My thoughts at 20+ hours in

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
1

I want to start by saying that I bought the original X-Com when I was 11 and in all that time no game has ever come close to beating it. It is the best game ever made. Other games have been in the vicinity , Jagged Alliance 1-2, Xenonauts and Baldurs Gate to name a few worthy contenders. When PP was announced I was extremely excited that Julian Gallop was back involved with this type of game.
I dove right in to PP on release day. It had a bit of a learning curve that meant I needed to restart the game once because of not being explained some aspects. I learned about them from other users and not from any in game help sadly. I am what I guess would be “mid game” on my restart. I have actually stopped playing as of yesterday in the hopes of some serious updates to the game. I have several issues that are game play gripes and some that are really annoying bugs. I will start with game play issues.

  1. First off I find it really disappointing so far that there doesn’t seem to be the weapon/armor tech path that pretty much every other X-Com style game has. That’s one of my favorites things about these games. That feeling you get of scraping by with puny weapons at the start and just when you are on the precipice of being totally outclassed your scientists come through with the tech bump that lets you start to turn the tide. So far every bit of new weaponry outside of a grenade launcher has been from the other factions or the Pandorans that carry human weapons. I guess that would be fine if not for the fact that the weapons you scrounge are either slightly better or possibly worse then what you start with. Maybe I haven’t broken through to the weapon research yet but so far it’s feeling pretty lame that my top squad is still using lots of the equipment they started the game with. That’s not really what makes these games fun for me at least.

  2. Another gripe is the difficulty to set overwatch that actually works. There definitely needs to be a zoom in for overwatch just like aiming or it will never work right.

  3. Also it seems dumb that you set overwatch to say the north but your squaddie points south with his body not even looking in the right direction.

  4. The scavenger missions start to become silly after a while when the pandorans can wreck the loot in one salvo of firing.

Now on too some bugs that make the game extremely frustrating. These are not totally game breaking but they really make it an chore to enjoy sometimes.

  1. When I have done every single Alien lair mission I can’t see anything on half or more of the map. I go down hallways that are completely black and eventually I will wander into a room and suddenly all the lights come back on. This is EXTREMELY IRRITATING. It makes me want to let the stupid things survive because I don’t want to deal with it.

  2. For some weird reason when I load any game on the geoscape the map defaults to the far side of the map from where my ships were when I made the save. I am constantly having to recenter the map. Very annoying.

  3. The tactical game constantly freezes during the pandorans turn. I once let the game sit for an hour and the turn never ended. I have to alt+tab out and force close the game to get out of it. It seems to happen more often when mind feathers are involved in the fight.

  4. Not sure if it’s a bug or not but sirens are insane. They can mind control and wreck your squad in one turn unless you kill them the instant you spot one. I don’t really see how this was ever properly play tested. Maybe there is a defense for this but since there is nearly ZERO guidance I don’t know. Maybe I just missed the memo.

I really want to love the game. It does a lot right but it takes a lot of work to have fun with it.

2 Likes
2

All fair points.

I agree with the research tree. It doesn’t feel like a consistent tech improvement over time. In fact, there are probably more late game techs that are worse than their early game counterparts (Like almost all of Anu’s tech…) Only a few are direct upgrades (NJ Piercing tech is awesome)

I’d like to see the orders and balance changed up a bit. Also, a visual tree might be welcome, but that’s probably not likely now.

I agree, the fact the soldier doesn’t stand to face over-watch often feels weird. It would be nice to have some control on which way they face (at any given time) too, as that has, on many occasions, prevented me from taking a shot I should have been allowed to take (stepping out the wrong way etc, so free aim looks at the wall…)

I feel like you should be spawned into the centre of a scavenger mission (as you were searching and collecting the loot when you get attacked) if you were closer to the loot, you should have a better time of defending it. As it stands currently, it’s like the aliens discover the site the second your team does, every time lol

The bugs are fairly known. I imagine they’ll be fixed in due course. Give it time.

Sirens can be dealt with. They’re very hard to begin with, but you get used to fighting them (I love me some spider-bots. Spam them and laugh! - Use a Techie if you need extra accuracy, as their default behaviour is kinda dumb). Grenade launchers is another way. (Snipers/Hel cannon are the obv ones too)