I save the world again, just as I have saved a dozen times. I have taken over another group of ragdoll soldiers and scientists, and once again frantically crawled back and forth on a horrifying planet in response to terrifying reports that strange creatures launched a terrorist attack. I've been cleaning up their weapons, analyzing their biology, and reverse engineering their technology. The fate of human destiny fell on the shoulders of fewer soldiers in the classroom, while the invisible, invisible people were probably behind them, shouldering their burdens, repairing their weapons, healing their wounds, and in every situation The bloody sweatshirt was washed at the end of the suburban skirmish.
Even if a wider network exists around this few heroes (perhaps including technical support for radar, compilation of budget breakdowns and access to administrators and human resources), there will be no more than a hundred people supporting the last, greatest hope of humanity To cope with such a huge mysterious threat. Phoenix Point is loyal to its close cousins' X-COM and XCOM lineages, and fundamentally, it again involves guerrilla tactics. A small squad of strong soldiers overturned a larger, slower unit, turning its tools and equipment to the unit, and eventually found and cut its head. The key to this motivation is the key to these guerrilla tactics, which is motivation. Its rhythm and progress.
The real meaning is the journey, not the destination, and the friends you make along the way. In this case, these friends can include bigger weapons, angry crossfire, and exciting revelations. I don't remember how I completed the X-COM series games, but I remember there are many examples of this: I first encountered a particular alien, found key information, or got into a fierce battle. Phoenix Point brings back all those exciting stimulating sensations and provides mild seasonings for some very familiar flavors. I was surprised by its surprise, its development attracted me, and I was bored with another cleanup task, where I waited for the last enemy to appear suddenly.
Phoenix Dot was released after long-term frozen alien virus releases caused global mutations and madness, and it not only lets you try to understand how to cope with this doomsday change, but also understands why your Phoenix plan And the secret group that was created) has completely collapsed. It seems that you are the last unit of a powerful and protective organization.
The world is factional, and the first of those familiar X-COM styles is the subtlety of X-COM: Apocalypse. When you appear, blink, and walk into a world plagued by new trends in climate change and tentacles moving towards everything, you will encounter three distinct ways of acquiring: by discovering religion, embracing new ecology, or just making Bigger guns. Exploring as a blank planet at first, your vehicle will bounce around in real time between each spot found, and then gradually draw a decentralized network of survivors. Call any of them and you can trade resources, hire new employees or even steal their lunch.
These factions put you in line to ask about you, make requests to perform tasks, and vaguely remind them of hot trends in post-apocalyptic branding. Although everyone gets along well at first, everyone is caught up in offensive grievances against others, so it will inevitably escalate. They urge you to support and provide their technology. Any action or opinion considered to be beneficial to one person inevitably frustrates others. If humans do not transform themselves, it will not be the end of the world.
In this shattered world, your ongoing exploration is closer to XCOM 2 than any other game in the series, which makes you a hungry itinerant voyager who, despite the risk of excessive tension, is far from home. In addition to discovering more settlements, you will find supply caches, a small number of key plots, and a large number of past relics. Some suspicious things happened, and through all of them, the salty taste of the series classic "Terror from the Abyss" appeared. Why do many people step into the sea? What is in the eroding mist that is gradually invading the interior? Is it really worthwhile to equip your squad with melee weapons?
I'm very picky about the screenshots and plots shared here, because with the introduction of new elements, the game slowly reveals its backstory matches, and both are very satisfying. Just as you find another type of soldier to recruit, another section of the plot is filled. You bring new weapons to the battlefield just before you face a moment that makes more sense than anything you haven't seen before. The game is constantly upgrading, at least to a certain extent, and I really don't want to spoil some very cool moments.
Those turn-based battlefields give X-COM and XCOM a firm feel. The modern expressions interpreted by Firaxis satisfy the diversity and fragility of the 1994 original. Yes, you can cheer up in your spare time, so don't worry about no one on the team watching the enemy. If you suspect scaly and wet things inside, there's nothing to stop you from blindly shooting mid-range distances, throwing grenades at the corners or leveling buildings with heavy weapons. Damn it honestly, it feels good to bring a heavy artillery to the town. When a faction urgently needs a spare, the X-COM in 1994 repeats itself again, because you broke the original material without any punishment. As long as everyone is alive.
Whenever you see an enemy's wood, squinting and deciding whether to shoot their heads first, legs or even a weapon in their hands, this is obvious fun. The crosshairs shrink when you control an experienced sniper and shoot a foot under the shield of a crab-like creature. Then, your assault police officer struck violently with two shotguns, chopped a nearby tree in half, and blew up some abandoned gas canisters. It's a normal day for Phoenix Point employees, and despite warnings about all these excitement, sometimes the third person camera blesses you with some really scary and totally incomprehensible angles.
Combat mixes older mechanics with newer mechanics to provide delicious packaging. We can learn about the cover system, different categories and specific functions from modern XCOM, and can move more freely to earlier X-COM. If technicians are sitting at the same location, they can shoot four times, or proportional to the proportion of them running around. Experienced assault soldiers can unlock unique sprint moves, while your heavy weapon soldiers quickly burst out of the air from their fighter-specific jetpack.
All of them are distributed in two different currencies. The main points of a soldier's action determine the number of points they can run and shoot, but most special abilities are triggered by the main points of the will, which will gradually increase with experience. The will point is also the morale of the soldier, who was killed by seeing a friend's death or trauma, replenished by taking a quick break or destroying the enemy. This is simple and effective, greatly limiting the number of party tricks you can urge everyone to perform. At the same time, this also provides many important opportunities for both to prevail. For example, snipers need two will points to reduce the cost of the next shot, which provides the possibility that they spent points of action to shoot and then monitor them. They cannot perform this combination indefinitely, but at critical moments this is the right way to use limited resources.
So you did that, and when your constantly oppressed soldiers began to get hurt in the same positions as the enemies you blasted off their limbs, they started to get angry and doubtful. Is that person just guessing their order? Maybe, but they did lose the loss of an arm and the ability to launch strange rocket launchers.
There are also opportunities for cross-category combinations. Skilled snipers such as assault raids, and carefully arranged and customized roster, start to fill up weird experts from other factions, which is fascinating and sometimes fun. Although it is possible to call heavy weapons by the name of a close friend again so that you can tell them how they bombed a large number of alien eggs last night, I did miss statistics on the number of soldiers killed and the mission. Ongoing and records of those lost in the ongoing struggle.
Phoenix Point makes all these detailed marksmanship games so satisfying, because as the rhythm of the game develops, you will find yourself fighting many similar skirmishes over and over again. Shooting things is fun in and of itself, but the broad background of small class tactics is not that exciting. The enemy AI is most interested in approaching you and firing, and its flanks are more caused by its initial deployment than by any situational awareness. The power of the enemy will not greatly change your strategy, including the now very familiar mind control, smoke screen, invisible things, and sometimes sticky to everyone. Hold your ground, enter Overwatch mode or steadily and systematically advance into a reliable and mundane strategy, and the deadliest counterattack you face is simple digital weights. As you might expect, this can be offset by finding and making bigger guns, but later battles are becoming more and more like attrition.
The pacemaker at Phoenix Point is here. Faced with increasing tensions between factions and growing small-scale conflicts, plot development may slow down. The time for more conflicts will only highlight their AI deficiencies and growing wear and tear, which means those familiar tastes will start to become overripe and stale. This forcing forward continues to be a powerful game, and the game will keep your interest, but its sparks have indeed weakened.
It can be said that every game in its lineage encountered this problem at a certain stage. As the demand for basic, combat and bottom line management increased, new games were discovered and eager to solve. For some players, this means never sailing in the endgame and the finale, but many of us indiscriminately find ourselves eventually hailed as the savvy savior of our loose little species. I don't think the situation at Phoenix Point will be much different. Phoenix Point is a commendable new concept. It is a concept that has been tried and tested so much. It is a classic formula with some fresh twists and turns. It has the right place in the industry, whether it is standing above the head or shoulders, there is no important indicator.
Playing Phoenix Point has been a strong impetus for my past, and has allowed me to experience 25 years of nostalgia for fighting aliens. And, if I still find myself back, and keen to blast the floor away from another horrible horror at the moment I finish this review, then you know it's more than right. Even if I never come to an end, I will still enjoy the journey, and the friends (soldiers) I met along the way (renamed my friends).
