Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden - catch all

Picked this up via the Greenmangaming VIP offer (thanks for the tip!) having had been following it for a while. It certainly scratched that TBS itch while also doing something new. It's also has hard as nails in places - I suspect there is a lot of subtly to what you are supposed to be doing that I just haven't figured out yet. Am I exploring too fast? Are you supposed to go back and forth across the Zone to places you've already been to get your level up? Can you only heal using med-packs? There are few things like that game could do a better job of explaining I think.

You guys playing Normal or Hard? I think it defaults to hard difficulty.

After being unable to play last night due to a common bug, a patch came out and I snuck in an hour while my kid was napping.

Really digging the exploration and combat sections. Only been to the Ark so I’ve only seen the opening areas but the main systems felt quite intuitive. Was surprised that I prefer it with a controller, feels more precise than fumbling with hotkeys. Maybe my favourite thing that is very “Vector” is I can freely attach and unattached weapon mods in town.

Some things still confuse me a little:

-Not sure if characters level up separately or as a squad
-Unclear how vital your permanent upgrade choices are or if there’s enough EXP and items in the world to fill out most of the trees
-game doesn’t really tell you if “Hide” completely conceals you from an enemy unless they have direct line-of-sight or it’s just a way to lock a character into cover
-is there a way to determine chance to hit with entering ambush, positioning, and targeting?
-very early but I’d like to know the max squad size and if your building a party or using everyone
-I wish there was a “highlight nearby by interactables” button
-out-of-combat movement speed is just a little slow

I’m playing on hard since I tend to like these types of games to have a bit more of a challenge. Not a fan of your party not healing up of having a healer on reaching a city. Hoping that becomes an option as I progress.

I’m quite a ways further in than you and the following seems to hold true:

1. They level up as a squad
2. You’ll need to save up some mutation points for specific upgrades. I’m not sure if they’ll all fill out either so I’m aiming for useful mutations and health boosts (these seem incredibly important)
3. Characters hiding in cover don’t get spotted unless they get flanked as far as I can tell, even if they are in a LoS zone.
4. Not that I can tell. Irritates me too!
5. Party size max is 3 as far as I can tell. You recruit another party member as you go through the game
6. I find stuff easy enough to find to be honest. I think items ‘glitter’ more if your flashlights are on.
7. Each area you explore isn’t that large to be honest, but do explore. I find the speed fine if I’m honest unless I’m tracking back through an area I’ve been through before.

I’d like a med Bay back at the ark too. Med-packs are expensive and you spend most of the game (or at least I have) without full health - I’m playing on hard and the difficulty curve seems to rise exponentially as you progress. Where I am now, if I were playing another sort of game I’d think I was underlevelled and need to go back and grind some more experience somewhere. However I think the game is more or less linear with some locked areas, so it doesn’t seem to be the case that you can. You rapidly go from being able to one-shot kill enemies from an ambush to needing to hit someone 4-5 times to get them down. As you can really only take one or two hits per Character before they start bleeding out, that feels a little off. It feels like a game with an optimal strategy to it I haven’t figured out yet. I’m worried that when I do it’s going to lose a lot of it’s charm and become a little boring.

As best as I can tell, each zone has a set number of enemies and pickups. At least I've not found anything new in the few times I've revisited a zone I've already cleared out.

You can fast travel to any zone you've already been to from the zone map.

I am now up to 5 characters in my squad, even though you can only take 3 out at a time. Still loving the game and the underlying systems.

Arkon wrote:

I am now up to 5 characters in my squad, even though you can only take 3 out at a time. Still loving the game and the underlying systems.

Glad that they have more characters. The only other one I saw was the

Spoiler:

fox in a trailer

I’m at 4 and don’t have the fox yet. The 4th character is really interesting from a combat standpoint too.

I’ve figure out that I can basically play this game like Shadow Tactics. Lots of save scumming. Pick off as many stragglers as I can before engaging in a larger fight. On hard your party regenerates health up to half so going all in on guaranteed shots if the last guy is down on health has been great.

I am looking forward to downloading this when it is released on GamePass. I believe it should be this week.

Todays update
https://steamcommunity.com/games/760...

Critical Fixes
Crashes upon startup after certain savegames.
Subtitles now working in lower resolutions that 1080p
Changing fullscreen modes now working for non-English language users.
Fix for possible permanent character slot loss in Iron Mutant mode.
UE4 Fix for sound issues with VR headset owners.
Bug Fixes
Swapping characters in squad no-longer resets mutation cooldown.
Fix for teleporting through Lux’s gate exploit.
Missing grenade icon under certain circumstances.
Balance fixes
EMP weapon modifications less OP.
Plutonia does double damage with her chainlighting.
Stoneskin now absorbs melee attacks.
Melee attacks are not longer made against cloaked units.

Vector wrote:

-Unclear how vital your permanent upgrade choices are or if there’s enough EXP and items in the world to fill out most of the trees

Not sure if you get enough EXP to buy all talents, it looks like you do. One thing for sure though - don't forget to equip your talents in the Inventory screen and switch them depending on what you are facing. Like if there are no robots in your next fight, no need to have that robot related talent equipped, pick something more useful.

[edit] Loving the game so far, I am around lvl 40.

Yeah, getting my head around equipping the three most optimal talents for a battle is something I'm just figuring out. Same with move my mods, weapons, and hats.

Tactically it’s got so much depth to it. The balance is a little uneven in places, but I’m thoroughly enjoying the experience!

Just released on GamePass. I am downloading to my Xbox now and hopefully I will be able to play a bit tonight.

https://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/com...

Played up to the Ark tonight on Gamepass. Approaching the game knowing very little about it, this was a very nice surprise.

I played a bit beyond that and quite enjoyed it.

I am playing on easy (or normal as they call it) and I hope it stays about this hard. I don't need to be punished to enjoy game (well except Dark Souls but that is the game)

farley3k wrote:

I played a bit beyond that and quite enjoyed it.

I am playing on easy (or normal as they call it) and I hope it stays about this hard. I don't need to be punished to enjoy game (well except Dark Souls but that is the game)

Think of each location as a puzzle battle to be solved - that’s how I’ve been approaching it. Scout out the area, work out where everyone is and what type of enemy they are and then kitting out my squad (in terms of weaponry, grenades and mutations, which you have to actively swap to be able to use. Took me a little while to realise that only one mutation of each type can be used at any one time, which is ridiculous considering the game spells this out to you at the start!) I’m playing on Hard, and while there have been plenty of restarts because I’ve been stupid (blundering into LoS or forgetting to equip grenades) once I’m in a fight it’s a wonderful tactical experience. Definitely in the top 5 games I’ve played this year.

Not a big fan of turn based games but after reading the comments and this review, I may pick this up. This sounds like it might be fun to play with my 10 year old too. Completing the maps sound more like a puzzle game to me (but with combat rather than finding clues or items) which we've enjoyed in the past.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...

Im spam saving like a Bossk basically because I like trying different approaches as well as my normal tomfoolery like trying a silent kill with a shotgun. The game is a real gem and I hope it gets some notice and some expansions. The setting is really atmospheric and the maps are really pretty. You can tell this was a labor of love. Heck, Id love to read a book based on this game.

A couple of tips:

-you can save during combat
-if there are too many enemies for your level, sneak one character by to an exit. They’ll all exit together and you can engage when your higher level and decked out with better gear
-combat rolls are handled the same way as XCOM in that if you set everyone up, save, miss a shot and load, that that exact shot will always miss. Vary up the sequence, positions, etc. for different outcomes
-disabling a robot enemy while sneaking will count as sneaking even on the second turn. Extremely useful when trying to pick-off med-bots and polis-bots
-the requirement of kills to refresh skills is for the whole squad and not the individual. I was able to locked down a Tank with Dux for several turns while the other two took out another two enemies before rooting the Tank again
-I suggest every character has at least one silenced weapon as soon as possible
-swap out your skills and grenades as needed for the upcoming encounter
-enemies can be knocked off from high levels and suffer additional fall damage
-there are 12 artifacts in the game so plan out which skills from the bar you’ll unlock; personally, I plan on leaving the medic and downed skills as I have only used to med-kits and only let people get downed on he final turn

Is add that so long as you aren’t in combat, you can swap characters in and out of your squad at will. Some of the characters deal with different enemy types better than others so it can be worth doing it before you engage. You DON’T have to go back to the Ark, you can do it immediately in game.

This game might be going on my Christmas list. I've been good this year, honest!

Plus up the hit points at least once
Everyone should have a stealth weapon
Plus up the stealth weapons first with your gun parts; ideally you want to go through a round such that a lower mob is killed after 3 silent hits, one from each character
Try to maximize critical hit chance opportunities both equipment and positioning with one character, hats, scopes, abilities, etc..
Use elevation whenever you can and cover always
The fire armor is great
Don't buy guns you'll find them on your own
Try to get borinson's eat to heal ability as soon as you can; great for tanking

SpyNavy wrote:

Don't buy guns you'll find them on your own

I'm gonna recommend the opposite on this one. My team is level 35 and scrap is way less important than weapon parts, so I've been buying all the weapons and dismantling them for parts to upgrade the weapons I use. Been working great so far.

Just remember that you can only equip one mutation per type for a character at a time and they can't be changed mid-combat. So while Bormon's eat to heal mutation can be great I am not certain it is work giving up Hog Rush.

Also, if you knock down an enemy using Hog Rush without smashing through anything, you'll have 3 rounds to silently kill them before they get up and call their friends.

Great tactics with hot rush. Buy for scrapping for weapon parts is a valid idea, I was talking about for character use. I'm hoping that the inventory of the merchant gets better.

Well this game isn't f*cking about.

I picked the middle difficulty, and have savescummed at least 5 times on like mission 2, Hammon's Cabin.

Spoiler:

At least 4 of those were in an attempt to take out the Shaman before he'll summon more enemies, which you can't do as he'll call them in immediately after being hit. Once I'd learned that, and where they'd spawn, I got a good run at the combat going, only to balls it up by accidentally tossing a smoke grenade which i thought was a frag grenade, at the last remaining enemy, thereby making him un-hittable *and* putting out the fire that he was on. Then running Borman through the fire, just for good measure.

I love XCOM and I think I may like this even more. The stealth bits really add a lot to the planning. Only problem I have is the text is very small and hard to read on my tv. It's like they made it for PC and forgot to scale the font for consoles.

Jonman wrote:

Well this game isn't f*cking about.

I picked the middle difficulty, and have savescummed at least 5 times on like mission 2, Hammon's Cabin.

Spoiler:

At least 4 of those were in an attempt to take out the Shaman before he'll summon more enemies, which you can't do as he'll call them in immediately after being hit. Once I'd learned that, and where they'd spawn, I got a good run at the combat going, only to balls it up by accidentally tossing a smoke grenade which i thought was a frag grenade, at the last remaining enemy, thereby making him un-hittable *and* putting out the fire that he was on. Then running Borman through the fire, just for good measure.

Spoiler:

Hog Rush the Shaman and you'll knock him out for 3 rounds, which should give you time to kill him before he can call for reinforcements.