Similar but different.

In the previous game there were 2 large zones, each with a hierarchy of sorts, and you moved your way through the various captains to take over the top.  Now there are 6 zones, and each Warlord controls a massive keep, with 3-4 chiefs.

I’ve cleared enough of zones for most of the sandbox to be present.  I still have a few skills unlocked by quests, but nothing that I can’t live without.  Shadow Dominate would be nice though…

Each map has a similar structure.  3 sub-areas that are controlled by specific Captains.  You run a small quest (poison 5 grogs, kill 10 archers) and he shows up.  Rarely alone.  Take him out and the sub-area is no longer controlled, saving some extra alarms and enemies.  There are more Nemesis quests (5-6) on the map at any time, putting one Captain against another.  The goal in all of this is to either kill or dominate the Captains.  The ones that are dominated can either assist you in a siege, be a bodyguard, or infiltrate the War Chiefs.

War Chiefs only come into play for the final siege mission.  They show up with their posse of Captains and make a right mess of things if you are not prepared.  The ones that have infiltrated can betray their chiefs, making combat a lot easier.  You can also draw out the War Chiefs in order to disable a specific defense (like strong walls, archers, defenders).  It is hard to dominate a War Chief since they are usually a few levels above you.  Taking them out does reduce the overall level of the siege, which is the really good part.

The most recent run was in Seregost.  I had dominated about 12 Captains, 5 of which infiltrated their chiefs.  I took the 4 call out missions to take out the chiefs and there was a lot of backstabbing going on.  I finally ran the siege and things went rather smoothly, all told.  The final Warlord was in a room of eternally spawning Caragors and Orcs.  He was enraged by almost anything too, so 2 hits and I was ready to kick the bucket.  I did manage to take him out with some strategic arrows and explosions, but it was a 10 minute battle.

Kill vs Dominate

Killing a captain gives you loot, dominating converts them to your side.  There’s a point where your loot gains have little overall benefit to the playstyle.  5 more hit points on 400 isn’t much.  In particular if you consider the secondary stats on some gear, such as elf-shots when you crit, or increased poison damage.

Dominating makes future battles easier, for two reasons.  First is that they can assist you in battle and betray their chiefs.  Super useful.  Second, if they are not dead, then they are not replaced with new Captains.

Plus, you’re going to end up killing a few Captains anyways along the way.  Either forced, or by accident.

Once you have the ability to dominate Captains, that’s what you should be aiming to do.

General Strategy

In 90% of the cases, it is best to have an in-out attack strategy.  Dominate a few archers, stealth attack the Captain, retreat, repeat.  There are some cases where it is not possible to stealth attack, or use arrows.  That requires some hefty fighting skills.

For those battles, you need:

• Double-jump – frozen attack.  Lets you jump over enemies  and freeze them.
• Counter – kill grunts.  Press counter at the right time to single shot a low level enemy.
• Elven light – fire attack.  Grunts are not immune to fire and this will take the large majority out
• Consume – chain attack.  Lets you dominate 3-4 orcs in a go.
• Shadow Strike.  Let’s you teleport to another grunt.  Great for quick escapes.  Uses 2 arrows.

I find the best route is to freeze/stun the Captain, then take out the grunts with some area attacks.

For fights with multiple Captains (most I’ve had so far was 4 at a time), you want to use the environment.  Poison some grog barrels, bait some traps, and Detonate some firepits.

Finally, as a general rule, you want to avoid an enraged Captain.  They attack twice as hard and twice as fast.

Finally had a chance to put some time in and there are some high level thoughts before I put in a meaty post.

• This remains a mash between the Batman series and Assassin’s Creed.
• Before you even control Talion, you’ve constructed and lost a new ring of power.  To Shelob.  Lore is taken behind the shed.
• Is it ok to not like any of the characters?  I don’t quite understand Talion’s motivations given that, ya know, he’s immortal and all.  He makes incredibly poor decisions.
• Shelob is neat.  Doesn’t at all match with the books, she plays heavily against type and lore, but as a foil, it works.
• As a side thought, if this had nothing to do with LOTR, it would be a much better game.  It’s like trope-city.
• The world is built more on vertical zones rather than the sprawl of the previous version.
• Moving around the world is a bit bumpy at first, until you get the double jump.  That’s after the 2nd main mission if I recall.  In fact, I recommend completing all the main missions on the first map before playing the sandbox portion.  You don’t get stronger, simply have more mobility.
• The game really doesn’t have any training wheels.  You are fighting captains within 5 minutes.
• Further lack of training wheels, the sub-systems in the game get complicated quickly and with little intro
• The time to kill (TTK) is rather high considering the amount of tools at hand to start.
• The Ubisoft problem of throwing tons of icons on the map is very present.  On the first map, within 5 minutes, you are overloaded with stuff and very little idea what it means.
• It appears that the same engine is being used, as it is not a graphical upgrade.  There’s more on screen mind you.
• There is much more focus on the bow here, at least in combat.  Many captains have some serious tweaks defensively and offensively that mean you should stay at range.
• Enemy archers are a massive pain.  They are hard to spot, and the vertical aspects of the zones make it hard to reach them.  Like mosquitoes that break your combo streak (and prevent use of special skills).
• Fire.  It’s like dropping a nuke on the field.  And it’s all over the place.
• There is a fluidity to combat and movement at the start here, that only showed up near the end in the previous game.  It is very nice.
• That said, there are dozens of buttons presses and situational attacks that can complicate your play.  You can certainly button mash with attack/retaliate, but you’ll never take down a captain that way.  The skill floor for progress is high.
• The side quests and gear upgrade mini-missions work well.  Really well actually.
• The main missions are less fun, as they break from the open world at various points.
• You collect elf words to make poems, to unlock doors, to access legendary gear.  Seriously.
• The first skill you should acquire is the “auto loot” one, at the end of the Wraith tree.  I do not understand why this is not a default skill.  I also do not understand what it has to do with Wraith powers.
• Captains appear with randomized stats.  That means there are very easy ones, and very hard ones.  I had one kill me in 1 hit due to the way he enraged and attacked, plus no ability to counter.  Intel seems more important than in the previous game, in order to avoid those situations.

If you play this as a game, then it’s a solid experience and easy to lose yourself in the sandbox.  If you play this as a LOTR story, woo are you in for disappointment.

From this interesting article, where the ESRB states that loot boxes are not gambling since you always get something.  In fact, they go on to compare it to collectible cards, where you may get a double, or a card you didn’t need.

The key argument here is the chance of loss in order for something to be considered gambling.  I can’t really think of any traditional gambling game where you leave with even a portion of your investment.  There’s no way to bet $20 on roulette and leave with something other than $0 or more than $20.  (This is not the argument around investments…)

Loss itself is an interesting thing to define.  I think most would associate loss to the concept of value.  You go into something with X value and leave with less than X.  Most times it relates to money, but there are certainly gambles that are not (like jumping out of an airplane and hoping the parachute opens).

The main issue I have is that it’s near impossible to provide a value metric against virtual goods.  It’s not a regulated market (it is a market), so an item in one game may be worth something different in another (like a name change).

It would be easy to argue that loot boxes provide no contextual value to a person, but not objectively.  If you already have that mount, then it has no value.  If you don’t, then it does.  If you’re in full epic gear, then more gear is useless.  So what loot boxes effectively do, is provide a floor value for virtual items.

This doesn’t dismiss the view point where the loot box is a way to reward a company for their efforts.  In that point, you’re actually always winning something, as the reward is the service you’re being provided.

Given that the both the objective value (the hat) and contextual value (the mount) typically have no value to me, I don’t use loot boxes.  In the case of F2P games, then my way to reward the dev is through anything but a loot box, first – like with Path of Exile or cosmetics in another game.  If there are no options, odds are it’s not a game I want to be playing (most mobile games).

All to say that I agree with the ESRB in their definition, as all loot boxes I’ve ever seen have something in them.  All those things have value to someone, so you’re getting something out of it.  People just need to assess what that value actually means to them.

Anyone can do this.  All you have to do is wait 3 months and pre-order patch 1.2! You get the full game, bug-free.

Snark aside, it remarkable how tolerant we gamers have become to shady business practices.  I’ve had my fair share of pre-orders in the past, though nowdays it seems everything has some sort of benefit tied into it.  Gamestop has a bonus mission for AC:Origins.  Mass Effect 3 had the playable Prothean as a pre-order.  I have a rule now, that any game that gives me additional content (not cosmetics) is not going to see a dime on regular priced material.  There are literally hundreds of other things I can play or do until some bargain bin sale comes around.

If you think about it, the only benefit pre-orders allow is that you can pre-download the game in order to play on day 1 (PC that is).    Does that even matter on a single player game?  I can sort of see multiplayer games, where you all want to play at the same time… but even then, the servers are likely going to get bombarded for the first few days.

I’ll give a recent example – For Honor.  Tons of hype.  The pre-launch videos were all smooth, and things looked engaging.  Pre-order gave you some extra customization skins (at least the base game version, ignoring Gold/Deluxe crud).  Then the early reviews came out.  They were generally negative, in particular around network connections and game balance.  Steam play has dropped by 95% now.  It lost 70% in the first month.

There are other examples: Evolve, Aliens Colonial Marines, SW Battlefront, Battleborn, AC3 & 5.

There’s always the argument that mutliplayer games need to be played on day 1.  Any multiplayer game that is half decent will not drop all players after a few weeks.  Any well-balanced multiplayer game will not make it so that veteran players completely outrank new players in PvP.  If you find a game where those statements are not true, then you’re playing a game you should not have paid for.

If anything, waiting 2 weeks will provide a better experience due to the “kitchen sink” patch that always comes out a few days after launch.

It’s just so much easier to put the money back into your wallet and wait a few more days.  At least the game will be playable by the time you join.

I like the cartoons, I dislike the movies.  Dislike may not be the correct word.  All the movies are identical in plot.  Humans stumble upon Transformers.  They are after some “ultimate” mcguffin that will save the world, Optimus will die, Megatron will be defeated, there’ll be some lady in skimpy clothes.  Done.

Most transformers games were garbage.  Hard to figure out why, given that it’s just robots on robots… and we’ve had plenty of those games.  The movies put in more energy to the games though, and 2+1 of them stood out.

War for Cybertron/Fall of Cybertron are 3rd person shooters on, yes, Cybertron.  Everything is technology, everyone can swap into some sort of vehicle, you can play both sides, the plot is as nonsensical as the cartoons, the set pieces are immense, and they are a complete blast to play through.  The first one has decent coop, the second one has tighter controls.  Plus, there’s something to be said about fighting against/as giant city robots.

They are maybe 8 hours a piece.  Not a terrible challenge, as there’s some auto-aim involved, headshots don’t seem to matter, and generally large hit boxes.  Good diversion games.

Transformer: Devastation is a different beast.  Here’s a vid from Total Biscuit on it, which covers a fair chunk.

The combat is high paced, but can get repetitive.  The zones also repeat themselves a bit.  The story is solid, the mechanics all seem to work.  It may be a bit short (about 5 hours without digging too much), but the fun factor is through the rough.  It feels a whole lot like the cartoon on the screen.

Overall, I consider it a better game than the previous two as it feels much harder to take a break.  At about $20 or less, it’s a great bargain.

I’m not cheap, I just like to compare.  Cheap is when you buy a tool for $25, knowing it will break after the job, when you could get a tool for $100 that will last forever.  Comparing is when you know what you want and try to find a better deal for it.  There’s always a deal somewhere, and there’s always the “big store” where anything can be found.

For PC games, that’s usually Steam.  Sure, they have their regular sales, and then the summer/winter bargain bins.  The rest of the time, they have games at a fair bit more than their competitors.

With XCOM2 done, I’m looking for something to spend the time until Destiny 2.  I recently finished up my 6 month playthrough of Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, and have a bit of time in Transformers: Devastation. Much different games, and I’ll talk about that in another post.

Right now, the 2 games that seem the most promising are Divinity 2 and Shadow of War.  Everyone seems to be raving about the former (and the 1st game was very good), and the latter has pre-reviews everywhere that are generally positive.  Up in igloo-land, prices aren’t too bad.  $54 for D2 and $80 for SoW on Steam.  Most A+ games are $70+.

I rarely pay $70+ for any game, unless it’s a dev I really want to support.  I can tell you that EA is not one of those devs.  Lo and behold, I check my promotions folder in gmail and found a GMG entry for SoW.  Super pre-order sale, plus more savings with a code.  It brought the price down to $38US, or more like $47 in icebucks.

Not exactly half-price but certainly a massive savings.  The downside here is that I have to wait until Tuesday to sink my teeth into it.  The upside is that it’s a long weekend here, celebrating the birth of Jean Poutine, and the annual tuque dog-sled races will keep me busy until then.  Sorry.

In fact, after the last post I was but 3 research days away from the last mission.  I just skipped all the other events and went full in.

You still need about 150 intel to fully stock the penultimate mission.  That gives you an extra soldier (for 4 total), stealth, some immunity, and larger vision range.  2 snipers took down everything and you just need to hack the final console to beat this mission.  I don’t really get it, considering the difficulty everywhere else.

The final mission is 2 zones.  First is a zone about twice the size of a regular mission… or at least it feels like it.  Advent to start, then moves through harder and harder enemies, ending with 2 Sectopod and 2 Advanced MEC.  That part was pretty easy, since the alien pods are so far apart.  A single sniper with Serial (free action after a kill shot) was able to take all 4 down.  Well, that was after my Avatar sent a null lance to take some hit points to start.  Things were looking pretty easy.  Ran through with 3 total damage taken.

Then the 2nd zone.  There are only 2 objectives here.  Don’t let the Avatar die.  Kill 3 enemy Avatar.  I figured… cake.

Wrong.

There is something about this particular zone that is broken.  Overwatch shots have a <50% chance to hit.  Any shot that is not a crit on an Avatar will graze.  The game actually crashed on me 4 times.  Twice it was due to detecting a vanished Spectre.  The first Avatar took a few more hits than it should have (all 6 guys) and I figured it was doable from that point.

Well, there are 6 teleport pads and they bring in all sorts of friends to the battle.  Actually moving forward is a horrible idea as I had 4 alien pods active at the same time.  Thankfully my Templar was at 3 energy, and was able to “tank” the enemy for a bit.  Enough to return their fired shots and be more or less immune to melee damage.  The enemy wanted to Mind Control someone else, thankfully.

Psionic Storm, a few Serial buffs to take out straggler, grenades, a blaster launcher, a claymore, Banish, a Mimic Beacon… you name it, I had to use it.  This was by far the hardest mission in the game and nearly everyone ended up taking damage.  This wasn’t due to poor planning, but more to some artificial balance mechanism to reduce my chance to hit.  Let me tell you, it is next to infuriating to miss a 100% chance shot, hit a console, blow it up, and take damage on your own soldier.  How does that even happen?

Anyhow, the last Avatar went down with a sword swipe and I was treated to the end credits.  The 3 factions get a 20 second end scene, Skirmishers with the more interesting one.

Overall package, the game is still highly recommended.  The power balance at the end is off, and I can only assume it’s worse if you had the alien hunters DLC.   Not much to do there.  There is always going to be some level of comfort in taking out aliens in XCOM.  I’m glad this run through brought back those feelings.

I’ve finished the Blacksite missions and the Codex brain missions, currently researching the final 2 steps.  These missions are designed to be done with regular weapons – maybe mags, if you play them when they show up.  I waited.  I tried to make it a bit harder with captains and sergeants, but that wasn’t enough to offset a full upgraded sniper rifle, with 4 extra ammo, 4 free reloads, bluescreen ammo and 20% chance to hit.  The sniper kills everything in 1 hit.  Killzone (overwatch shot on anything that moves) + 7 ammo + squadsight = clear a map.

I managed to take out the Warlock as well.  The first floor was oddly linear and my Ranger never broke stealth.  The 2nd floor, I think things just ended up perfect.

Two advent soldiers down in a turn.  I know where the trigger line is with the chosen (2 tiles past half), so I set up the team for an ambush.  He had the most hit points of all the Chosen but still went down in a single round thanks to a chain shot sniper.  That gave the rest of the team free shots on the sarcophagus.  End of round had a Codex and Advent soldier show up.  A serial sniper (keep shooting after kills) took care of those 2 and the rest of the team took down the sarcophagus.  Warlock came back at 40% health, went down in 1 melee strike.

I think now I’m just going to assume the game is complete and go through the motions.  Even with really bad RNG, the damage taken is maybe 3-4 days of recovery.  They are tired for longer.    The power scales have tipped a tad too much in my favor – and I think the root cause is amazing luck on breakthroughs.  I started off early with extra weapon damage, then extra mods.  I do understand that RNG has benefits and drawbacks, but I think there’s a missed opportunity here for some added failure that is not time based.

A few items that could have worked better:

• a separate tired system, with a method to accelerate returns.  Right now, it’s  just a number you have to wait out.  The templar base should address this.
• a more pronounced negative trait system that goes beyond panic.  Lower aim%, lower mobility, failed reload, missed grenades… that sort of stuff.
• Breakthroughs that are weighted against previous breakthroughs and have a cost other than time
• A reason to use a specialist beyond healing
• More mobility for enemy units so that they can close the gap, or pull you out of cover
• A way for a soldier to “tank up” and draw fire.  The AI uses proximity to determine threat
• Better use of enemy threats.  Every month they choose 3 to look at, and you can counter 1 through a guerrilla mission.  I never found them to be threatening.
• More use of the Lost.  They are certainly a challenge at low gear levels.  Sending 3-4 swarms to a high ranked mission is a great twist.  I had it happen a couple times… very entertaining

I think the next update on XCOM2 will be when I clear the final mission.

Rose colored glasses perhaps, but I recall fairly clearly the time I was forced to Skulljack a Codex and out popped an Avatar.  I lost nearly everyone on that mission due to the teleports and massive power that thing had.

Now though?  My sniper had serial with 3 free reloads, 100% hit rate across the map, and 50% critical rate, and he was 3 floors above everyone.  What does this mean?  It means that I skulljacked the Codex to start the round, that removed stealth from the team (minus Reaper & Ranger), spawned an Avatar, and somehow managed to trigger 2 alien pods (advent soldiers).  Oh, and it was a mission to take out an enemy general… who is continuously running away from you.

First hit was for 10 damage and shredded his 1 armor.  Teleported away from the main force, but my sniper could still see him.  22 damage and down.  Serial was activated, and that took out every other visible enemy.  Sniper had 8 kills in 1 turn.

Sure enough, the general had moved away, but not far enough from my Reaper.  Squadsight + grenade launcher on my Grenadier took away his cover and my sniper took him out in another shot.  Map over I thought.  But no, the Chosen Warlock showed up.  He can see through stealth and is immune to melee, so the Reaper and Ranger were useless for damage.  Guess who did all the work?

Don’t get me wrong.  A ranger with the Chosen katanas is a super beast.  They can walk all over a map with hidden Chryssalids and bladestorm each to death.  She took out 6.

My challenge right now is when I get a ton of pods open, and there’s at least 1 crazy enemy.  Like a Sectopod, or a Andromedon.  I’m a few missions away from the final Chosen battle.  I need to rest up a few folk first.  After that is complete, I’m pretty much just a walking chainsaw.

Psi Soldier

I think this is the one area of the game that has been neglected the most in all the DLC.  You still need a Psi Lab.  You still need to take that soldier out of rotation to train.  Training still takes many, many days.  It means that soldier never develops any bonds, and can’t do any covert ops.  Meta-wise, it means that you have very little experience actually using those skills, if they die you’ve lost months of in-game time and no way to accelerate a replacement, and your gameplay tactics are already set by the time one is available.

It is the least intuitive class in the game, which is too bad because they are also incredibly powerful.  I just won’t ever be using one this playthrough.