Gears Tactics Catch-All

Agree with UMOarsman. I have game pass and it installed fine on my PC from the Microsoft Launcher (first time for everything!)

Loving this game so far. Really think this is the perfect universe for this type of game too. I'm up to mission 6 so far and it's definitely got its challenges coming from a very heavy Xcom background. But I think it's a great game and really enjoying my time with it!

Played both the new xcom chimera squad and gears tactics. Both are fun but the production values on Gears Tactics seem much better. To be fair, they come in at different price points ($10 sale price/$20 vs $5 for PC Gamepass/$60).

BFGP, the last day of the XCOM Chimera sale price is today, I think. It'll double tomorrow.

Robear wrote:

BFGP, the last day of the XCOM Chimera sale price is today, I think. It'll double tomorrow.

It will double in 45 minutes.

Starting playing this today (I have game pass). Not played much, just picked up The Cole Train bonus, so about 3 missions in.
I'm liking the tweaks made to the xcom formula. The way overwatch is used is much more tactical than Xcom, I know it's only early days but I'm pretty sure I'm not just going to be able to level up an uber sniper who kills everything that moves on the map like in X-Com.
Also means when you set up a overwatch trap and a locust just gets beamed from all sides, it's really satisfying

Edit - One thing I would love for these games to have is a system for load out per class instead of for each character just to keep the mirco management to a min instead.

I’ve played a few hours of Chimera and Tactics. Initial impression is I like Tactics more, for now, due to the large maps and more serious tone. Feels like a AAA game. Equipment management is a chore though. I do like Chimera too.

The brumak boss fight was a total pain. Take out its arm guns as quickly as possible and don't let it stomp you or corner you.

Yeah, that one I had to use the slow and steady "doesn't get mashed to pieces" strategy. It took me 3 tries to beat it on normal. I ended up destroying the arm cannons and running running running. I only took shots on like half of my turns. It took me a good 30 minutes just to take it down. I'm not looking forward to the next boss.

At some point partway through the side missions lost any and all fun and just turned into new ways for the game to be frustrating.

Game: Here control these two control points, but you only get two soldiers

Ok... I guess that's possible as long as the enemies aren't too terrible.

Game: Spawns boomers and a bunch of wretches near both points after the first turn

Ok so I'll just focus one point initially, kill the boomer there, and then move one guy to the other, fine.

Game: Ok next turn have a bunch of shotgun guys that go Berserk after they get shot once lol

Nevermind I'm just going to recruit new soldiers before every one of these let them die and fail so I can move on to the next story mission eventually.

I actually enjoyed the Brumak fight... I only took out one of the guns but just kept pelting the tanks on the back and whittled him down. Best part is when he fired a missile right on top of an e-hole and killed the wretches that spawned

Overall I'm enjoying it, but agree with Thin_J, it's got some balance issues and it takes a lot of concentration to play. It's not a casual, sit down and have a bit of fun game so I'm finding that I want to play, but don't have the mental energy at the end of the day to actually want to continue.

I just beat the second boss. There is a definite way to fight these bosses. Once, I figured out when to not fire, when to fire, and when to relocate it actually ended up being breezy.

To be clear, I was reeeeeally enjoying this thing a lot, and still like a lot of what they've done here, but the side missions are super repetitive and as stated before, they ways they choose to increase the difficulty of them aren't the fun kind of challenging. They're just annoying and they make you play way too many of them too often throughout the entire game.

I didn't start feeling this way until about the ~18 hour mark, for what it's worth.

Thin_J wrote:

To be clear, I was reeeeeally enjoying this thing a lot, and still like a lot of what they've done here, but the side missions are super repetitive and as stated before, they ways they choose to increase the difficulty of them aren't the fun kind of challenging. They're just annoying and they make you play way too many of them too often throughout the entire game.

I didn't start feeling this way until about the ~18 hour mark, for what it's worth.

Well...shoot. I’m about 6 hours in and loving it so far. I can see what you described as being a drag.

Kantus suck. 70% damage mitigation is just... egads, wtf, no! :O

People still playing?

I've been doing a few missions a day and just finished chapter 2... now that was a boss fight!

Yes. A mission or two a day. Terrific game. Had some apprehension about the first boss based on posts but I enjoyed the encounter. It did not overstay it’s welcome. I liked seeing something graphically represented in this type of game with a massive scale. I like the greed factor with optional chests to try and grab during the mission.
Enjoying, nearly as much, as I did the Xcom tactical battles.
One nitpick is managing inventory.

Love it. On Act 2 chapter 2.
Heck, I might load up Gears 5 between missions and alternate between.

BlackSabre wrote:

Kantus suck. 70% damage mitigation is just... egads, wtf, no! :O

Yeah, kill the kantus first if possible. Also chainsaw and retro lancer charges still work. Otherwise, wait out the 2 turns.

There's a mission pacing problem that makes me not want to play the game. The game drops waves of monsters all around you without a whole lot of guidance on what to expect or how many more monsters there will be or how long it will take. It ends up just being very stressful for me, in a not good way.

I think that was the main reason that I stopped playing the game.

So how much of that would be relieved by the ability to save mid mission?

Also, chapter 3 is no joke. Tried a control mission with 2 people and yeah, that didn't go so well

Yeah, why the f cant be save anytime? Damn checkpoint system is the worse.

Reupped my Game Pass and installed late last night. Going to go through the first few missions tonight.

For whatever reason, I enjoy the hell out of this game. I think it is because it sets up those risk-reward decisions well with heroic moments. The home base UI is trash, I agree. I just finished the second boss. It was much harder than the first for me. Unreasonably difficult. But, I’m looking forward to hitting the 3rd Act tonight.

Yep, third act sucks ass so far. First mission "Silver Bassilisk". It's a control mission and you get 2 soldiers. f*cking impossible. They throw boomers, tickers, 3 Theron guards, Disciples. Complete bullsh*t.

Whomever the f*ck designed that mission, I hope the fleas of a thousand Camels infest your armpits! f*ck!

Ran the first few missions last night. Got to the point where I have Gabe, Sid, and the two starter recruits. It feels like a completely different game than XCOM. Same genre but they've done so much work with pretty much every aspect.

I absolutely love the action point system. Taking a bit to get my head around the idea how to effectively use them, however. As someone who plays a lot of turn-based RPGs, this feels more akin to playing Wasteland or Divinity: OS. Great moments of shifting my troops around the battlefield to counter enemy positions then capitalizing on exposed flanks. Executions are such a key change. It's a really clever risk reward.

Accidentally have confirmed a few moves without meaning to and made some mistakes. Restarted the second mission early on because I made the same dumb mistake twice in a row. Not a fan of collecting loot boxes in the middle of missions. There should be another aspect to the game that's not just combat. Even something like sending out your unused recruits on missions like in Dragon Age: Inquisition would be nice. They could have combat with a EXP boost, item, etc.

Got to the brumak fight last night. Not a fan that the previous encounter rolled right into that and didn't even restore my team's health.

Got to a point where I felt I made too many errors and decided to come back to it today. Kept letting Sid get crushed and was running out of ways to effectively revive and get him out of stomping range. I think I'm going to focus on taking out the arm cannons first.

BlackSabre wrote:

Yep, third act sucks ass so far. First mission "Silver Bassilisk". It's a control mission and you get 2 soldiers. f*cking impossible. They throw boomers, tickers, 3 Theron guards, Disciples. Complete bullsh*t.

For what it's worth, this sounds like the exact mission that started my slide toward no longer enjoying the side missions.

Just reached the part I think you guys are talking about. Just finished 2/3 of the required side-missions in the early parts of Act 3. Those two were both 2-person squads. Actually breezed through them but ended up redoing and struggling to complete the optional objective on the second one. It was a legendary and holding a point with a lone sniper isn't the easiest of tasks. Managed to do it, though. Problem is the final required side-mission is 4-person and I've used my 4 best in the previous two (Gabe, Spector (starting scout), Mikayla, and Wolf (starting heavy)). Down to Sid and whoever my latest recruits are.

My scout is a mad-woman. I've geared her towards demolitions and she can now chuck a grenade every turn. She's also equipped with bonus that increases the AoE and has the only rare grenade I've found. Plus her Proximity Mine skill is great. She can basically dash around the battlefield, chucking grenades, and cloaking when she's deep behind enemy lines. As much as I love the heavy class, she's a must have on all missions.

I did progress a little further, but believe I've stalled at Chapter 3 act 2 and as much as I want to go back and finish it.... yeah, motivation to do so isn't quite there. Just felt unnecessarily difficult and draining. Not something I'm looking for in my gaming right now.

I missed getting the new XCOM game due to life stuff, but I recently ended up subscribing to Xbox Game Pass for $1 first month. All three games I had my eye on (Gears Tactics, Mechwarrior 5, and Phoenix Point) are available on Game Pass. Bloody good value for one month of gaming!

So far it seems to me there's a tension between progressing down skill trees that essentially allow more actions per turn (especially Gabe and his Command skill or say a Heavy down the artillery skill tree) vs crunchy single-target abilities (the old one eyed dude, Sid?).

Finished last night. Act 3 is really padded out and the only purpose is to get more gear. You don't even get enough experience to properly level up your characters. They also end up reusing side missions as story missions. I don't mind the repetitive side missions but to properly do that you need to be creative with the story missions, they don't do that. You also have no choice of who to use in the final confrontation. It's a bit of a bummer and as the game offers nothing other than combat, I don't see any reason to continue on afterwards.

I found it extremely fun, though. Really hope they get the proper time to expand on what they built. The core mechanics and interactions are a lot of fun. It doesn't feel like XCOM to me but closer to Divinity: Original Sin, Wasteland 2, or Mutant: Year Zero. That's a very good thing.

My wishlist for a sequel:
-greater variety in side-missions
-unique or different spins on story missions
-remove the arbitrary limitations and bonus objectives and replace them with a more cohesive system
-better gear variety or uniqueness
-faster leveling system
-have a reason to maintain characters throughout instead of dropping them when a higher level comes along
-more ways to negate enemies positive
-melee becomes extremely situational halfway through the game
-another class
-greater enemy variety
-better boss fight differentiation (all three bosses ended up having very similar patterns)
-something to do other than combat (limited crafting, passive side-ops, etc.)
-better inventory and gear management