L/I post-gampaign report + some feedback
Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 10:00 pm
http://i.imgur.com/W4kR0NQ.jpg
Game number 23, 235 hours logged in steam after release of LW2, not sure how much of it AFK. 7th actual attempt (not counting several late march/early april restarts due to poor scientist/engineer RNG). Initially i wanted to have completely blind playthrough but gave up. Didnt touch the DLC items/content
1st try
Blind attempt, lasted only few hours and was a trainwreck that ended in mid-april.
2nd try
(still relatively blind), made it to early may and lost campaign due to trying sub-50% infiltration rescue engineer VIP, had 4 scientists and only 1 engineer.
3rd try
Actually looked up stuff about infiltration mechanics etc. and found out that "moderate" actually means swarming^2 in LW1 terms if you count the reinforcements. Also started stealthing prisoner rescues. This story ended entirely due to early reinforcement DE in june/july, absolutely fucked up several missions and i gave up after losing 10+ guys during the month (this was still during the yellow alert reinforcement "feature").
4th try
First "actual attempt" (as in progressed in liberations or main storyline). Made it to mid or late july, half of A-team utterly destroyed by trying to take my time with first network tower... shortly after that the rest were wiped by 0% infiltration supply raid gone wrong (a guy flanked and killed by yellow alert pod, lead to 2 panics and rest is predictable).
5th try
Absolutely awful campaign that ended in august, terrible luck with DEs... had the intel one, faceless one, venom rounds and several others back to back. Took me over 3 months to gather intel to progress to blacksite location, lost the entirety of B-team and 2 regions during 30d infiltration and upon starting the mission i proceeded to safely camp in a corner. When i eventually begun moving towards the vial the HIDDEN TIMER expired and pods of 8 started raining upon me, needless to say i lost everyone before i saw the vial and took a 2 day break from LW2.
Before starting my next campaign i researched absolutely everything i could about the game and watched severals hours of streams and vods (shoutouts especially to JoINrbs)
6th try
Started abusing the hell out of stealthing and threw enjoyment into the garbage bin, also stopped completely using technicals and only had a couple assaults early on for specific missions (like network tower rush with lasers). In addition i found out the hard way that liberating regions early on is completely pointless since the region defense missions are nigh-impossible without getting lucky with civilian placement. At this point i was heavily abusing supply raids and rarely bothered with unstealthable combat missions after the laser-rush momentum wore off. Arguably my best run but i lost it all in october Forge, tried to stealth my 10man team across the bridge when things "looked" quiet and got ambushed by half of the map in 2 turns, including archon king, one of the most painful losses of my long war career.
7th and final attempt
- 0 (zero) (none) random combat missions with infiltration requirement after the early exo-suit+laser momentum wore off, only sustained 1 fully decked out A-team.
- Manned practically 100% of infiltrateable stealth missions (except VIP escorts that didnt have scientist/engineer reward). A lot of them failed or had too dangerous container/whatever location and therein lies the reason for my 20% failure rate of missions.
- Ran ridiculous amounts of supply raids with cheesy 2-3 sharpshooter 3 gunner, 2 ranger comps.
- More than 50% of my very high casualty count was shinobis, with 20ish-% being specialists and rest normal combat losses. I also had only 1 living Msgt shinobi officer for the last mission (who was powerleveled by 3 man stealthing 3 facilities).
- None of my technicals saw any use outside haven missions. Assaults (except 1 assault with amazing AWC perks) saw also relatively little use after network tower and laser/exo powerup. Unless you count the 2 black market suicide-smg-tank-assaults for risky stealthing purposes.
- Was still missing andromedon corpse by the end of the game.
- Supply gathering is a waste of resources unless you have capped rebels in haven, you are going to need a lot of rookies and a lot of intel.
breaching charges are incrediby useful.
- Did not invest any resources into PSI during my last 2 runs.
Compared to long war 1 this left me with a sour taste in my mouth. While long war 1 has its small issues like the endgame farm that drags on for a bit too long... Long war 2 just seems to have more fundamental issues and i dont see myself replaying this again unless more tactical combat-oriented approach gets heavily incentivized.
Strategic layer feels mostly fine and pacing of the campaign is good but the endless one-dimensional stealthing minigame gets extremely tiresome after few dozens of hours. I completed the Blacksite and Forge missions both with 3 shinobis and assuming you take your time, have breaching charges and have the conceal perk on all of them, its practically impossible to fail. Those 2 missions + the liberation-chain network towers (these are largely depend on pod-RNG) also seem to be the only 3 "necessary" extremely difficult missions in the game, all thanks to HIDDEN TIMERS that ruined 2 of my earlier attempts. The rest of the missions can be safely skipped at will. And I absolutely have to point out that i do think the timer fits the Blacksite and Forge missions since they are essentially covert operations, it just MUST BE MADE OBVIOUS that you are working against a timer after breaking concealment.
During my victorious run i completed 0 troop columns, 0 protect device or destroy relay missions (after laser/exo advantage expired) and 2 or 3 sabotage monument missions (in specific regions). I also captured 0 enemy VIP's (easiest missions to stealth with sharpshooter+shinobi+specialist) and i saw 0 landed UFO-missions during my campaigns, are they even a thing anymore? And thanks to late game avatar progression barrage and endless crippling DEs its both impossible and stupid to even attempt researching plasma weapons.
Last but not least, sound mechanics often lead to entire map being pulled which largely renders offensive grenadiers a very situational class after early game and makes technical even more more awful option than it already was. Plus i think the yellow alert is the most infuriating and unfair mechanic ive ever experienced in a turn-based strategy game.
All that being said i still greatly enjoyed LW2 for close to 200 hours and the infiltration mechanics conceptually feel truly unique. The majority of issues can be fixed by careful rebalancing and 0% supply raids need to be radically changed, maybe slightly buffing the rewards and making them comparable to LW1 landed larges in rarity... so that they become a calculated risk that might require infiltration abortions instead of being your bread and butter that takes half of your campaign gameplay time.
Game number 23, 235 hours logged in steam after release of LW2, not sure how much of it AFK. 7th actual attempt (not counting several late march/early april restarts due to poor scientist/engineer RNG). Initially i wanted to have completely blind playthrough but gave up. Didnt touch the DLC items/content
1st try
Blind attempt, lasted only few hours and was a trainwreck that ended in mid-april.
2nd try
(still relatively blind), made it to early may and lost campaign due to trying sub-50% infiltration rescue engineer VIP, had 4 scientists and only 1 engineer.
3rd try
Actually looked up stuff about infiltration mechanics etc. and found out that "moderate" actually means swarming^2 in LW1 terms if you count the reinforcements. Also started stealthing prisoner rescues. This story ended entirely due to early reinforcement DE in june/july, absolutely fucked up several missions and i gave up after losing 10+ guys during the month (this was still during the yellow alert reinforcement "feature").
4th try
First "actual attempt" (as in progressed in liberations or main storyline). Made it to mid or late july, half of A-team utterly destroyed by trying to take my time with first network tower... shortly after that the rest were wiped by 0% infiltration supply raid gone wrong (a guy flanked and killed by yellow alert pod, lead to 2 panics and rest is predictable).
5th try
Absolutely awful campaign that ended in august, terrible luck with DEs... had the intel one, faceless one, venom rounds and several others back to back. Took me over 3 months to gather intel to progress to blacksite location, lost the entirety of B-team and 2 regions during 30d infiltration and upon starting the mission i proceeded to safely camp in a corner. When i eventually begun moving towards the vial the HIDDEN TIMER expired and pods of 8 started raining upon me, needless to say i lost everyone before i saw the vial and took a 2 day break from LW2.
Before starting my next campaign i researched absolutely everything i could about the game and watched severals hours of streams and vods (shoutouts especially to JoINrbs)
6th try
Started abusing the hell out of stealthing and threw enjoyment into the garbage bin, also stopped completely using technicals and only had a couple assaults early on for specific missions (like network tower rush with lasers). In addition i found out the hard way that liberating regions early on is completely pointless since the region defense missions are nigh-impossible without getting lucky with civilian placement. At this point i was heavily abusing supply raids and rarely bothered with unstealthable combat missions after the laser-rush momentum wore off. Arguably my best run but i lost it all in october Forge, tried to stealth my 10man team across the bridge when things "looked" quiet and got ambushed by half of the map in 2 turns, including archon king, one of the most painful losses of my long war career.
7th and final attempt
- 0 (zero) (none) random combat missions with infiltration requirement after the early exo-suit+laser momentum wore off, only sustained 1 fully decked out A-team.
- Manned practically 100% of infiltrateable stealth missions (except VIP escorts that didnt have scientist/engineer reward). A lot of them failed or had too dangerous container/whatever location and therein lies the reason for my 20% failure rate of missions.
- Ran ridiculous amounts of supply raids with cheesy 2-3 sharpshooter 3 gunner, 2 ranger comps.
- More than 50% of my very high casualty count was shinobis, with 20ish-% being specialists and rest normal combat losses. I also had only 1 living Msgt shinobi officer for the last mission (who was powerleveled by 3 man stealthing 3 facilities).
- None of my technicals saw any use outside haven missions. Assaults (except 1 assault with amazing AWC perks) saw also relatively little use after network tower and laser/exo powerup. Unless you count the 2 black market suicide-smg-tank-assaults for risky stealthing purposes.
- Was still missing andromedon corpse by the end of the game.
- Supply gathering is a waste of resources unless you have capped rebels in haven, you are going to need a lot of rookies and a lot of intel.
breaching charges are incrediby useful.
- Did not invest any resources into PSI during my last 2 runs.
Compared to long war 1 this left me with a sour taste in my mouth. While long war 1 has its small issues like the endgame farm that drags on for a bit too long... Long war 2 just seems to have more fundamental issues and i dont see myself replaying this again unless more tactical combat-oriented approach gets heavily incentivized.
Strategic layer feels mostly fine and pacing of the campaign is good but the endless one-dimensional stealthing minigame gets extremely tiresome after few dozens of hours. I completed the Blacksite and Forge missions both with 3 shinobis and assuming you take your time, have breaching charges and have the conceal perk on all of them, its practically impossible to fail. Those 2 missions + the liberation-chain network towers (these are largely depend on pod-RNG) also seem to be the only 3 "necessary" extremely difficult missions in the game, all thanks to HIDDEN TIMERS that ruined 2 of my earlier attempts. The rest of the missions can be safely skipped at will. And I absolutely have to point out that i do think the timer fits the Blacksite and Forge missions since they are essentially covert operations, it just MUST BE MADE OBVIOUS that you are working against a timer after breaking concealment.
During my victorious run i completed 0 troop columns, 0 protect device or destroy relay missions (after laser/exo advantage expired) and 2 or 3 sabotage monument missions (in specific regions). I also captured 0 enemy VIP's (easiest missions to stealth with sharpshooter+shinobi+specialist) and i saw 0 landed UFO-missions during my campaigns, are they even a thing anymore? And thanks to late game avatar progression barrage and endless crippling DEs its both impossible and stupid to even attempt researching plasma weapons.
Last but not least, sound mechanics often lead to entire map being pulled which largely renders offensive grenadiers a very situational class after early game and makes technical even more more awful option than it already was. Plus i think the yellow alert is the most infuriating and unfair mechanic ive ever experienced in a turn-based strategy game.
All that being said i still greatly enjoyed LW2 for close to 200 hours and the infiltration mechanics conceptually feel truly unique. The majority of issues can be fixed by careful rebalancing and 0% supply raids need to be radically changed, maybe slightly buffing the rewards and making them comparable to LW1 landed larges in rarity... so that they become a calculated risk that might require infiltration abortions instead of being your bread and butter that takes half of your campaign gameplay time.