watch it immediately

[@Rycluse]

[@shadowofhawk55]

My biggest issues with playing Pheonix point is A) Capping the number of soldiers I can bring into a fire fight and B) the enemy being able to do bullshit with snub pistols. A) to me is the most glaring, since I have invested all these resources into soldiers and gunships, why am I limited to X amount a mission? Realistically, defending a Haven should allow me to deploy ten soldiers and an APC if I have the transportation capacity for it. but it doesn't. And then the pistol thing, is just infuriating. most of the soldiers I have lost in the game was due to some freller on the opposite end of the map, plinking them away with a pistol seemingly with auto aim as even Heavy Cover wasn't protecting my guy. But when I empy a rifle or a shotgun into said person they just walk it off.

[@shikniwho7215]

and also, defending Haven should also let you set up your unit instead of put them so damn far away, one thing if the enemy can enter the base from various locations, otherwise, why did your soldiers spread so thin? is the base has zero radar or warning system so your unit can response to enemy attack in time?

[@shadowofhawk55]

@@shikniwho7215 I never got my bases attacked, I was talking about the cities.

[@AbyssalManta]

You didn't mention how ludicrously imbalanced this game was at launch (don't know if they fixed it, never came back). For the first tier of enemies (the humanoid crab and frog things), you have this vehicle that can ONE SHOT ANYTHING WITH PERFECT ACCURACY ANYWHERE ON THE MAP. It made your soldiers completely irrelevant while trivializing the entire freaking early game. Just as you're struggling to keep your eyes open... you meet the second tier behemoth sized monstrosities. Their armor absorbs your god finger vehicle launched ICBMs like it's a bee sting. One of them would have been a boss encounter, as you said... and then you realize the game expects you to fight 4 or 5 of these TOGETHER. Like. Calling it "imbalance" doesn't do it justice. The game might as well just start playing "Never Gonna Give you Up" at this point.

[@Sparten7F4]

To me that just sounds like 'Hah, you relied on the noob crutch too hard. Punishment time!" syndrome.

[@Leiska86]

The vehicle has enough ammunition for like four salvos. It was never that great. Vehicles have been and still are kind of ass in PP and can't make up for the lost soldier slots on a transport.

[@justinpeter6814]

You won me with the campy song 4 minutes in. Take my like, you’ve earned it.

[@shaunkhing]

Timely video - I've been getting back into PP recently. I bought it a couple of years ago on steam I think, played the intro and put it away. But recently I thought I'd give it another chance. And I agree with pretty much all your points. I also have very fond memories of UFO defence, and I can clearly chart that evolution between that game and PP. I also agree that it's definitely a game that struggles to reconcile internal conflicts within its own systems. It's at the same time opaque, while trying to be super clear. It's trying to reduce RNG but then building it into more subtle things. The worst part of it though is that it lacks personality. The animations, the tilesets, the armour and vehicle designs just feel kind of generic. Maybe that's just me but I can't immerse myself in its world, it just feels like a bunch of mechanics meshing into a game. I still enjoy it, but it's not as satisfying as UFO.

[@paulhutchins2699]

My error when first playing was to run all of the DLC at once, far too much to get to grips with. Having started again with reduced DLC, I found it easier to get in to . Still not as good as Xcom 2 WOTC though - I love that game

[@darth_dan8886]

Honestly I believe Phoenix Point has been the next step in the (formerly) Xcom formula. The visual precision aiming with body part weakness systems, the horizontal progression - I'm rather certain that the game devs in the genre will pick up on the reception of these particular aspects, even if the game itself didn't quite "make it".

[@dj11o9er]

Tbh i heard that the devs behind PP were original XCOM devs. Not the 2K XCOM or whatever, but the oldie one.

[@TheMagicalArden]

@@dj11o9er Yep. Lead dev is OG Xcom game dev.

[@Ninjat126]

I'm only a few hours into Phoenix Point but the basic tactical movement & combat feels really nice. Being given a visual representation of weapon spread rather than just a number and a percentage really helps tie the whole experience together- makes the game world & gunplay feel a lot more real & physical. Reminds me of playing Infinity or Necromunda on the tabletop, crouching down to draw lines of fire between your dudes. I'm pretty sure that aim system directly led to another gameplay element I dislike, though- everything's a bullet sponge, and it's particularly notable with human enemies and your soldiers. Realistically, it's basically impossible for your soldiers to not hit a human target when they're within 10m and firing an automatic rifle. I think human enemies have had their health set with this in mind, because you can unload a dozen rifle rounds into a guy's head point-blank and he'll react like you just hit him with a football. It doesn't help that (for animation clarity) enemies play their flinch animations a fraction of a second AFTER the attacker's firing animation finishes.

[@darth_dan8886]

@@Ninjat126 The animations do play into it a lot. I've had situations when I had to wait for a particular frame in an enemy's idle animation to expose a weakspot for a sniper shot, for example. I don't believe that should really happen... Also, can't exactly agree with the HUMAN enemies being all that tanky at all, tbh. In fact, I find them the easiest to kill - but they also have the best burst damage potential. Some later game mutants, tho... They almost all get significant amounts of armour and taking one down by just one person becomes damn near impossible.

[@ameryaser3987]

"What is that phoenix doing." "I think it's pointing"

[@mochithepooh5368]

I played the game once and it was....really confusing for new player. The realistic LoS and manual aiming turns the game into like crawling sim, "oh yeah you can see the enemy from here, oops it's only their hand". Oh did you know that you need 2 hands to use a rifle, making snipers really dangerous because they can one tap the arms, essentially making that soldier useless? Also enemy have idle animation which can give you a better shot because they expose more of their body if you just wait...it was really weird.

[@chadcornish5819]

Had to stop the video when you broke out into song.

[@senecauk8363]

So I did something kinda stupid. My first dabble with turn based games like this was Gears Tactics, which I loved. I started looking into other options and eventually started Phoenix Point, with a load of the DLC activated as I didnt want to miss out on content. Little did I know this DLC was adding brutal mechanics like corruption, as well as horrible new enemy types (I'm looking at you Acheron- I genuinely think they look grotesque and bug-like). I did okay at the tactical stuff, but the strategic layer is bewildering. Ended up bouncing off pretty hard and am now getting my turnbased-but-with-something-more-welcoming-on-top from Wasteland 3 :)

[@hombreg1]

Wasteland 3 is an amazing game though. You did good

[@senecauk8363]

@@hombreg1 yeah, totally loving the density of the world and the simple yet rewarding combat :)

[@wofuljac]

Love your fast humor through out the review lol.

[@countravicchio1050]

i had played PP at steam launch and about 2 months ago and I thought I had missed something or had gone crazy. it feels good to know I wasn't alone in this feeling

[@MKB07]

I gave it a try expecting big things and after 8 hours it just wasn't fun at any point for me. It looked so interesting yet felt so unsatisfying, so I gave up on it and just moded xcom2 wotc with 300 mods and had more fun.

[@hannabelphaege3774]

This game is so close to good. Some of the innovations feel like an obvious step in the right direction but the execution is way off. I had a guy on a roof whose shots were blocked by a little metal handrail, which obvoiously provided no cover to him. The high mortality also ruins the tension, weirdly. There's almost no point in continuing if you lose a guy in the early to mid game, so that feeling of living with mistakes or bad luck is gone. I don't find difficulty apealing, so the fact that PP added a ton of difficulty for no extra satisfaction is pretty shit. Some of the innovations are great and I really hope they catch on, plus the writing is very good (Synnedrion's "let's get along with the monsters" spiel would be joke in any other game) but it's an awkward middle evolution. It's the Croconaw of XComalikes

[@f1b0nacc1sequence7]

Your "Ground Mission Song" was brilliant! You managed to make me laugh at the end of a very, very difficult day. Thanks dude!

[@HueyTheDoctor]

What an excellent video. I saw this game was on GamePass, I loved Xcom so wanted to see if this compares at all, your video was so much more than I was expecting. I'm downloading the game now.

[@dracul74]

I have installed and uninstalled this game several times in the last year, lol. Very love and hate. I see the problems as 1) you really need to save scum at the beginning... a good start (not losing any one) makes a big difference 2) some of the mechanics need to be reworked or better (the number of times overwatch works incorrectly, etc.) 3) bringing rookie troopers on needs to be less costly. You have probably checked it out but if not Age of Wonders Planetfall is pretty good.

[@MsRiqueman]

Uninstalled Age of Wonders after i saw that robot prostitutes were a unit, I mean, wtf were they thinking. The whole game was weird and i cringed a lot. Agree about PP, I feel the same way, its one of those games that are great in some areas, but some stuff is just too hard to ignore.

[@jakeboston1]

When i saw this game years back, I thought of a Cthulu themed Xcom. I was so hyped. I then saw some of the armor and weapons, and thought mass effect for some reason. Got even more hyped. They talked about how the accuracy is way bettter, and you wont have a 98% hit chance, at point blank, and miss, 95% of the time. again i was hyped. When it came out, i played it, dying on the hill that it stood on with it. I FORCED myself to enjoy it. I eventually gave up and burnt out, never came back.

[@foobarbazbaa5598]

Replayed it recently and loved it. Hit much closer for me than everything that came out of Firaxis since XCom.

[@oliverallen5324]

Great Video Essay. Looking forward to more content; Subscribed.

[@scifiguy3214]

I tried it on Xbox but found it had no option in settings to adjust its aspect ratio, and since on the main map after the tutorial all of the currency’s or resources (I could never tell what they were) were more than half out of screen, I gave up and returned to other games. If they’ve addressed this I’d give it another go.

[@lord6617]

The epic deal murdered this game for me. I totally peaced out at that point and never came back to it. It was like Monster Hunter for me - Big hype, came out sony exclusive for almost a year before it moved to PC, and at that point I was checked out.

[@akenzokuinthewild6396]

Do you mean nintendo exclusive?

[@lord6617]

@@akenzokuinthewild6396 console exclusive. It wasn't on PC.

[@akenzokuinthewild6396]

@@lord6617 yeah, I get what you mean, just correcting you for no good reason, sorry about that

[@diondavis6547]

Jumped back in over the weekend and had a great time. All of the updates have really given a lot more depth to the game. It's been tough, I'm trying to stay friendly to all of the factions so I can get some of their tech but hard to keep my soldiers alive and rescue cities. Overall I hope a lot of folks give this game a try it in a great state and I'm glad I was able to get in early on, I def learned a lot.

[@theuglynovember]

came for a post review review of pheonix point, staying indefinitely or the hilarious song. Subbed

[@jesuscoutofandino6280]

You are going to make me check again.... and probably get disappointed again. I backed it. I got it when it came out in Epic, didnt care about the whole controversy. I played it... it was a PAIN. Missions were either incredibly long and boring or absolutely one-sided affairs in which my very limited troops were DOA because some artillery thing from the other border of the map hit them and they are now all without arms. And the DLC didnt seem to make anything better, just hey, you found all that hard, let me give you an even HARDER mission. I understood quickly that they wanted to keep the feeling of early XCOM - you are fighting with pitiful weapons and armor against something much much superior - for the whole game, but that was precisely the opposite of what I wanted - I wanted to endure my months in hell til I got to arm my guys for a decent fight. But no, that is not this game; get all the upgrades and you are still screwed, fighting stuff that has enough armor to stop a nuke and can insta-kill you or at the very least maim you which is the same.

[@DinnerForkTongue]

"I understood quickly that they wanted to keep the feeling of early XCOM - you are fighting with pitiful weapons and armor against something much much superior - for the whole game, but that was precisely the opposite of what I wanted" Naturally. The biggest draw of XCOM is catching up with the enemies's tech and eventually surpassing it.

[@AlissahKat]

I'm just so in love with the way bullets work in phoenix point. That's the main thing I miss when I go back to a game like xcom 2 now. The fact that your units can equip riot shields, and the shield actually physically blocks bullets with its own health + armor pool, is so much cooler than a flat "defense" boost like you would get in xcom-like games. It also adds way more strategy to how you place your shield guys. Also, they don't even have to deploy the shield. If it's in their inventory, the shield is on their back, and still fully functional in protecting them from getting shot in the back. The bullets being "real" also makes the way you think about cover way different, which is just really refreshing when you're so used to cover being a 20/40% defense boost. A lot of the times, you can also do the "free aiming" with no enemy in sight, and shoot a window or wall, so you can get another soldier to actually hit the enemy, which is really cool. I always felt like that was missing from xcom 2, especially considering walls break so easily in that game. Yeah, it does have a lot of flaws, obviously, but for me, I'd say it's still definitely worth it. I'm also used to playing extremely difficult games where you have to "die until you learn how not to die" though.

[@IEEEE50]

i recommend playing the original game it has the same simulated bullets and a 30 year old modding community

[@hilo5322]

thank you. thru your video I heard of xcom and Xenonauts for the first time in my live. Now i can't stop playing both of the games. thanks for mentioning those games

[@docmnc8010]

Been playing phoenix point over the last few weeks and it's been my favourite of the games I've played in this style so far

[@vgalis]

I remember my very first playthrough of UFO defense. On the very first turn of the very first mission, an alien tossed a grenade into my landing craft and soldiers who hadn't had a chance to spread out enough, instantly one-shotting my whole team and also costing me the landing craft itself.

[@angelic8632002]

Honestly, my hope is that this doesn't turn out to be a one off, and they make a sequel, having learned a lot from all the landmines they walked on. It has the right idea in my opinion. Its just the execution that was messy and the last two dlc's didn't help...

[@Eumelmann]

Subbed for the singing bit, quality comedy!

[@TheDarkPrince1553]

Your channel is of such high quality, why don't you have 100k subs yet? Definitely liking and sharing this around for my Video Game Analysis group of friends.

[@Rycluse]

Cause it's an oversaturated sector of youtube I'd wager, not that that stops me. Thanks for sharing!

[@thewalkingcrow8946]

I was one of the higher tier backers and played it through every iteration until release. It's biggest problem is you are punished for experimentation as what you've been doing works and then suddenly it doesn't. There are certain builds that are just utterly broken, capable of wiping the board entirely on the first turn (aka Terminator builds), and then there's the other ones (like the Synedrion Cena build, "Can't See Me"). But once you figure out how the economy works, like what faction to buy what from and what faction to sell to, it becomes trivial and a lot of needless button clicking. It's entirely possible to just ignore the factions and win the game. The biggest killer is how long a freaking turn takes. They can't speed up the animation because of the game engine and cover doesn't work like Xcom remake's cover. If a bullet finds a hole it hits you and vice versa. Because of this a simple smash and grab with zero risk to your OP soldiers can take 30 minutes to an hour with minimal resource gains from it. Nevermind the fact that the stories published with the hype train are literally from where I live and it was kind of awkward. I sent Stroud some messages on better places to use and at first he seemed interested in updating the literature to match reality, but after the Epic thing it became clear they were just going to milk people for their creative inputs. Then they promised me creatures that weren't saltwater based, like an alligator, but they failed to do anything beyond crab and jellyfish people and I guess the spiders even though they aren't very spidery. Sirens aren't very inspiring enemies, either. At first they were OP as shit, because you had ZERO defense against them and just one could squad wipe you. Now you just shoot them in the head and they are kind of useless.

[@davetaylor2088]

Been playing this for a few months and love it. It's challenging (sometimes extremely so) and very sophisticated. I recommend it if you like this style of game. I haven't quite had the courage to load up the festering skies dlc yet but I am watching Perun play through the FS dlc to get a grip on how it works (kzbin.info/www/bejne/nWO5dayBodGmnZI).

[@mountainmgtow5421]

That ragtime song totally made me sub. Hahahaha! Thank you!

[@DrGaryGreen]

I was in my last year of Chiropractic school when XCom cam out. Loved it. I totally get what you're saying.

[@CallyMayz]

I haven't played it but it sounds like a painful experience, I'm personally not a big fan of how important the Firaxis games try to make your dudes and how big of a setback losing several high tier soldiers can be. But at least gear upgrades let rookies stay at least slightly competitive. Late game is a rookie just near complete dead weight in this?

[@shadowofhawk55]

From playing myself, the replacement of dead guys isn't as big a deal. The biggest issue was economy and equipping, at least when I played. I could easily fly around and get a full squad, but outfitting them with gear and equipment, as well as getting enough food, was where the real challenge was. My biggest issue was it definitely felt like the soldiers weren't supposed to be heroes, but just soldiers. But I could only bring a certain number per mission, not due to transportation limits but to hard locks set by the game. I could have five transports loaded with boys and girls and trucks, but the game would say "Only six points of soldiers can go on the mission and most of that is taken up by your APC" purely for game balance, that just made the fighting tedious instead of fun.

[@ironraccoon3536]

Ok, I want to actually give feedback in this random comment, but I can't really pin down how this video makes me feel. I guess the best way I can describe it is "perfectly cromulent", but unromantic? It's a good video, but it's just an odd atmosphere. I dunno, but I congratulate you Rycluse, because this video gives me a feeling I don't think I've really gotten before from a KZbin video. Also, I now want to play Phoenix Point. Too bad X-Com Files is eating all my time.

[@BallisticAviation]

Subbed just for the raw musical talent. The game review is also good.

[@g80gzt]

Phoenix Point had a strength of the aim circle. Shotgun point blank? gigantic enemy crab? no chance you can miss if you're close enough. You just need to hit the soft spots.

[@the_dropbear4392]

Wow I had literally forgotten this game existed. News of the epic deal made it fall of my radar.

[@DantezMaritu]

I don't know. I have tried PP (haha, peepee) several times. It just didn't click. I love my XCOM style games to be generally grounded. Hence why I enjoyed Enemy Unknown and Xenonauts the most. EU and Xenonauts is modernized XCOM with a very grounded campaign. You are a bunch of soldiers that try to shoot aliens and save humanity by strategic tactical operations. You use standard guns and use alien weaponry to get bigger bang. Moving onwards all the way to Phoenix Point, these games just turned more and more fantasy. This allows for more complexity, sure. But I just don't like the setting and the gameplay that it creates. Whether it is anime style sword dudes nothing personnelling alien kids, or playing MtG in a crab infested world. That is just me though. I am boring like that.

[@alexanderdejorge8524]

I'm subscribing just in the hope that there'll be more songs, ha!

[@Sillybutts]

4:00 Fantastic lol! This kind of stuff is why I'm subscribing now!

[@diondavis6547]

I've been playing since the beta, it's a fun game with a lot depth. My problem is that all of the updates and expansions require you to start from scratch. These games require a lot of time so I'm waiting for one big update to start over again. I've dropped close to 100 hours on the game. Will go back sometime soon.

[@PhoenixPointGame]

Just to clarify, none of our current/future free content updates require a game restart (not since 2020, and our apologies for the inconveniences there), but obviously, to enable new content into your campaign, a restart is required. Hope that helps!

[@diondavis6547]

@@PhoenixPointGame No worries!! I totally understand. it was something I was not used to. For me it takes a while to get through the game and then another awesome expansion pops up so I have to restart. Overall it been worth it, I've just been taking it a bit slower to get as much of the full experience as I can. The game is fantastic and I have really enjoyed playing since the beta. The amount of content and work put into the game shows how committed you guys are to making a great product. I will def keep diving back in and I def keep recommending it to my friends.

[@ZoZo-fh6tq]

No I dont

[@Rycluse]

Welcome to the intended audience

[@constantinvasiliev2065]

Thanks. I was on the fence with this one.

[@SirDawkinsthemad]

This actually really made me want to play this game. I was always vaguely aware of the games existence but for it never really stood out, and despite the issues you pointed out it sounds like it could be good.

[@threehundredblackout]

never heard about this shit EVER

[@indonesiareborn4068]

good for you, i pirated the game, and still feel robbed because the game is literally poor man Xcom 2

[@zombiepete]

I think a non-trivial issue with Phoenix Point is the audio design. None of the guns sound particularly punchy, and there's basically zero soundtrack to speak of. The Firaxis XCOM games sound like you're playing Halo, even when you're sitting there tabbing between your soldiers trying to figure out your next move. I genuinely think with better audio design I would have played the game for significantly longer.

[@Ulmaramlu]

The song got you a like from me. Great job!

[@redscience2117]

Seems like "Straight up cannon fodder" completed his role in life. What a trooper.