Hard to believe it was 74 cents until I played it. I wanted to like this game. The game won't let me. I had to look up how to get out of the first area because the game wanted me to repair my spacesuit. How do I do that? Nothing in game told me how. Walk to a glowing patch on the ground. No, not that one. The other one. Click on 'Characters', then doubleclick on the four bars on your spacesuit. Then press escape. Then save your changes. In the second area, a monster knocked me off a platform and when the game put me back, I was frozen in place. I spent the next two minutes being pelted by arrows while I tried to move or attack. Nothing I tried would move me out of that position. I have to repeatedly click on nearby monsters in order to attack, and I have to make sure the monster's outline is highlighted otherwise I do nothing. Click to move? fine. Click and drag does not move? Why? The dialog is dreadful. "I can't do that in a swamp" a billion times. shut up. just shut up. Cutscene dialogs are the worst. Growly voices that sound like drunk dogs stumbling through their lines in a children's play. It makes even less sense than that sentence. Visuals look ok. Story is stupid. Long cooldowns on the skills like this is some stupid mmo. This game is bad. I wonder if it will reach "so bad, it's good" status if I try to play it some more. Not worth the frustration to me. Too many good games out there for me to bother.
This game is a lot of fun. I liked XCOM, and this one turns everything up a few levels. I would have been happy with the vanilla game, until I heard about the voice packs. I immediately decided I had to have a squad of Tony Montana, Duke Nukem, Archer, Bob Ross, Cheryl Tunt, and Tommy Wiseau. One of the top reviews said there was no mod support. I downloaded a few mods from Nexus Mods and I figured out how to add them to the game. I recently completed the base game with mods enabled and had no issues on Windows 7. Here is what I did: 1. download the mod for "manual install", not through a mod manager. 2. create a folder in your XCOM2 installation folder's XComGame folder and call it Mods. 3. extract the mod's contents into the Mods folder. 4. Ensure the mod is contained in one folder 5. Ensure the mod's folder name exactly matches the name of the mod's XComMod file, without the extension. For example, the Tommy Wiseau voice pack's mod file is "Wiseau.XComMod", so the folder must be named "Wiseau". 6. some mods replace the contents of the game's config files (only when the mod is loaded), which can cause incompatibilities with other mods. They're just text files, so a manual merge works just fine. Mods I have installed: AdvancedModularWeapons AlgernopKriegerVoicepack AllSoldiersGainXP "ARCHER'SPamPooveyVoicepack" "ARCHER'sSterlingArcher" ArmorUtilitySlots Arnold BasilFawltyVoicepack BobRoss BothPerkswhenlevelingup CherylTuntVoicepack ChooseableAWC Clint DeadpoolVoicepack DisableTimers 'Duke Nukem Voice Pack' LanaKaneVoicepack MaloryArcherVoicepack MaxSquadSizeFix Montana MontyPythonVoicepack MrSatanVoicepack NecromancerClass NoAvatarProject Palpatine PlayableAdvent ShowMeTheSkills Vader Wiseau The voice packs are great. Cheryl launching a grenade and saying "Let me bounce this of you guys" cracks me up. Bob Ross was my sniper and "Today, the paint salesman is in town". Now I have my squad and it is glorious.
This game's demo was the first demo I ever played and until last month was the only demo that I liked enough to buy the full game. The music still gets stuck in my head. The lore has never left my head. The chaining attacks make combat very engaging and fun. The graphics were pretty good on PC at the time. Replaying it on PS2 a few years ago, I found the environments bare. There really wasn't enough power in the machines back then to have hordes of enemies and intricate environments, but this game makes the best of what it has. Methodical combat that allows tactical gameplay and hack and slash. I spent hours in completely unnecessary parts of the game just exploring. FInding lore makes sense in this game. It's not audio logs strewn about a forest. It's books in libraries, conversations with people that are interested in the summoner for in-world reasons. The whole world doesn't know everything about you from day 1. Characters have their own reasons for doing what they do. The game rewards you for exploring, but does not require obsession for completion. Sometimes the clues are weird. A drunk exclaims "Mish kish fish!" What does that mean? I won't spoil it. That one line has stuck with me for ages. I played through this game at least six times in the early 2000s and it was always fun. The weird glitch where characters' bodies partially pass through the clipping plane was pretty funny. That was the biggest glitch/bug I found. Just a funny look at the inside of a character's head. I like the summons and the different locations. Even the obligatory sewer level was fun. Lots of tactics to try and items to experiment with. They put a lot of care into this game and it shows.
