Thoughts on BB5

Hello all, I’ve enjoyed BB5 after perhaps 20-30 hours of play. A few comments below if you’d care to read about it:

Strengths:

  • Multi-classing breaks down traditional roles and responsibilities well. I tended to choose Assault for everyone’s second class because Dash is a vital, vital ability.

  • Manually aiming seemed like a gimmick at first, but once you realize you have the ability to eliminate the enemy’s key attack, chance to turn invisible, etc. it becomes a value proposition you have to assess. I like that.

  • Sacrificing your points for others, combinatorial abilities, etc. make your squad greater than the sum of its parts. I enjoy sleuthing out new ways to skin the cat.

Weaknesses:

  • It’s a backer build. It’s buggy AF, slow to start and load (even on SSDs) and requires a lot of reloading …and some re-loads are permanently bugged. My campaign is DOA until the ‘geoscape is frozen over the pacific’ bug is sorted out.

  • Assault with Sniper as a second class really has no weakness. I have two with shot guns and sniper rifles and I often wonder why I don’t have more characters set up like this. This combo seems overpowered to me.

  • Some have been reported on others’ comments here, so I won’t belabor them: too many raids on havens, too much time spent defending them, etc. I appreciate there’s a balance of ‘you can’t save everyone’ and what not, but even saving half the havens that are hit (that will die without your help) will get horrifically Long War grind-y in no time.

  • In general, the balance seems off. Research is too slow, leveling is too quick, manfacturing is hideously slow and base development speed feels about right. Creatures go from cupcakes to overpowered very quickly, while our Level 7 super soldiers are still wielding initial tier weaponry (maybe not form the same faction, but about the same potency) very far into the game.

  • There are tons of low/mid-level research and tasks to accomplish to support that research, but nothing at all like the X-Com (classic and rebooted) steady progression of better stuff / better tech that results from it. So it feels like you’re trapped in middle school and the good stuff doesn’t come until you complete your post-doc.

  • Not enough mission types.

  • Turrets dropped on the ground and not reclaimed are lost when you win the mission – and you can’t rebuild them until fairly long on in the game. That effectively renders any Technicians recruited before hitting NJ 75% useless characters to put on the Manticore.

Opportunities to Improve beyond correcting weaknesses (ideas, I guess):

  • As others have alluded to, a geoscape Fog of War that marks where you have / haven’t satellite scanned is essential IMHO. In my playthrough I only found two bases despite searching 4 continents heavily. Further, I was zinging back and forth to defend havens so much that I lost track of where I did/didn’t scan.

  • To address the same problem, perhaps a hot/cold meter on how close you are to a PP base signal would be a nice feature. It wouldn’t tell you where the PP bases are, but it would imply what direction to look.

  • If trading resources doesn’t require a pickup, soldier recruitment and starting scans should not require being there either. One visit to establish contact, and after that (and if you have the research pre-reqs), you should be able to trade/scan/recruit as you wish.

Overall:

I am enjoying myself a lot and welcome the final release, but I will not lie that X-Com 2 is becoming a reference-grade level expectation of plot / pacing / tech development / challenge that I hope this game can ‘innovatively parallel’ if not live up to outright. I don’t expect AAA polish / voice talent / animated setpieces, etc. from an indie game like this, but I do expect the game to reasonably grow and progress as I play it. Right now that feeling is missing.

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