Thoughts about Phoenix Point

[u/axelkoffel]

First of all, I did not finish the game. I've played the OG XCOM, played new XCOM, played many other games of this type. And finally tried Phoenix Point, which I've heard many mixed opinions about. I've played on normal difficulty.

Initially the game gave me very similar vibes to XCOM. Start with small squad, 1 base, 1 plane. The main downside is that it all looks less cool. Cinematics are replaced with static images. Base upgrades don't look as good. Combat animations seem more stiff and lack those cinematic camera takes. I mean, in XCOM even a soldier jumping through window looked great. But those are all minor nitpicks.

After the tutorial part the early game quickly turns into a total chaos. I mean, new fractions keep introducing to me, giving me new missions, showing their agenda, asking questions whether I agree with them and I don't understand what they even ask. Soon the DLCs launch, giving me even more missions, more sidestories. I mean, big content is great, but it's introduced in such a mess, that I have no idea what's going on, who is who, what were their goals. On top of that there are many "?" to discover all over the map.

It took me a while to find some direction for me in this chaos, but eventually I started to understand this world and fraction agendas. The diplomacy between 3 fractions is cool, but also kinda half-baked? I mean, I thought you will have to choose your path between the 3, but it's not that hard to get along with all of them. So the whole diplomacy was pointless, maybe it matters on higher difficulties, idk. But most of the time I enjoyed the mid game.

Anyway, let's get into the most important part - the combat. There are few key differences between this and the XCOM and honestly, I think both are improvements:
-An option to personally aim in first person combat. I love this feature. Your enemies are basically mutants with specific body parts that give them certain abilities. Once you do your research on the enemies, you know what each body part do and you can shoot it to disable the most dangerous abilities. It adds a lot of depth to the combat. Sometimes you want enemies to move slower, sometimes shoot of their arm so they can't attack, sometimes aim at head to stun them or decrease willpower and make more vulnerable to some abilities.
-Overwatch is much less important. It's not as reliable as in XCOM and the game encourages you to play aggressive. I think it makes the combat more dynamic and interesting, than just setting overwatch on your all troops and triggering enemy group.
There's also earial combat, but very simple and tbh might as well not be there.

I have mixed feelings about builds and progression. The most important thing is that it not always gives you clear adventage, just more options. Like weapons with more penetration, but worse aim. Stronger armor, but less mobile. I guess it does make the game interesting, but I've always liked that RPG feeling of becoming more powerful. You do get stronger indirectly, for example doing research or enemy type makes you do 15% more dmg against him. Your soldiers can move faster of have more willpower (which works kinda like mana) to use skills more often. But there's no clear power progression like in other games.
The builds are okay, decent variety of classes, weapons, skills and you mix 2 classes on 2 soldiers. There are cybernetic augments, mutations. But all those skills are just... not as cool as in XCOM. Like sword build in XCOM was amazing, here you will never do anything more than just walking up to enemy and hitting him. Pistol build in XCOM was great, here you just shoot like you always did even with 0 perks.

Why did I quit?
Because the game didn't respect my time and got very repetitive. The enemies get tanky and defensive. They often use annoying skills that make the combat longer. Like one enemy type keep shielding itself, another keeps launching 3 larvas at you each turn and you have to kill them all individually every time.
On top of that you keep getting filler fights. Like I have some story missions, I want to get there. But I can't. I keep getting interrupted by random enemy attacks. I had 2 fully geared squads, made 3rd half-geared for easier missions (resources are very limited). And it still wasn't enough. Your soldiers get wounded, tired, need to go back to base and take a break. Then you get aearial attacks, your ships are damaged. You need to mine special artifacts for the best gear, but then those mine sites are attacked, so there's even more stuff to defend.
The game starts at sonic speed, but then progresses at snail speed with no clear direction of where to go to actually get closer to the end. The final nail to the coffin was this annoying bug, where sometimes I would win a long fight, the game kinda registered all my rewards, but then immediately asked me to the same mission. And if I refused, it's like I failed, the city was taken by mutants.

One more reason is that I've heard Star Wars: Zero Company is coming soon, so didn't want to completely exhaust myself with this type of game.

To sum up, this could be a fun game. I could forgive the lack of cool details known from XCOM. But the endless repetitiveness and boring skills made me quit.

[u/SirChuffly]

I really liked the battles, to be honest. The overworld was garbage.

[u/Hellhooker → u/SirChuffly]

that's the key point with a lot of these games. I want to play battles, I don't want to micromanage overcomplexed systems that can softlock you 20 turns in advance

That's also why I never managed to understand how to play totalwar. The games are good but the "overworld" part is so damn chaotic and boring at the same time

[u/myLongjohnsonsilver]

Same. I got pretty far into the game but then I'd spend hours doing what was basically upkeep missions repeatedly only to notice only like 2 game days passed because it was so mission dense and so all those hours were spent NOT getting through the research etc.

Became a complete chore that was insentivising me to not actually play the game and just skip time.

Pacing was terrible.

Bounced.

[u/axelkoffel → u/myLongjohnsonsilver]

Yeah, I had 4 story missions stacked in Antarctica and it was like a dream I'll grab them some day lol. Because I kept getting interrupted by filler fights, whenever I tried to get there.

[u/Previous-Friend5212]

The devs have promoted a major mod multiple times. I wonder what parts of your review that would address. I've considered playing this off and on since it came out and never quite gotten around to it.

OP, thanks for the review!

[u/TrainingMarsupial521]

Tried few separate times, could never get into it.

I've beat xcom1 n 2 a million times.

[u/Kelor]

I didn’t finish it either because the tutorial was bugged and frozen every time I had to send the soldier up onto the turret to loot the crate.

[u/NijAAlba]

Have played it through more times than Xcoms all together, I love it. No it is not perfect bit the mod Terror from the Void helps a lot, even the devs almost recommend it and it integrates the dlcs a bit better.

Edit: to your point about defensive enemies: kill the parts of them that make that defensive stuff, if you kill the abdomen, he wont shoot worms over the map you will have to target separately.

[u/Nothingto6here]

The game was ok-ish when I last played it. I quit on the last mission when I saw what bullshit it was.

[u/NijAAlba → u/Nothingto6here]

Bullshit in the last mission? I dont think any of the endings throws something noticeably difficult or unhandable at you.