Xenonauts 2

[General Reign]

Finally came out. Anybody going to dip their feet in on this game that is still in Early Access I guess?

[Acrux]

I couldn't get into Xenonauts 1. Something just seemed off, but it's been a while so I don't remember what.

What is new with this game? Honestly, it looks identical to me.

[General Reign]

I couldn't get into Xenonauts 1. Something just seemed off, but it's been a while so I don't remember what.

What is new with this game? Honestly, it looks identical to me.

They changed a lot with interception apparently. It looks like the art is not as boring. I will be entirely honest I was counting on someone else to tell me all of that. I liked the last one but I did not beat it because at some point it just got boring - it needed more scripted events to shake things up on the world map. It's better than NuXcom but it's probably not as exciting...if they removed needing to equip mags for your troops I will be pissed.

I won't be picking this up for some time still because as a general practice I do not buy Early Access games.

[Emphyrio]

I couldn't get into Xenonauts 1. Something just seemed off, but it's been a while so I don't remember what.

It sucked.

[Atlantico]

I couldn't get into Xenonauts 1. Something just seemed off, but it's been a while so I don't remember what.

It sucked.

I loved it. Loved the strategy, art, humor, style and strategy. Excellent atmosphere and setting.

I am definitely buying Xenonauts 2

edit: bought

[General Reign]

I couldn't get into Xenonauts 1. Something just seemed off, but it's been a while so I don't remember what.

It sucked.

If someone is still happy with Open X-Com I can see that.

EARLY ACCESS REVIEW
POSTED: JULY 18
Xenonauts 2 is in a really difficult place, it fails to stand-apart from it's predecessor in significant enough ways for me to look past the lack of content, including what is available in-game currently as well as the dev's roadmap for their early access period.

That may be severely understating the point. This game does not in any way feel new, and I'm baffled this was in-development for 6-8 years as I'd struggle to assert I wasn't just playing Xenonauts 1 again, but in an upgraded engine with a new UI.
While playing through the campaign I kept waiting to find ANYTHING that I could unequivocally say was new, and that lasted until I completed all content available in the Early Access release (devs estimate EA contains 2/3 of the final game). So I'm back to wondering why this game even exists.

And then we get to the price: $40 USD
I cannot comprehend how they reached that as a valid price for this game or why their publisher didn't push-back more strongly against it. Outside of die-hard fans of the genre like me, who will play these XCOM games regardless, I cannot imagine recommending this game to a generalist strategy/tactics fan, and I'd much sooner tell someone to pick the first game up for $5 on sale than to spend 8x that for an incomplete, glorified patch of the same game.


....

Damn.

[Lucky]

EARLY ACCESS REVIEW
POSTED: JULY 18
Xenonauts 2 is in a really difficult place, it fails to stand-apart from it's predecessor in significant enough ways for me to look past the lack of content, including what is available in-game currently as well as the dev's roadmap for their early access period.

That may be severely understating the point. This game does not in any way feel new, and I'm baffled this was in-development for 6-8 years as I'd struggle to assert I wasn't just playing Xenonauts 1 again, but in an upgraded engine with a new UI.
While playing through the campaign I kept waiting to find ANYTHING that I could unequivocally say was new, and that lasted until I completed all content available in the Early Access release (devs estimate EA contains 2/3 of the final game). So I'm back to wondering why this game even exists.

And then we get to the price: $40 USD
I cannot comprehend how they reached that as a valid price for this game or why their publisher didn't push-back more strongly against it. Outside of die-hard fans of the genre like me, who will play these XCOM games regardless, I cannot imagine recommending this game to a generalist strategy/tactics fan, and I'd much sooner tell someone to pick the first game up for $5 on sale than to spend 8x that for an incomplete, glorified patch of the same game.


....

Damn.

This seems to confirm the impression I got from watching a video of it. It looked to me more like "Xenonauts 1.5" than a proper sequel and a lot of the reviews seem to be implying the same thing.

I honestly have no idea what they've spent almost-a-decade doing.

[Emphyrio]

I was playing Xeno 1 from its own early access period. This story is familiar. IIRC the lead dev (Chris) is not a programmer. The original programmer made the game in a 2D engine before he left. The lead dev was always whining about how much faster Xeno 1 could be completed if only he had made it in a 3-D engine with 3-D models instead of sprites.

[Atlantico]

I was playing Xeno 1 from its own early access period. This story is familiar. IIRC the lead dev (Chris) is not a programmer. The original programmer made the game in a 2D engine before he left. The lead dev was always whining about how much faster Xeno 1 could be completed if only he had made it in a 3-D engine with 3-D models instead of sprites.

I've been playing X2 for the last couple of days and yeah it's best described as Xenonauts Remastered. The 2D sprites had a lot of charm to them, but the 3D isn't without charm and it is minimal. It basically looks 2D but is 3D and I like that.

The gameplay is more polished, but not dumbed down. They've added some new types of missions, which is fine.

The one thing that is grating is the "current year" political correctness, which has seeped into the game. Fortunately mods can fix it, and I'm talking about flags. This is in an alternate reality where the Cold War never ended — and I love that — but some flags are post Cold War, like South Africa and for whatever reason the Ukraine SSR has the Soviet flag but isn't part of the Soviet map. It's in "Europe" along with Crimea.

Even so, good game because X1 was a good game. This is more of the same, but polished.

IIRC the lead dev is basically the only permanent employee of the Goldhawk Entertainment and he just sources whatever he needs or can't do himself from third parties. Effectively this is a one-man operation.

[Emphyrio]

What I didn't like about Xenonauts 1 was how limited and on-rails it was. There was *one* playstyle that you were supposed to use, the tacticool swat man style, and Chris ruthlessly eliminated anything that wasn't that. I quit playing when he nerfed RPGs so that they couldn't one-shot aliens anymore.

[Atlantico]

What I didn't like about Xenonauts 1 was how limited and on-rails it was. There was *one* playstyle that you were supposed to use, the tacticool swat man style, and Chris ruthlessly eliminated anything that wasn't that. I quit playing when he nerfed RPGs so that they couldn't one-shot aliens anymore.

No worse than JA2

[Atlantico]

The more I think about it, I am convinced I am correct.

X2 and JA2 are basically the same genre. Squad based tactical games with an overarching survival management strategy. Good stuff.

[Eyestabber]

X1 was a very mediocre game whose saving grace was being highly moddable. In the vanilla game you can't make your own door on ships, you must always attack via the dev approved angle and psionics are a big "HAHA, FUCK YOU" with zero counter play. Not to mention the little things mods fixed. Without any mods X1 is a 6/10 on a good day. I remember playing a demo for X2 and enjoying it quite a bit, but now I look at screenshots and everything is different, like WTF? Did they just scrap whatever version I played and started over? Reviews for X2 paint a bleak picture, but we'll have to wait and see.

EDIT: oh, they teamed up with Hooded Horse? That's a nice little coincidence.

[Atlantico]

X1 was a very mediocre game whose saving grace was being highly moddable. In the vanilla game you can't make your own door on ships, you must always attack via the dev approved angle and psionics are a big "HAHA, FUCK YOU" with zero counter play. Not to mention the little things mods fixed. Without any mods X1 is a 6/10 on a good day. I remember playing a demo for X2 and enjoying it quite a bit, but now I look at screenshots and everything is different, like WTF? Did they just scrap whatever version I played and started over? Reviews for X2 paint a bleak picture, but we'll have to wait and see.

Seems like nerdrage to me. You could describe any Bethesda game the same way, saved by modders.

Sure X1 was frustrating at times because like the original X-Com the firing line was not the same as the line of sight. That's been changed in X2 and you and the opponent have the exact same line of sight/fire. If you can't shoot them, they can't shoot you. So far there's no unfair psionics in X2, but there are punishing psionics.

This is what it used to look like with destructible UFO walls:



This is what it looks like *now* with custom UFOs and non-destructible walls:



Having both is beyond the capabilities of the dev, so we'll get one or the other in the end. That being said, I think the game looks far far better now than in the early screenshot so I'm not surprised the game looks different to you. It's way better looking and not janky. Even so, it's obviously "the same version".