Feedback on Phoenix Point as a XCOM Veteran

Alright, I just finished my first playthrough of Phoenix Point and I thought I’d make a feedback on the game and its game mechanics.
First I want to say that I backed this game more than a year ago, I was disappointed by the Epic exclusive but I stick around because the game looked promising and I can’t get enough of XCOM like games (I finished both XCOM and XCOM2 in legendary Iron Man several time and I think XCOM2 is the game I’ve played the most on Steam). So this was my first playthrough of the one year edition of the game. This might get a bit long so get yourself a tea, coffee or whatever beverage suits you and let’s go !

  1. What I enjoyed
  • Real balistic model. It is much less infuriating than the bullshit statistical model of modern XCOM (seeing your soldier shove his rifle IN the alien face and finally decides than, no, he’d rather shoot the wall behind is bullshit).
  • Factions. Even if they are a bit stereotypical they are great.
  • Vehicles. I wanted them so bad in XCOM, it’s a great addition.
  • Enemy design. Lovecraftian and disgusting. I love it.
  • Damaging body parts. Sometimes killing is not the best option.
  1. What I didn’t enjoy
  • Base system. There’s no room to specialization or customization. I expected a base named “PHB-R&D” to have a bonus in research, one with “aeronautics” in its name to have a bonus when crafting planes and so on. But no. All my bases are Medbay, Crew quarter, Mist repeller, satellite uplink and sometime R&D, manufacture and archeology lab
  • The manufacturing system. While I enjoyed managing the ammo of my soldiers (and even once scavenging a rifle on a corpse to continue the fight) having them automatically replenished and teleported in their inventory feels weird. Just make a manufacturing queue for each manufacturing center and deal with storage separately for each base and maybe had a convoy system to send ressource from one base to another. I think I saw this idea in another thread and I completely agree.
  • Enemy variety. It feels like I am facing the same 5 or 6 enemies with skin swap. I know they have different abilities but it is not significant enough to adapt my strategy accordingly. But it is also linked to the next point.
  • Class balance. Marksman, Heavy and Infiltrator are so overpowered I didn’t play with anything else. Marked for death is ridiculously OP, I OS the final boss with a pistol shot dealing 12K damage. On the other hand, mind control is so expensive that Anu Priest are not worth investing in and Berzeker are plain garbage.
  • Research and weapon development. I expected different tier of armor and weapons but the research tree as it is is disappointing. For example you first get the Mercy shotgun and then the Slamstrike who deals less damage and has less ammo. What’s the point ? I know about the shock damage but it doesn’t feel worth the investment. I also expected the Phoenix Point research to allow for hybrid technologies between the different factions like a laser gatling (synedrion jericho), piercing and shredding shotgun (anu jericho) and why not the same with vehicles like arming an Armadillo with Phoenix Point rocket launcher, having a medbay in the scarab tank. Same with aircraft. There’s room for personalization but it is lacking from the game. And some tech are absolutely useless. Honestly, who used the riot shield ?
  • Virus and paralysis. There is no counter to these before very late in the game. Medkit should get you rid of virus and paralysis but no you have to wait X turn to make your soldier available again. I mean I had a few missions where I had to wait 10 to 20 turns doing nothing but passing turns for my soldier to be able to move again and evacuate. How fun is that ? The answer is : it is not. Or give an option for other soldiers to help their comrade like giving them motivation, or carrying them when they are paralyzed because right now they are like “oh no Bob is paralyzed… Well, shame I can’t help him in any way”. Or make the virus stack and disappear in the same turn, like you stack X virus on an enemy, at the beginning of its turn it drains X willpower and the virus is gone.
  • Mission variety. By the endgame it becomes defend haven -> destroy nest and that’s it. It is not interesting. I would have enjoy a way to solve these fights automatically like Haven defense when you don’t intervene. Send a troop in a nest and based on soldiers level make it succeed or fail.
  • Damaging body parts. I like it but at the same time it feels meaningless excepct for arms and legs. Reduced accuracy for “losing” your head and reduced max HP for losing torso would be nice. Or make it harder to heal between fights.
  • Insta death. Your soldier reach 0 HP it dies. I would like them to have a chance to survive and being stabilized like in modern XCOM.
  • Vehicle ramming. How come my 4 tons heavy armored Armadillo can’t just run over a poison worm ?
  • Unit position at the start of missions. Is there really no way to choose where your units start the mission ? I had a Phoenix base defense with a vehicle stuck in an inaccessible space of the base. The only access was for a heavy with a jet pack or with jet jump bionic legs and that wouldn’t have been my choice I must say. And I had the same issue with a mindfragger spawning in the same kind of inaccessible area. If I hadn’t bring a heavy, I would have been stuck forever.
  • Final mission. Without spoiling, the final mission is not interesting.
  1. DLCs
  • Titanium and Blood : I am mixed on this one, I like the bionic augment system (except the heavy torso that won’t allow you to equip mounted weapon and the shield isn’t useful enough to justify the tradeoff) but the Pure sidequest feels unfinished… I was expecting a whole new faction when they asked for help but instead you end up with a new threat that looks like Jericho and that’s about it. As for the forsaken it’s the same gimmick with mutation and Anu faction
  • Ancient Knowledge : About same as above, I like the Ancient weapons, the assault and defense on exploitation sites and all. But I don’t like the fact that it costs so much ressource and you can’t craft these weapons without the right manufacturing place. I understand the point of it but it’s lacking something, I mean, I finished my playthrough without finding the last manufacturing site so I couldn’t craft the Ancient sniper. That is how hard these place are to find. Besides, you can’t craft the weapons without the right manufacturing site but you can assemble a cyclop ? Also I would have make the Cyclop a Vehicle to accompagny your troops on the field and maybe design a new ancient airship to make it worth it. It could have been great but not so much as it is.
  • Living Weapons : The armor is nice, the assault rifle is ok I guess and the heavy weapon was too inaccurate for my taste. It is a poisonous Deceptor with a fancy skin. Why can’t we retreive the research of the mad scientist and craft them using captured pandorians ?

Overall I enjoyed the game but not enough to replay it over and over again like I did and still do with XCOM2. There is a lot of room for enhancement. As it is now, it has a lot of potential but feels unfinished. I’ll wait for the rest of the DLC to be released before giving it another try but I have very little hopes given the ones currently out. I hope the devs are going to take our feedback into account to improve the game one way or another.

13 Likes

Eh … how did you get to 12.000 hp damage with a pistol?
I need to learn some tricks.

1 Like

My team was composed of 9 soldiers all marksman and another class with maxed stats. Rank 7 you unlock marked for death which you can stack and the soldier with the pistol was a infiltrator who double damage while stealth. So I stacked a bunch of Marked for Death (like 10-12) on the boss and pew he was dead. That’s also how I deal with Scylla in general. And why I think marksman is the best class of the game.

6 Likes

it is a known bug:

2 Likes

For brevity, can you give the TOP-3 of Love and Hate? Or whatever you want.

3 Likes

Don’t rely on this bug after future updates. Sometimes, it’s counter-productive to exploit such bugs. When the time comes that they are gone, one may not have the skill to accomplish a mission without the bug.

4 Likes

Completely agreed, but I do find starting on different continent, having variety of paths to take in alliances and raiding, having different ends … appealing to play again. However, yes, I agree on most of remarks, that it gets dull towards the end, that enemy variety needs improvement (that is so far promised) and that new races are not exploited enough :slight_smile: As well as on some mechanics. But also on in game potential.

2 Likes

I wasn’t aware it was a bug ! Thanks for the heads up. That could motivate me to try different strategy in a new game… :slight_smile:

1 Like

Top 3 love

  1. Vehicles
  2. Real Balistic
  3. Enemy design

Top 3 hate

  1. Virus/paralysis
  2. R&D - Weapon/Armor tier
  3. Class balance

Hope this helps

6 Likes

I wasn’t aware it was a bug. Thanks for the heads up :slight_smile:

1 Like

It was stacking before, it was fixed, now its back with 1.9 or so … so maybe 2.0. will fix it back. It was supposed to be red mark of death and one per enemy unit (once marked no more, but your snipers can mark other targets).

1 Like

Shield is useful against weapons with virus and paralysis because they deal very little real damage. But I didn’t like how some fancy armor (like priest’s one) can have its decorative elements as parts of real body and they protrude from behind the shield.

1 Like

This was the inspiration for Devs themselves at the beginning of development:
EGX Rezzed 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYI6vZ_wjGc
Phoenix Point Backer Build 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IfUE2ZQWQg

These are, at the moment, just a few of the many reasons for the screams of pain from the Community on the Forum and Canny.
__
Imho: Despite the identical start, Devs and Community have different Outcomes.

1 Like

I’ve always specialized my bases. The first one is always the one to get 2 of each lab and fab + the alien containment and I usually destroy the satellite + access lift. It’s the general all-purpose base. If I don’t bother with Synedrion tech then it still works within the the 20 power limit. Moving on though, the second one usually is an “R&D” base that houses most of my fabs/labs. The third is always a training base that has mostly Training Centers and a lab or two. The 4th tends to be an “outpost” base, that gets multiple med bays and living quarters and usually is in Greenland or the Middle East to bridge my early 3 bases on one continent to the rest for recuperation purposes without the need for extra personnel stationed there or the need to fly to the other side of the world.

Anything beyond 4 bases tend to be highly specific and relative to whoever my favored faction is. If New Jericho, I’ll be using satellites for their bonus. If Synedrion, I won’t even bother with Satellites and instead just build Mist Repellers near clusters of Synedrion havens, or Anu will build a farm/mutation base.

The UI, sound, visuals seem so much nicer in those videos. I don’t understand why it changed so much. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

3 Likes

Well i waited a year when i pre order the game and end in complete disappointment when i played the first couple of times, then update after update, thanks to feedback the game utterly improved but still not enough to be replayable as xcom2, i mean modded xcom2 because i never played the vanilla more than 4 times i think. About the ramming option, there was in becker build the skill to ram over enemies with the armadillo maybe to much abuse from youtubers make the devs reconsider the skill and remove it from the game.

“Behemoth detected” @ 6:45 of the EGX presentation! And look at that cool mutated terrain, and the search lights! Hopefully all this stuff makes it back in.

Lots of people agree that the game drags for the last 20%. Based on past additions (such as the melee torso in B&T) I will guess that the holes in the game will be plugged later, but for now it is incomplete.

3 Likes

Unfortunately all three DLC’s give only “optional” side content, so far. So, as long as this stays and go on for future DLC’s all the “holes” pretty much will stay.

2 Likes

I played the backer build so I know what it looked like and I find the UI more appealing than the current version.

For base specialization I guess that could be a challenge to specialize them but I rather have it an intended game mechanic. And specializing depending on your favored faction also sound great but in the couple runs I played in the current version, I always end up maxing diplomacy with all 3 factions at the same time because you win reputation for every nest you destroy. Even after stealing 5 aircrafts to NJ I was still at max rep with them…

1 Like

For me personally, the genius of PP, in contrast to the mass / casual FiraCom, lies in the re-release of the “UFO System”: TU, Ballistics, Inventory (+ close to reality). If this System of Three is in Perfect Balance, then this is 60% Success for me. (current game rating is 70%)

3 Likes

Well I agree with you,m TU system, Ballistics (but not first person) and Inventory is what the game does good.

To bad the rest isn’t.