Universal Xenowerk Tactics (by Pixelbite)

I’ve just cleared my first two skull dropzone.

It involved new aliens spawning, then standing still like lemons whilst my one “bait” yellow bloke shot them to bits *shrugs*



I can’t honestly say I’m really feeling this game yet. If it wasn’t xenowerks, with its fantastic legacy, I’m not sure I’d still be playing.

AI is meh. (As above). Camera is ganky / too close. Gameplay is pretty simplistic. Adrenaline is almost nil. Giving a shit about my chars is, so far, non existent.

Lack of load out options is *facepalm*. You’ve basically got one of three (is that it?) identikit chars with abilities. At L1, two of those three chars have abilities that should just bloody well be a minimap.

Home base is meh. Feels like some inspiration has been taken from Darkest Dungeon (trauma, events, wagons of new recruits, levelling) but without the depth, nuance or rich character variations that make that work. Also feels like strain tactics, in storyline and principle, but without the rich depth of gameplay and characterisation that makes that week.

Lots of levels are just dull. (Ambush. Shoot one wave of five enemies. Leave. Or bunker. Find target computer in second room. Leave). Enemy variation isn’t great. Equipment is mostly single purpose (buy this to access this level on this trip).

Perhaps this will improve with eg a crew of L15 five skull busting tanks.

But perhaps it won’t.

 

Just to add to that, certainly with L1 chars the only rationale for not taking along 3 hardass green grenade blokes is that if you do, you’ll waste a tonne of time searching for objectives. Because the other two have half the minimap each. (But do far less damage).

meh.

 

So if you haven’t triggered a time critical mission, there’s literally no incentive to take on more challenging mission chains / escapades by linking side missions together?

*facepalm*

I’ve been pushing my teams to chain missions, because chuffing obviously it feels as if this is the intention - play against time, carefully match your limited equipment capacity to chain the most possible, maximise gains within time, trauma and equipment limits.

if it isn’t, then good grief. What a total faceplant of design.

 

It’s taken me 1.5 days to realise that exp is both exposure and experience *facepalm* I’ve been alternately trying to max it out, then avoiding maxing it out, as my understanding shifted *facepalm*

 

It has taken north of five (idk how many) hours of persistence, but I’m beginning to quite enjoy this.

The start is poorly managed, dull guff. But the step up from l2 to l3 is very substantial - brutal, even - and characters begin to get much more fruity once they’ve got two or three available powers.

 

And an entire level three squad, representing a considerable investment of time and energy, has just been destroyed because my thumb rested on the bottom of the screen. *facepalm*

 

Something weird happened on this.

You get 2 (?) days to send out a rescue party.

I sent out one party. My other three L3 people. They got hit by FIVE CONSECUTIVE THREE SKULL HORROR CARDS @ a loss of 25% morale per card, with each 25% causing them 1 trauma (requires hospitalisation for >0 days), and 100% morale taking them out of action completely. They had medevac insurance and so were able to get back to base when demoralised, but were crippled and I’d rescued just one of the 3 lost team. (It was a pitifully short venture. I was hammered by those morale cards, with them appearing in quick succession). So I was basically looking at about 4 days of nothing but hospitalisation with almost no missions In order to get a damaged / reduced team back, after one (one!) clumsy thumb encroachment. Can’t say I was impressed. When the cards / dice go wrong, it can feel a bit OTT / loaded.

Uh, this game is exceptionally good at preventing ragequits. Quit in the middle of a battle and come back; you’ll be exactly where you left off. There’s no unpeeling of game events, ever.

Except this time, when I next went back, it was as if the rescue mission had never happened *shrugs*. Able to send out 3 L3 operatives on a rescue mission this time with some protection against horror. (Well, tbf, this meant sending out 2xL3 and 1xL2 with anti-horror characteristics).

I managed to retrieve all three, so now have a functional group again. In need of a fair bit of hospitalisation, but nowhere near as bad as it had looked (wrt both absolute losses and temp hospitalisations). Odd!

 

Mine didn’t. I eventually gave up out of boredom, mind.

Someone up thread persisted more, I think.

 

I stopped at day 24, it seems.

IIRC, getting 100% for one of the factions, the top one, triggers the five day thing?

 

Would pretty much agree.

I kept on persisting, hoping it would become worthwhile. And there was a moment as I tried to get to one of the more difficult landing zones where it felt, briefly, challenging and interesting. But that was at, like, 3 or 4* (so I’d already spent far too long playing a game that felt like drudgery); and once I’d got it, I struggled to work out why on earth I’d bothered. Thereafter, every time I started it up I found myself looking at a screen and thinking ‘I just don’t care enough about any of these missions to bother planning a route.’

Bland, though. Ultimately bland. A real let-down given the Xenowerks legacy.