First a warning to not read ahead, if you want to get your own experience of the tutorial.
About myself:
I play Phenix Point since it was released in December 2019 and I played it much, somewhat around 1600 hours. So I think I have a deep inside of many of the techniques, tactics, possibilities and so on. So, why to write a feedback about the Tutorial of the latest version now after one year of playing? Well, because I can, also because I was slightly upset by the original Tutorial and after the announcement of the Polaris patch I was curious what they did there. But that also means that this feedback is NOT from a view of a new and less experienced player. I highly assume that I miss some points that would be essential for new players, even when I try to look at it from their point of view.
So, let’s get starting …
Introduction into the Phoenix Point Story
The starting characters spoke to me and I always felt involved in the individual sections of the first phase of the tutorial, essential 3 single short missions in a row, right in the middle of the action. From my perspective, it is a good starting point for the whole story of Phoenix Point. I felt encouraged to go further, to find out more, it aroused curiosity in me about everything that will come (even from my perspective of someone that probably already knows everything about the story).
Introduction for the player to important mechanics
From my point of view, the 3 introductory missions were well structured, in the following more in detail:
In the first mission you learn simple things like scrolling over the map, moving the two soldiers and shooting at enemies, in this mission a couple of Arthrons. The start is completely scripted and you have to follow the instructions mostly exactly, but after 2-3 turns it quickly changes to free movement. To finish this first mission you have to move one of your soldiers to a Scarab (Phoenix Point vehicle).
The first mission seemed to me basically identical to the old tutorial, at least I couldn’t find any differences and basically I also didn’t find this part really bad in the older version either.
The second mission was completely new and for me it was really interesting. I could use the Scarab that I took in the first part, so there is also an introduction to the nice firepower of this vehicle and how to go in and out (not scripted, but you can do it and get some on hints on screen if you do so). Another soldier should be found to join our small squad to get it up to 3. For the newcomer I first had to pick up equipment that was available in a small crate. This also covered the handling of the inventory and the crates. The opponents (this time Bandits) became more numerous and I had to think a little about how to get to the objective of the mission without getting too much injured. Just rush off … I have no idea what would happen then, I haven’t tried it
In the third and last mission of this first part of the tutorial I should enter an abandoned Phoenix Point base and clear it of enemies. I got an Info that the Scarab is broken and not longer usable. Maybe it would be nice for the lowest difficulty (Rookie) that this would not happen to give them another toy for an easier start. In the base were also the next two members (on Veteran difficulty, maybe one more on Rookie) waiting for me to complete my first squad and I was supposed to take them over before they are overwhelmed by the enemies, here again Pandorans. I had to hurry up with the first one, a sniper. She was attacked by a poison worm and had to be healed quickly to keep her from dying. Then I went through a few corridors of the base with various enemies, Mindfraggers, Worms and Arthrons and one of my assaults actually injured an arm so badly that I could no longer use it (I’m sure that it was not scripted, see also comments below from @Yokes and @VOLAND. I just went too fast and then ran into an Arthron … I didn’t really take it seriously until then). I found the last soldier in the last room, a hanger with a manticore, only accessible over the second floor, it told me that the door to the hangar is not functional. This soldier was taken over by a Mindfragger and I strongly assume it was deliberately scripted or positioned that way, otherwise he would simply not survive the opponents there in the time that is needed to get there. After removing the Mindfraggers head from the poor one, it was time to clean the base from the rest of the opponents, from then on it was no longer a real challenge, at least for me.
After the liberation of the base, I saw the geoscape for the first time without any POIs visible. I was assigned to repair the hanger so that the Manticore could be used. So a little introduction to base management and the pause function of the Geoscape, good so far. No scanning from the base is starting after unpausing the game and that was a bit irritating for me, because there was a radar facility up and running in the base (but not a real problem, just read ahead).
(unsure about the order)
After the repair was done, a single POI comes up that I was supposed to fly to and examine, the next important step in introducing movement on the geoscape, appeared fine too.
This POI was a scavenging site. I can’t say if that’s always the case, but it was somewhat easy (for me) that I assume it’s scripted that way. A mission where you can retrace some of the things you have already learned about tactical combat in the first part. There were only 4 crates and also not that many enemies, again Pandorans and here also Tritons for the first time. Just a hint: Be careful, I’m pretty sure you can lose soldiers in this mission, probably also fail the whole mission even it is still part of the tutorial.
(unsure about the order)
There was also an introduction to production and research, but in retrospect I’m not sure whether this came up before or after the scavenging mission outlined above. I was only able to produce Medpacks and start the research for Atmospheric Analysis. Nothing really exciting, just 2-3 clicks and done.
Then the tutorial was declared over and I could go completely free to everything that was shown to me. The scanner of my starting base was immediately exposed to around 50%, so there was no loss of time in this regard.
Summary
I really enjoyed it, clearly a step in the right direction. Maybe some points are left over, I can’t say that for sure, because again, I’m probably too experienced in the game to see some more details that would be important for lesser experienced players. From me a to the devs for this part of the game, well done so far.
Brief notes on my starting conditions after this Tutorial in general:
Start in Southwest Asia.
At the end of the tutorial, the base scanner had “grown” to around 50%.
A lot of POIs that I was able to examine right away.
Lots of Anu heavens nearby, also two from Synedrion, but unfortunately none from NJ (so far, to this point I haven’t checked all POIs in range).
Edit: Some additions to the third mission and corrections (please tell me if there are some parts ugly bad, English is not my natural language, so bad things simply happens )
Soldiers can die as early as second tutorial mission. I think there is nothing scripted in the tutorial except starting positions of enemies. In third mission I suppose Mindfragger starts outside of assault firepower but in range to capture him, so Arthrons won’t shred him to pieces. And enemies wait for you before they activate, they don’t roam the map as in normal maps.
That was also what I thought, but I was not entirely sure. Only exception is maybe the first couple of turns in the first mission where you have to learn to take cover and shoot, first without free aim and the second with free aim. The second Arthron seems to spawn directly after you switch the turn.
One thing that is maybe also fixed set (scripted) is the first POI mission itself so that it is always this easy scavenging mission. But not the tactical behaviours in this mission, I’m pretty sure that there was nothing scripted.
What I also appreciate in the new tutorials is that one is tutored to do stupid things. Even XCOM tutorials had the player do stupid and deadly things. I like the fact that the new versions are more of, “here are some tips, now go out there and learn your own tricks”.
Yup, I also fired up the game to see the new tutorial and sincerely, I loved it. So much better. My only two small gripes:
There’s a guy that talks I think in the first cinematic, very bad acting.
The first scavenging mission that you explore after recovering the base was a resource mission but the icon in the world map afterwards showed a recover vehicle mission.
Also, it would be nice to have an extra tutorial mission on rookie difficulty to recover the damaged scarab after recovering the base. Then it would be repaired and usable.
I’m still pissed about the 2nd savegame breaking and the huge amount of bugs introduced since the Arkham patch, though. Even then, the beginning of the game is so much fun that I had to force myself into stopping playing because I won’t have enough time to finish a campaign before Festering Skies anyway. Also, there are still so many new Arkham/Polaris bugs. I don’t have the strength to play the game in this state anymore, I’ll just wait until it becomes more stable again.
On that bug note… I fear that Snapshot may have let go some of their early employees, or moved them into the new project, and now PP is being taken care of by newcomers. That would explain the huge amount of bugs with Arkham, when the game was very good before that . This is just speculation though.
Yeah, that was one of the good things. There were a lot of good things in the last patches.
Including these.
However, they’ve also introduced a LOT of new bugs, to things that were working. To a point that even I, a so-called (right here on this forum) fanboy of the game, decided to stop playing again. Both minor and major (game breaking), there were a lot of new ones.
Yeah, and I’d lived with them, because they didn’t impede my progress. However it was just too much for me to lose my progress once again because I have so little time to play (I’ve never been able to finish a campaign!) AND put up with so many new bugs too on things that were working.
I suppose that this is because I’m a developer and I wish they would test things better, as is expected of our job. Also, I really wish they would’ve created a savegame converter for the new format. Maybe I’m wrong, but that doesn’t seem like something that would take a lot of time. Just add up the time they’ve thrown in the garbage for all their players combined. Would it not be worth it? And this is for the second time now.
Great writeup on the tutorial. I also started a new game with tutorial enabled, and it’s so much better now. It hooks the player into the story, which was missing earlier. A small but important improvement, especially now when Steam launch happened.
After playing it for a second time (yes, I did it twice ), here some additional Infos:
The order that i can’t remember accurately in the first run:
The first part are the above described 3 missions in a row to introduce some of the tactical behaviours.
After liberating the Phoenix Point base, there is the first introduction to the geoscape, repair the hanger (base management) and unpause the game.
After the repair of the hangar is finished, the first POI (point of interest) appears, introduction to fly around and explore POIs.
The POI is another mission to scavenging resources, the same map as in my first run but different positions of the crates and also a bit different things to scavenge.
After this mission I was told to fly back to the base and after the arrival I had to start the first research, the Atmospheric Analysis. This is the introduction into research, very quick and short, just go to research, start it and then back to geoscape to unpause the game, nothing else to do at this moment. I don’t know if this is enough for new players, on the other side in my opinion this part is pretty intuitive.
After finishing this research I was told to produce one Medkit. It is almost the same procedure as with research, quick and short, simply selecting the production tab and build the one medkit (nothing else is available for production).
After this the whole tutorial is over and the normal game starts.
The time to get all this together is something around 1,5-2 days. Some things could be achieved more efficient without the tutorial but on the other side I got 5 already well trained soldiers (4 missions with not much EXP, but enough to get 3 of them up to level 2 and a good amount SP for each, especially the first two Assaults).
The recruits I got in these two runs had the same names, also the same stats but a bit higher than normal. Their personal perks are distributed randomly, i.e. I got completely different in the second run. It is not possible to change some of the personal settings of the first two Assaults. Only the name, the eye & armor colors and the armor pattern can be changed, the rest is fixed. The other three can be changed in any means.
All in all I found many hints and tips not bad, especially in the tactical section, for me it seems that many parts are covered.
Ohh, the cover system, I think the short explantation for low and high cover is not really clear, it only told me that the soldier is crouching at low cover and that he will step out from high cover but not much about protection. I think the whole protection by obstacles in the line of fire is not that easy to explain. But at least a little warning, for instance that these symbols doesn’t give any fixed protection value, could be given at this point.
Yeah and because of the gender bug (all my soldiers have the gender opposite to their names) the second soldier had a male name but female body, and that could not be changed (this doesn’t happen with the red haired gal, and the others can have name or gender changed). I just assumed WW3 and the PV had finally led to people being able to be what they want to be
I agree. However, by memory only, I thought that the hint did say something about cover depending on obstacle and angle (although with different and simplified words). Is there an entry about cover in the “ufopedia”? I guess it would be ok to have greater explanation there, as you don’t want to bury the player in help text.
Oh interesting, I have no gender problems, all OK here.
In my two attempts all 5 had the same names. The first two Assaults are named “Jacob Eber” and “Sophia Brown”, the 3rd, a Heavy guy called “Omar Ashur” and he is also called with his name from Sophia in one of the sequences, so I thought they were always the same. Then the others, a Sniper woman called “Irina Sokolova” and as last the third Assault named “Takeshi Sato”.
No clue. I won’t be playing now because I’ll wait at least until festering skies. Maybe when that comes, I’ll uninstall both EGS and Steam versions then.
to the devs for this part of the game, well done so far.
. This is just speculation though.
