Finished my first campaign!

Phoenix Point
1

Wow - just wow. I hit nearly 100 hours for my first ever campaign and thoroughly enjoyed the whole ride (though apparently the total campaign time was only 15 hrs, based on my ending screen stats).

I love Xcom2 but always struggled with trying to finish a campaign (countless restarts) but I was able to push through with PP.

Yes I save scummed here and there, but also allowed max level soldiers to die when it was due to poor mistakes on my end (sorry soldiers).

What I really enjoyed:

  1. Free aim and ballistics - this is so good and satisfying to use. And with the 4 AP system, you can pull off some wonderful moves. Really wish more games would consider this (at least the 4AP concept) rather than the big standard 2move a la Xcom2.

  2. Multi squads and multiclassing - this is probably the reason why I was able to keep at it. Different squad groups plus sidegrades rather than pure upgrades meant that I didn’t really have an A Team doing the whole run. I ended up with very diverse teams for specific setups. Majority of my units wore Phoenix armor to the end, mixed with plenty of augments.

I didn’t finish experimenting possible combos either.

My favorite team is a 3-soldier combo with Scarab. Scarab plus a heavy focus on bombarding while a sniper cleans up, and a melee just runs around killing everything else. So good.

  1. Vehicles - oh man I really really love vehicles! I used Mutogs a lot initially since I enjoyed chaining the melee kills, but them being prone to mind control later on made it a lot harder to work with.

I managed to use Aspida only twice - once for a LotA mission and it literally saved my ass since I had no idea of the high damage the ancients could dish put, so the full heals greatly helped.

The second time I used was for a citidel mission and it died fairly quickly when the arthrons decided to gang on it, but it saved the day by blocking the short route to me (and a mind-controlled fireworm to block the only free time).

The Scarab and Armadillo are very solid picks - every squad had one or the other vehicle, plus two spares to switch out when the ones in aircrafts need repairs.

  1. The geoscape - Fantastic implementation and really gave me the feeling of unifying the rag tag bands to save the world (when I’m not busy raiding them).

Things that could be improved:

  1. More geoscape time - honestly I think there are too many battles (or at least, the expectation of battles even though you don’t have to fight eg saving havens). We need more stuff to do in geoscape instead. LotA’s resource generation (ie aircraft stay on forge) is a step in the right direction and things like being able to station soldiers in key havens to boost their defensive rating (so you can skip battling), make trade routes, etc. The geoscape is just dripping with metagame potential.

  2. LotA - I only did one mission and felt abit let down. Enemies seem to be a bigger Arthron (ie Hoplites) and a less scary long ranged Scyalla (ie Cyclops) and the mission was just to kill them all rather than something more novel or interesting. I didn’t bother with more missions since I wanted to finish my campaign. Perhaps the weapons might be worth it but the map objective should at least be more interesting.

  3. Invincible environment objects - I save scum a lot due to being unsure if a wall/branch/object is going to be unbreakable or not. Might as well display object HP on mouse over in free aim so you can make better decisions.

  4. Poorly explained stuff - Umbras don’t spawn if you kill the host with fire. I never knew this until I read it on this forum somewhere and tested it myself! Acid eats armor and then only HP which means the combined acid total shown isn’t necessarily the HP damage which is different from poison damage. A lot of very cool mechanics not explained and I only know most of what I know from extensively reading the official wiki, which I actually don’t mind and enjoy doing. But I imagine this can be frustrating for the average player who just wants to play the game. The hint popups help and I think just need more of them everywhere

  5. Mod support - I know it’s a long shot but definitely this will boost PP longevity.

Really the above are minor gripes overall and didn’t detract from the overall wholesome experience. I’m happy to say PP knocked Xcom2 off the pedestal for me and I’m now onto my second campaign and on Legend.

Thanks for reading and a huge congrats to the Snapshot team for this marvellous game!

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Agreed, more exploration dependency / more interesting things to find, even game finalization dependent, less heaven defences (I mean in last part of game)

Agreed, enemies could be better used, worse then with e.g Pure fraction

Agreed, we dependent on Wikipedia :slight_smile:
Would love to see in game info richer.

official one is unlikely to happen, and even unofficial is broken now.

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Come to think of it, sidegrades really make it worthwhile to go on new campaigns because you’re not rushing for one obvious OP weapon, and the base PP weapons last a long time before being outclassed by some faction weapons.

There are so many clever decisions done but I know it’s not all obvious until you’ve gone through an extensive campaign or two.

Anyway I’m obviously fanboying lol but really looking forward to Festering Skies!

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