Game who is stuck in the past
I remember when first I had played UFO1. I was blasted with a variety and freedom game had to offer. I never experienced original UFO series while having only modern firaxis xcom as a point of reference. I had loved the original and I had made many memorable experiences with it. However, while UFO: Extraterrestrials was still perfectly acceptable in 2008 when it was released and in 10’s with all its patches and mods, UFO 2 however remained stuck in the past. It feels like a game which should had been released a decade ago. What once was exciting and interesting now feels archaic and primitive.
Main changes
The main changes are dynamic lighting and 3D engine. While game does feel superior to its predecessor, it is also such a small increment in game quality that it is barely noticeable. 3D models are as ugly as they can be and while lighting exists, game does not take any advantage of it. Night battles feel identical to day fighting. Light sources do not illuminate surrounding areas. There is no real darkness and night vision. An engine improvement is both unrefined and hardly matters.
Gameplay
Bugs
- I had sent many bug reports to devs only to get radio silence. I was encountering some bug every time I would sit to play. Some bugs are persistent like basic sign sprites being rendered on the ground. Others can be quite hilarious as completing first map in an end mission with a single shot, by destroying alien generator with a mortar and bypassing a need to get keys all together. Other bugs are not as funny like impossible to research tech being shown to you or being hard locked from researching most end game stuff.
Item Variety - Game has very little variety in its weapons. Your troops do not have anything to use. You start with a basic rocket launcher, you end with a basic rocket launcher, but with using specialized ammo which despite being specialized is better in every way. I started with basic rifle and ended up last mission using basic rifles, but instead of using 5.56 mm ammunition, I swapped for 7.62 mm ammunition. What an exciting research path, something as mundane as higher caliber ammunition needs to be researched and manufactured!
The only new weapon early to mid game is basic photon beamer which every alien uses. It is heavy, inaccurate and requires a lot of action points to use. I do not know what mod designers did to balance this game, but he did a shoddy job at it. This weapon is introduced very early on into the game and requires mid to late game stats to use effectively and even then, it is barely better than a base weapon. It does not become an upgrade until you get heavy ammunition for it which is quite late in a game. Even when you have the stats, you might want to use basic rifle for more carrying capacity and more action points.
Balance - Game balance is non existent. First you get to research fire armour. Then game spawns a mission with just fire enemies to see if you build newest armour. Armour and weapons often are colour coded. Fire armour is red. It makes you immune to fire and is worse in other respects than second generation armour you research. Same is for ice armour. It is blue. It is useless as cryo damage is so rare in this game. Then I saw some green armour too, guess what it is for! To counter one very specific type of damage while being worse in all other respects.
Enemy balance is atrocious. The most deadly enemies are enemy computers…They can fire dozens of times per turn and paralyze your guys. Have million HP and are present on most late game missions. However, as it being piece of hardware, you can completely ignore it and you never need to go to main UFO room to fight it. That is exception only in the last, horrible mission which never ends. Just before finishing it, you are forced into a room with this thing staring at you. You are bound to be wiped out if you are not save scumming. That was extremely annoying, over-tuned and cheap way to end the game.
Mortar is also an extremely overpowered weapon.
An armor system which this game wishes to have - Fighting in this game is extremely annoying. Gameplay looks like this.
Enemy had resisted fire.
Enemy had resisted fire.
Enemy had resisted fire.
Enemy had resisted fire.
Enemy had resisted fire.
Enemy had received 1 damage.
Enemy had resisted fire.
Enemy had resisted fire.
Enemy had resisted fire.
Enemy had resisted fire.
Enemy got hit in a weakspot. He had received 89 damage.
Enemy dies.
This applies and to your soldiers. You are so bloody resistant to all sorts of damage that your basic kits feels like end-game armour! Also, in a same way you can suddenly die out of nowhere.
Experience System - Game level up system is broken. To level up your troops takes a long time and you can’t really lose any of them. This makes already long game unbearably long. That is more, you can’t even evacuate your troops if mission goes badly. This game begs you to save scum. The only way to realistically level your troops to the max levels is to find commander, have a rifle and just spam fire on them. Hit on enemy gives insignificant 1 XP, but if you hit commander you get 10 XP as much as for two whole kills – 5 XP. This makes enemy commanders a jack pot which would give you more xp if farmed than dozen missions. Entire levelling system without this exploit is extremely grindy. It is a game where you need over a hundred kills on your soldier to reach max level.
Air Combat - Air combat is the greatest example which highlights how archaic this game had become. It is literally “pew pew” combat and it even makes an identical sound to pew pew. There is no depth in air combat. Planes can cover half of globe. There is no variety of what weapons you can take. It is all down to dps and survivability. You send planes to destroy enemy UFO, pull one fighter plane back which got attacked by the enemy. Here, you had mastered air combat and now none of your fighters will be lost. This whole system feels like an afterthought. Game does not give air combat like in Xenonauts nor it gives strategic layer which you would have to manage. Enemy UFOs are flying blind around the map hopelessly. They ignore your base defences which eventually gun them down. However, sometimes they will make sharp-U turn straight to your base and will force you into extremely painful base defence mission with over 40 enemies to kill!
What is most annoying is that you can’t do anything to enemy UFOs. Your interceptors are fighting them across continents and just before you are going to destroy them, they decide it is time for a mission and land! This forces you to do another mission.
Game Economy - Game economy is broken. Initially you might struggle a little bit, but game has ”swarm” events which is just beefed up UFO spawn event. You need to destroy enemy swarm leader. If it hits land, you will need to clear it. You get several months worth of income from an event which spawns several times per year! You are overflowing with resources and there is nothing to research or to manufacture. I did not built a second lab, because game has so little content that it was not necessary!
User Interface - GUI is terrible. You can’t just click items to place them in storage. You have to painfully drag every bit of your gear to storage menu. Items are just a long list which you have to scroll. This level of GUI you would expect from game made in 90’s, even in 00’s GUI became questionable and even UFO 1 was dated in that regard considerably.
AI - The issue with AI is that it often camps in corners and refuses to engage. You can clear enemy UFO and still somewhere one alien will be stuck and prevent you from completing mission. It can take several dozen of turns for him to show up if it ever does that.