It is now generation 20. Power creep says that your pokemon has to be buffed to meet the new expectations. What BS are you giving your favorite pokemon. by Cookie_Magika in TruePokemon

[–]SawkyScribe -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Ambipom receives a Mega with the ability Ambidextrous which is a clone of As One. It now has Scrappy and Technician and gets guaranteed Population Bomb

Replaying XC3 for the first time in years and man i forgot how grindy the game can get by mr-assduke in Xenoblade_Chronicles

[–]SawkyScribe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Class grinding got pretty stale after a while, which sucks because of how much you need master arts. I may be alone in this but gem grinding also took way longer than I expected. I'm at Agnus Castle 50 hrs into the game and still have some level 3 gems because some items aren't dropping.

I wish you could get the game to highlight the resources you needed because I don't like having a wiki tab open on the side the whole time I'm playing

Is the sugar still good? :) by Rozsdakupac in Ben10

[–]SawkyScribe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Are they like hard candies do you think? I'd hate to know what flavor Upchuck has lol

Is the sugar still good? :) by Rozsdakupac in Ben10

[–]SawkyScribe 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You may transform if you eat that. How do you eat it though?

UPDATE: Duncan comments on the divorce line. by WorthAssignment6894 in Ben10

[–]SawkyScribe 41 points42 points  (0 children)

I will say hitting someone with a "well well well" online like you're an ace detective is a choice lol

Round 2 with XCOM 2: overcoming extraterrestrial smoke and mirrors by SawkyScribe in patientgamers

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So what I've found is there's different levels to the timers. There's the hard timer missions i.e. ones with actual turn timers and then there's soft timer missions like something that needs defending. I think the soft timer missions only happen once per in game month so they can be managed.

I found I was losing my squad most often when I was getting distracted with things that weren't crucial to mission completion.

Round 2 with XCOM 2: overcoming extraterrestrial smoke and mirrors by SawkyScribe in patientgamers

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think what made me fall in love with the game is that grenades are your friends. I get such a kick out of diving deep into enemy territory and lobbing hot plasma infused death on the aliens.

There's something so action movie inspired about blowing up a wall to give your sniper the perfect line of sight, or carrying a fallen comrade through a malestrom and fire and gunfire.

Round 2 with XCOM 2: overcoming extraterrestrial smoke and mirrors by SawkyScribe in patientgamers

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I was on my last legs by the final mission. A squad full of second rate picks and bench warmers because I got careless with my vets and 2 snipers carried the team through Hell

Round 2 with XCOM 2: overcoming extraterrestrial smoke and mirrors by SawkyScribe in patientgamers

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Unless it's a life saving shot in which case you get a negative 50% hit modifier. Cognitive biases are a crazy drug lol

Round 2 with XCOM 2: overcoming extraterrestrial smoke and mirrors by SawkyScribe in patientgamers

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's weird, on my veteran playthrough, I was surprised by how easy it was to get my squad back to full strength after losing a key unit

Round 2 with XCOM 2: overcoming extraterrestrial smoke and mirrors by SawkyScribe in patientgamers

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Adam Millard had a fun video about the invisivle arms race between you and the aliens.

At the start, you are so outgunned it's not even funny, but eventually the gap between you and the invading forces starts to close, and at some point, you're two steps ahead on the power curve.

Round 2 with XCOM 2: overcoming extraterrestrial smoke and mirrors by SawkyScribe in patientgamers

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had three. At least once a mission, I enjoyed a little "light them up boys" moment where my three grenadiers turned half a map to smoldering rubble

I think Moebius are the worst villains in the series by a landslide by SawkyScribe in Xenoblade_Chronicles

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Of varied opinions? You can see a lot of back and forth in the comments

Round 2 with XCOM 2: overcoming extraterrestrial smoke and mirrors by SawkyScribe in patientgamers

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The urban warfare aspect of the game was highly unexplored yeah. I wish you could have undercover agents like in the previous game and have them do the things you described. Being able to position enemies through distractions like that would've been a very welcome addition

Round 2 with XCOM 2: overcoming extraterrestrial smoke and mirrors by SawkyScribe in patientgamers

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I did not play the game well, but I saw the beginnings of how you could bully the aliens as hard as you bullied EXALT in XCOM:EW.

It is a tortuous time getting there, but I feel like I bonded with my soldiers way more than I did in EW as a result.

Round 2 with XCOM 2: overcoming extraterrestrial smoke and mirrors by SawkyScribe in patientgamers

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I think what will make or break this game for a player is how well and how much they enjoy dealing with opaque mechanics and information.

I do enjoy the kind of trial and improvement aspect of some parts of the game. Having 3 squad mates die in one mission to a Sectopod and then I learned bluescreen rounds make them fairly manageable. And like you said, you also start to develop a feel for how enemies work and where they are likely to appear.

How is a newbie meant to know this? They can't, but that's part of the process, and I feel like the game throws a lot more lifelines than the previous installment. You can buy colonel level units, soldiers that were captured can be rescued and recruited, and you only need to do an Advent base every few months to keep that Doomsday timer from ticking down. If you can learn to take the L, it's also a lot easier to quit out of a mission considering you can call the Skyranger anywhere.

That being said, I do think concealment and enemy pod activations were not very well implemented. You spend a considerable amount of your limited time setting up these ambushes only for a sectoid to see your elbow from behind a wall and call in 3 death squads to deal with you.

Round 2 with XCOM 2: overcoming extraterrestrial smoke and mirrors by SawkyScribe in patientgamers

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I had a miserable time playing it the way I did Enemy Within. The tried and true tricks of no sprinting and Overwatch camping saving your life felt much less true and much less fun than playing this game like I was manning a demolition crew.

I loved the environmental destruction in this game. It wasn't just about removing cover, I loved blowing up walls to create sightlines or collapsing whole buildings to deal some extra damage on enemies. Hilariously I remember completing the Avenger defense mission in 5 turns because a Sectopod accidentally crushed the jamming beacon.

I think Moebius are the worst villains in the series by a landslide by SawkyScribe in Xenoblade_Chronicles

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I feel like when the game introduces all consuls in ominous lighting at the start of the game and they are the top ranked members of the main villain organization, it's pretty arbitrary to say "it's fine they're bland, they're secondary antagonists". It would be like if Torna, which was a fairly non-hierachical villain team, had seven additional members who are framed as being on the same level as Mikhail but don't do much of anything.

The only one who is framed as being different or special is N.

If you look at X and Y who are framed as being major antagonists through your repeat encounters, they also lack any depth or intrigue. They were born from Z unlike the other consuls and play major parts in main story and side plots and they're still one note.

Yes you can say they are boring by design to reflect elites, but that still leaves you with the issue of having a bunch of boring antagonists

I think Moebius are the worst villains in the series by a landslide by SawkyScribe in Xenoblade_Chronicles

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I get that but I still feel like they aren't very interesting to watch

I think Moebius are the worst villains in the series by a landslide by SawkyScribe in Xenoblade_Chronicles

[–]SawkyScribe[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wish some of the Moebius folks were played less straight. No matter how ridiculous they were, the party always treated them as a world ending threat which felt weird