Can’t believe we don’t have a thread about this awesome game series and the latest xpack. Completed Commander difficulty twice and going to try Legendary. Feel confident I can tackle it now. Quite cool to see the growth. Had issues with Veteran, thanks to TapCat on yourtube, my game improved drastically over time.
So my review of the game after 2 full playthroughs…
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WoTC does have odd difficulty curve scaling. Early game you only have to worry about the Assasin. It takes some practice to understand her movement so you won’t take damage. Also management of tired soldiers can be an issue for some.
Other then that the game provides many mitigation/control options for the player that it does indeed remove a lot of challenge. Sure the lost can feel overwhelming, but you can kill 20 a round, even early game.
Once you get some soldiers up and running you’ll just tear everything to shreds. You never have to worry about scientists/engineers. There are random missues and covert missions that grant you the option to get plenty. The Xcom skills get randomly generated, but you can still create super OP soldiers that way. A sniper that has both Rapid Fire AND Chain Shot on top of their regular skills. Specialists that have both hacking and healing with Rapid Fire and Run and Gun. Assault that end up with Killzone and Shred.
Usually Grenadiers have Aim issues, so you try to give them some through weapon upgrades/pcs. With covert missions you can get +stat boosts. I just made sure to put soldiers on the stat that was most suited for them. And some missions providing full out promotions were perfect to rank up slacking, or completely new, soldiers.
You can Bond soldiers together once they did some missions together and become good friends. This will let you bond them and grants the ability of giving 1 extra action to their buddy, once a mission. This can become two as well as some other nice perks as their bond gets stronger. The extra actions on a turn can sometimes mean an extra kill…or just use them as n Oh:heart:
I need to fix my mistake. Once you get the use of them the extra turns, especially later on with extra XCom abilities learned, soldiers can just tear up entire battlefields in a single round no matter who they’re fighting.
Seriously the game gets progressively more a joke. I really enjoyed the game upto mid game. The final 15 missions or so I just couldn’t care. Just ran in and ignoring cover. Took out some rulers, andies, sectopods… it didn’t matter anymore. 50 Lost on the screen? Just send in 1 ranger with bladestorm and the other soldiers can go for a drink while he cleans up. The Lost are a nice concept early on, but from mid game and beyond they’re just their to waste your time. They do not provide in-direct challenge or noteworthy effects on ammo management or whatever. 1 ranger and 1 sniper can take care of hordes while the other 4 soldiers can take care of Gatekeepers, Sectopods and other advent nuiscances.
I played super careless in ithe end, because I didn’t care about anything anymore since nothing mattered at late game. Covert missions give you enough chances to reduce avatar progress. Combined by cleaning up some facilities… It caused the Avatar progress bar to be at 0 before starting the final mission. Only in Early Game I had it go up with only 2 bars remaning, before I started to do covert missions. Never touched a Blacksite until I had taken care of the three Chosen.
Now the order in which you get the Covert Missions from the Ring is RNG. My first playthrough I got a lot of them early on. Second run I started getting them later. Outcome was still the same. Total control all around.
The Chosen is nice. And their influence can change per playthrough. On the first one the Assasin had taken the Avenger down and I had to deal with an interesting ground battle. She is the most threatening to deal with. Once you got battle scanners, or specialist with scanning abilities she becomes a lot easier. The Warlock is ok, but his summons and mind control hardly posed any danger. Used three mindshields when going to his stronghold, whcih did come in handy. Other then that he’s quite the push over unfortunately. The hunter however… in both playthroughs he is just pointless. Pure cannonfodder.
Dealing with their search/sabotage gave another layer to deal with stuff. Some people might say it gets hectic since you also have to worry about advent and avatar progress. But seriously you can ignore avatar due to the covert mission, or just do occasional blacksites. On my second playthrough I was lucky enough to get a faction order that reduced Chosen progress for 33%. Perhaps that is too strong and 25% would be more in line, while the default progress is a bit on the fast side. Overall very manageable.
Once you kill the sniper you got a really strong shotgun and katana for an assault. It has a tong of advanced add-ons. Your already powerfull ranger will be a killing machine.
The faction orders you get are nice, and also to seem somewhat random. I enjoyed stacking +10 and +15% drop supplies every month. I enjoyed the instant resistance connection in the later mid game to quickly ramp up income. Playing with the faction orders is nice and is a real motivation to be involved with them and get them to max reputation. Those 2 slots per faction is nice. the reduction of hack defences was nice. It is all nice and you can choose what you’ll need for the upcoming month. Like reduced time of research in a specific field. Which I think will really come in handy on Legendary. Just like mission timers. Through some covert missions was able to increase timers from 5-8 turns on a mission to around 20 making the timed missions not an issue any more either.
The heroes you get from the factions are ok. I somewhat enjoyed Mox. He made it to major in both playthroughs. He’s mobile and lets out multiple shots per turn. Templar is not my favorite at this point. Don’t really need another front runner with my assault setup, whcih is the main reason. So I often just use the Templar for covert missions. The Reaper however is just so OP. She’s hidden and can hide again making her a perfect scout. Midgame+ her first shot is NEVER detected and can shred armor. Combined with a passive she can do some hard hitting. The Claymore is strong too. Especially once you carry two and can attach them to opponents. Then throw an acid/incindiary bomb on top and you get damage that takes out really strong groups in a single hit. Her concealment combined with squadsight on snipers made a lot of missions really easy as well. Took out objectives while my soldiers were still 2 screens en route.
The Quirks is interesting. Pratal Mox got scared when MEC’s showed. My Reaper and Sniper had that when a Chosen appeared. mid mid-game I build an infirmary on third row in the avenger and cured everyone with ailments real fast. From that point on it become a non-issue any more.
Supply Raids has a new alternate mission type as well. You need to mark crates. I don’t bother with that. The reward just isn’t worth the trouble. Best to just take the 3-4 crates you can while controling the battles as well as you can and make it out of there alive.
Overall WoTC is very fun and adds many new layers and mechanics as well as some new mission types. After two runs on Commander I had lots of fun. There were a handful of hectic challenging fights. One had sit-rep scouted in an underground area. Three very difficult pods with Andies, Gatekeeper, Spectres and more just huddled up around the device I was to protect. Did lose one soldier there so that the others could make it out mostly unscathed.
Can’t wait to try Legendary. Never played on that difficulty before. Seeeing how easy WoTC makes the game. I feel ready for the leap 
Definately worth my money so far.
