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XCOM 2 - Alien Hunters thoughts, prepare to get frustrated

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Update: When you start a new game, make sure you tick the box for the Alien Hunter expansion mission. This will give you the ability to delay it forever, and not have the vicious new aliens appear. If you don't tick it, they will appear whenever they please. A mission for a "Locator Beacon" will appear, do not do it and you will be happily playing as normal. I still do not recommend getting this DLC.

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So I've been playing through XCOM 2 again, but now with the Alien Hunters DLC enabled and my god it's frustrating.

To get this out of the way: I freaking love XCOM 2, I think it's an incredibly challenging game, that keeps me coming back for more. I like that it's challenging, I enjoy thinking up different strategies when I've failed numerous times.

This DLC however, ruins it for me.

The new "boss" aliens it introduces are horrifically overpowered, break the turn-based system since they get to move after what looks like every action you take and they can turn up anywhere.

The turn system being equal on both sides is one of the things that should have never been touched, it helps keep the balance of the game. Having an enemy that can weave in and out of every decision you make just makes all your possible plans pointless.

In my latest playthrough I was maybe four missions in, when you're still starting out and have bugger all gear and a boss Viper appeared. It slaughtered a few of my men and then escaped only to show up again in another mission shortly after and slaughtered another squad.

I'm going to be honest, I feel like these boss aliens were only put in to make the game noticeably harder without the developers truly thinking about their design or the balance of the overall game.

I have to say I have not been enjoying the DLC. This is all while playing it on Normal difficulty, so it's not even supposed to be this insanely hard.

XCOM 2 is great, this DLC is not. I will be turning this DLC off in my list and restarting my game, again. It appears a lot of the Steam user reviews completely agree with me on this too.

I hope in future they spend more time fixing the vast amount of bugs the game still has, and not on gimmick DLC like this. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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17 comments
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Liam Dawe Jun 23, 2016
For those interested from last nights livestream: https://www.twitch.tv/gamingonlinux/v/73926320

From 12:35 it shows me the first alien ruler without doing any special mission it is just there, also a very early mission where I have fuck all equipment.
immortel Jun 23, 2016
I find the reaction a good idea and put more challenge to the game what I dislike is, if I reload my gun, move or shoot at another target, I see no reason to have a reaction trigger. Just that would have been a lot better.
Mountain Man Jun 23, 2016
Quoting: TheRiddickPS. I played XCOM2 beforehand a bit to try it out, but it wasn't an official copy so I deleted it. It had bad fps on the Radeon open driver! (like 15fps with nasty stutter/freeze)
So you admit to playing a pirated copy, and then have the gall to complain about the performance?
Kimyrielle Jun 23, 2016
I am not sure why devs don't get that not all people want games to be insanely hard. And when even "Easy" is still anything but, something's wrong. "Easy" means "Don't challenge me, ever!!!", not "A little less frustrating".

A while back I got Remember Me because I liked the story and the fact that the game featured a strong female lead character for a change. I am not good at this sort of game, so I played it on Easy. All I wanted was to see the story. But no, I never really saw it. Like a third into the game, the bosses started to kick my butt so hard that I just couldn't beat them, not even on the easiest available setting. The game didn't have cheat codes either, so it went off my hard drive, because what's the point of a game you can't finish? I don't get the logic of frustrating players. If they set the difficulty to the lowest possible setting, it means a challenge is not what they are after.

I had no clue that XCOM is one of these games that love to frustrate players like that. It will get a kick from my wishlist.


Last edited by Kimyrielle on 23 June 2016 at 2:44 pm UTC
TheRiddick Jun 23, 2016
I got XCOM2 now and will say it runs pretty good with AMDGPU-PRO drivers, probably on par with what Liam was getting last night at 1440p (4k works ok also but bit too much screen tearing due to lowfps).

EDIT: After further testing, certain missions like retaliation ones have REAL low FPS even with everything turned off. Bizarre.


Last edited by TheRiddick on 24 June 2016 at 7:10 pm UTC
Liam Dawe Jun 24, 2016
We do not support piracy here, keep it out of our comments. This is the last word on it, further comments arguing that will be removed.

To quote our rules which are not up for debate:
QuotePiracy is not cool, we do not support it and don't want to hear/read about it. Keep it out of our comments. Support developers, buy their games, don't be a dick.
Liam Dawe Jun 28, 2016
Update: When you start a new game, make sure you tick the box for the Alien Hunter expansion mission. This will give you the ability to delay it forever, and not have the vicious new aliens appear. If you don't tick it, they will appear whenever they please. A mission for a "Locator Beacon" will appear, do not do it and you will be happily playing as normal.
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