I have to say this is a very individual statement as FiraXcom contains mods. I’ve already seen Youtubers who were bad, but could easily handle the game with overpowered mods (ultra super classes, etc.).
I personally beat XCOM 2 on Legend, but only after about 600-700h and then with loads after bad missions and all the known advantages (except mods). PP feels significantly easier to me AFTER one Playthrough (even with massive self restrictions), but not the FIRST TIME.
This is the most important aspect for this thread, we were discussing it in another one. It became very clear to me that the game is SO MUCH RNG DEPENDANT in the beginning that it’s what leads players to this.
The way you handle the first 2 weeks of the game is what shapes your entire campaign difficulty. Problem is, it’s totally RNG dependent. It depends on which factions start close to you, which start close to your first mist zone (so that you get haven defenses for them), and heavily into 2 things: how much resources you can amass in the beginning and how early do you get (and make good use of) a 2nd aircraft. This leads to the game being very difficult in the first playthrough in any difficulty.
In my opinion, in lower difficulties, the game should diminish the RNG factor. It should guarantee at least one haven of each faction near the player, and also at least one haven of each faction near the first mist near your first base. Also, that you get enough HD’s for reaching at least 25% with one faction, in the first couple of weeks. This opens up exploration. Load-time tips could be enough to help more, indicating that the player should invest in a second aircraft at the earliest, to be able to explore more.
Just give a second aircraft on EASY for free.
That’s also a good option. Maybe if we had recover aircraft missions that could be a thing, or we could get aircrafts at recovered bases.
I played this on the default difficulty. I also finished all 3 Xcoms at the games’ default difficulty level, with the original (allegedly) by this same designer as being the most fun. This phoenix point is the most tedious, most brutal of all the bunch. You are forced to defend all the havens because nobody else will lift a finger (more like the developer got lazy and didnt program an AI that would do it). Literally went through hundreds of fights, with most on identical maps but from a different direction. Tedious doesnt begin to describe it. The developer if he even played his own game from start to finish (and quite frankly should be mandatory for each major revision to test the gameplay aspect of it), would have realized a need to create an auto-battle feature that will assign a victory or failure and death/injury so that the player doesnt need to go through this many battles. It isnt that hard to make.
I noticed a lot of you mentioned playing this at the highest difficulty - some of you probably thought Long War was exactly the hardness Xcom 2 should be. And I would say you would be in the minority. Sadly not everyone is capable of playing at your level. For me this isnt supposed to be chore that I need to make every decision correctly because i do want to experiment around with different decision choices. Besides, it isnt even like there is a proper tutorial on how to fight properly for this game. Is every player supposed to finish xcom 1/2 before playing this one?
For the final mission, what should have happened was a strategic placement of caches of ammo and healing kits at certain intervals. Had the developer actually played this game he would have seen how obvious that was. Really, having a final boss that drains your soldiers of health between 50-100 for each soldier per turn FROM AFAR is supposed to be reasonable and fun??? I actually clicked on the Info on the creature and I think it was supposed to be drain health for soldiers within 5 tiles, not like this.
This game is just a sad implementation of some really good ideas that expand the genre, but unfortunately due to the malpractice approach he uses, it utterly fks the game for anyone other than hardcore players. Maybe his aim was to cater to the tiny minority of players who like tedious and extremely difficult. Would explain why this was funded by the pubic.
Is the expansion of this game equally as brutal?
I had also thought something similar, look here:
If you talk about Legend of the Ancients. Sadly worse…
… Avoiding then. Good thing i asked. Im still stuck on the last mission of phoenix point. Maybe the guy will patch and it make it more reasonable, and have it work with the saved games for this current patch.
I hope the developer doesnt pull a Star Citizen on everyone and keeps this game in permanent alpha/beta before moving onto another project.
In reality I hijacked your idea 
. I remembered the main points about aircraft but couldn’t remember who said it.
I think you have very valid points in your criticism. With that said, as someone who backed both PP and SC… at least I got my fun from PP, while I’m extremely regretful of backing SC. After SC, I decided to not participate in any crowdfunding again. PP was the only exception, as I loved the pitched idea and the x-com franchise is my favorite of all time.
Unfortunately, PP is very poorly designed. Unless you play in a certain way (borderline exploits) you will have issues with winning. In truth in terms of tactical freedom, it is nowhere near XCOM.
Its been a while since the release and the game still feels like a mod rather than a stand-alone polished experience.
The most annoying thing is that what is simply a poor design choice or lack of skill to balance things properly is depicted as a “game feature”. This leads to comments which imply that if you are not enjoying the game it means that you are a noob and you don’t know how to play it.
In what way does X-com give you more tactical freedom? PP is far from perfect, but tactical freedom is one of its strong points, IMO.
im curious, without sucking up to the Synedrion early on, are you able to get the mist repeller in a reasonable time frame? I tried stealing from the tech but after stealing 7 meaningless things i still couldnt get the mist repeller (yes they had it in use).
7 could not be enough, they have a bunch of base techs before the mist repeller research comes up (AI, Helios, energy tech, Aspida, armor, weapons, nanotech, paralysing pistol, Infiltrator … and some more).
I’m not sure, AFAIK you get them in order. But even if it is random, then it could be long way to get what you want.
Perhaps he means XCom (the old one) not X-Com. Either way, tactical freedom comes from a number of options that you have in your disposal to deal with a threat and ability to use those.
One of the things X-Com got right is to keep event based structure for missions. PP went into another direction - fly around, get into RNG fights and respond to events. What this leads to is making squads, sending them to exploration and then responding to threats using those squads. Combined with rather fast recovery time, you get a system where you are very likely to have the same composition of squads throughout the game.
What it means, is that your tactical freedom is as free as what soldiers you have in your squad and those soldiers are rarely swapped with someone else.
This is very different to X-Com or XCom as in either you will be arranging your squads for each mission as many soldiers will be in the sick bay. You will have to make choices as whom to take and who is needed to support other soldiers.
The other aspect is that pretty much any build in PP can solo enemies, there isn’t really a need for synergy between different classes to have any meaningful squad composition. I’ve played just fine when everyone in the squad as hybrid of heavy/sniper and heavy/assault. You could add some heavy/engineer into mix for limb healing, but it’s not really necessary. There is no synergy between these guys as each just has a high dps, you really just need to take care to put them in position where they can use their weapons effectively.
This is not a tactical freedom, it’s just freedom. The tactical decision you would be making is - who can kill this crab right now? Can we get this syren in single turn? and etc. there is no need to plan for multiple turns ahead. You could do more by carefully selecting builds and chaining some abilities, but why bother? Some people still use assault rifles in mid game, because they use one guy to shred crab’s armor and then use another guy to attack with assault rifles. Why? You can simply take a sniper rifle and shoot off limbs. Or use GL for general AOA damage instead of focused armor shred, you get armor shred from it anyway.
There is a general weird approach towards balancing in this game.
I think it was in BB4 when we got grenade launchers. They where very powerful and a lot of fun. In something like X-Com/XCom their mass alone would prohibit from being used as a side weapon, so you wouldn’t carry one on every soldier or will have limited ammunition. In PP, as you can multiclass anyone into heavy or just get proficiency perk, everyone in squad could carry it, so crabs say hello to artillery barage from turn 1. Then combine it with Rage Burst and you have an ultimate fun weapon.
Yeah it makes game too easy, so it needs to be balanced. Like maybe add spread and a time fuze? Nahh, let’s make it underpowered first, so it can’t kill even a single crab. Then month later add spread, but in such a way that grenade can explode in your face by randomly hitting the same cover you are standing behind…
What could have been done instead is raising mass to a degree that make it’s nearly impossible to be used as side weapon, add spread of where grenades land, add time fuze that sets a limit of minimal distance of the shot. Add other type of ammunition and spawn more low level crabs. Then this weapon could be use through the whole game, by a support class whos purpose is to dispatch mass of low level enemies. Set a firewall, crack open buildings, gas some area and etc.
In last campaign, I had it as sideweapon on 5 out of 6 people in the team. On mission with 2 chirons, 5 just jamped to the tallest building and bombarded chirons and worms for 5+ turns. “Tactics”
USER DFO ERROR ALERT!
No the game is not too hard/difficult to play. It appears that you however, do not have the patience to learn the New, by expecting it to be Played just like XCOM. Which this game is not.
That’s a DUH, moment, sport. Especially when you realize that Julian Gollop, the designer/developer, created that franchise, which has since been taken from the original UFO/XCOM series of games, to create XCOM. 
You need to learn how to offer Constructive Suggestions, and not blame anything for mistake created by yourself.
Did I have trouble starting out as a Newb? Yes. But I didn’t *blame the game or my advanced age (67) for those troubles. Instead, I searched the forums, for tips on what I was doing wrong. Then went on to conquer the games individual DLC’s combined and as individuals at Veteran Level.
I could go on, but seriously doubt you read this far … 
If you need to consult video tutorial or wiki before playing the game, then it probably game has a steep learning curve. Like dwarf fortress for example. But it doesn’t necessary mean that game is actual complex, it might be simply convoluted or teaching player wrong things through the mechanics. Like PP tutorial teaches you that grenades are powerful, which they aren’t. Or starts you with soldiers with no abilities, so you tend to not use them often. Or start you with a cannon, which is absolutely crap in hands of rookie and player who doesn’t know how and when to use it. In no way game teaches you what you need to achive strategically in first few weeks of the game, it just throws a bunch of research topics at you, half of which are useless till mid game.
The next part is feedback. As game heavily relies on RNG, there is barely any feedback in regards to you doing well or not well in tactical battles. When 1/3rd of your team is incapacitated at starting turns due to chiron/pair of syrenas/poison/mass acid, you might be having hard time pulling of that mission. So what do you draw from this? Do you need better armor, weapons, abilities, maybe vehicles or you change your tactics? Exactly same mission can go completely different if you start just 10 squares away. If enemies just have twice as much HP as before, do you go and research next tier of weapons? Those don’t exist outside of DLC. So what new player is suppose to do if all of the intuitive ways to change how campaign goes are not really available as part of the game. Yeah, he needs to go and watch videos about some meta-builds and cheese tactics like if he is playing a WOW or something.
Games advanced quite considerable since UFO/XCOM where made, the expectations from design went up too. But seriously, there is Xenonauts which actually re-implements old games and it doesn’t require reading wiki to play it.
oh i read it alright. Your attempt to portray me as lazy and possible dumb isnt going to work. I played many iterations from different patches, incl. 3 of them with latest. Im the wrong person to be taking your attitude. Everything i’ve said is mirrored in reviews and even some of your fellow players in here. The developers screwed up the game design for sure.
So according to YOU im to blame for this. I dont know who the F you are. You could be some 10 year old but your opinion is your opinion. As for learning to give constructive suggestions, what did you just do to me? You’re a hypocrite of the highest order.
Im happy for you that you think this game is too easy. You’re in the minority. It depends on the target audience of this game. If the intention was from the start to do a long war type of game for PP then they nailed it.
I can understand you but here in the forum you are wrong. You will hear WHAT I have completely finished the game with only 2 soldiers and you scream for NERF??? You will only get an answer from hardcore gamers who won’t help you but only cement their own ideas. It’s best not to ask any questions.
If you ask a reasonable question, in most cases you will get reasonable answers here in the forum.
But if you only show how bad the game is from your own point of view, what kind of answers should you expect? It’s OK, but it’s not a question, it’s just feedback. And apart from confirmations, everything else is usually not taken seriously anyway. That’s okay too, because it’s just personal feedback.
But if you do this with an offensive tone, you shouldn’t get mad about responses that come back in the same tone. A serious answer is usually not worthwhile in such cases. And now I’ve done it again … never mind.