dbm
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- Aug 21, 2017
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So, as mentioned up-thread I decided to take a chance on Phoenix Point. I don’t personally have strong opinions on the Epic Store, so buying it from there was fine.
My machine is a Mac Mini 2018 with i7 and 16GB RAM. Out of the box it has Intel UHD 630 graphics card, which isn’t especially powerful, but does the basics fine. It would run XCOM: War of the Chosen quite comfortably. It struggled with Phoenix Point, running really slow even on the lowest graphics settings. I had already planned to get an eGPU for my Mini so this brought that forward on my schedule. It now has a Radeon RX 580 GTS XXX card in an external case... That did the trick, and now it runs as snappy as you like with high video settings! And it looks lovely... It is somewhat unstable on the Mac, however, crashing pretty much every time I quit the application, though it has only crashed mid-game once so far and that was some time ago, now.
So, putting the tech stuff to one side what is the game like, especially in comparison to XCOM2?
It really is a spiritual successor to the original UFO: Enemy Unknown, feeling more true to that legacy than the modern XCOM games from Firaxis, in my opinion. The game is much more nuanced, with more equipment options and an action point system which, while less granular than the original UFO, Laser Squad or Rebelstar is still more flexible than the move / attack system which is basically used in XCOM.
The basic premise of the game is the same as the other games - you command a paramilitary organisation with one or more bases and you fend off xeno threats to try to save human kind. The story is a little different here, with the threat coming from the sea and thought to be based on a virus(!) released from the arctic ice, mutating humans and other creatures into xenomorphs of different kinds.
A big difference to any of the previous games is that there are competing factions to interact with, here. So far I have met four of them, though only three are mentioned in the background, so who can say where there may be even more to come? It’s certainly possible that an additional faction was added as a DLC (currently three sets of DLC have been released and there are two more planned). Here is the big twist: each faction has unique tech and unique character classes. And you can trade, steal, research and recruit In relation to these factions. When you make contact with a base run by another faction you can trade with them and recruit people from their settlements. You can reverse engineer their technology, either acquired through a recruit or picked up from the battlefield... And you can raid their settlements, too, to steal assets or research. The factions have competing strategies, too, and you can choose to back one over another, and they may ask you to raid their competitors! There is a diplomacy system which tracks how the factions feel about you and each other; it’s still early days for me and I’m working out the implications of this.
One of the criticisms of the game is that the the enemy AI is not too hard. So far (playing on the standard ‘Veteran’ level) I would say it has been a mixed bag. The enemies haven’t been following highly complex strategies but they do use their powers, seek cover and do things like throwing grenades so I would say, at this point, that it is comparable to XCOM2. Perhaps not as difficult as XCOM2: WotC, but still tricky enough to be fun.
I would give it a solid 7 or 8 out of 10 at the moment and there is possibility to up that rating as I learn more about the game.
My machine is a Mac Mini 2018 with i7 and 16GB RAM. Out of the box it has Intel UHD 630 graphics card, which isn’t especially powerful, but does the basics fine. It would run XCOM: War of the Chosen quite comfortably. It struggled with Phoenix Point, running really slow even on the lowest graphics settings. I had already planned to get an eGPU for my Mini so this brought that forward on my schedule. It now has a Radeon RX 580 GTS XXX card in an external case... That did the trick, and now it runs as snappy as you like with high video settings! And it looks lovely... It is somewhat unstable on the Mac, however, crashing pretty much every time I quit the application, though it has only crashed mid-game once so far and that was some time ago, now.
So, putting the tech stuff to one side what is the game like, especially in comparison to XCOM2?
It really is a spiritual successor to the original UFO: Enemy Unknown, feeling more true to that legacy than the modern XCOM games from Firaxis, in my opinion. The game is much more nuanced, with more equipment options and an action point system which, while less granular than the original UFO, Laser Squad or Rebelstar is still more flexible than the move / attack system which is basically used in XCOM.
The basic premise of the game is the same as the other games - you command a paramilitary organisation with one or more bases and you fend off xeno threats to try to save human kind. The story is a little different here, with the threat coming from the sea and thought to be based on a virus(!) released from the arctic ice, mutating humans and other creatures into xenomorphs of different kinds.
A big difference to any of the previous games is that there are competing factions to interact with, here. So far I have met four of them, though only three are mentioned in the background, so who can say where there may be even more to come? It’s certainly possible that an additional faction was added as a DLC (currently three sets of DLC have been released and there are two more planned). Here is the big twist: each faction has unique tech and unique character classes. And you can trade, steal, research and recruit In relation to these factions. When you make contact with a base run by another faction you can trade with them and recruit people from their settlements. You can reverse engineer their technology, either acquired through a recruit or picked up from the battlefield... And you can raid their settlements, too, to steal assets or research. The factions have competing strategies, too, and you can choose to back one over another, and they may ask you to raid their competitors! There is a diplomacy system which tracks how the factions feel about you and each other; it’s still early days for me and I’m working out the implications of this.
One of the criticisms of the game is that the the enemy AI is not too hard. So far (playing on the standard ‘Veteran’ level) I would say it has been a mixed bag. The enemies haven’t been following highly complex strategies but they do use their powers, seek cover and do things like throwing grenades so I would say, at this point, that it is comparable to XCOM2. Perhaps not as difficult as XCOM2: WotC, but still tricky enough to be fun.
I would give it a solid 7 or 8 out of 10 at the moment and there is possibility to up that rating as I learn more about the game.