Ironman is the worst for the feels, when an honoured soldier who've served you for so long and successfully managed to become a colonel and highest commander of the xcom land forces, dies in front of your eyes and there's nothing you can do about it ;-;
thats feeling is the best, first time i play this game, i dont know about the save and load, and its so thrilling when im manager to clutch 5 floater with my ace assault, leave her just 1 HP. And then she stay with me to the very end.
Be warned if your here for the fastest speed run every you came to the wrong place this guy takes his time and USES HIS HEAD if you don't have the patience please take your " wow your sure taking your sweet time" comments and your dislikes else ware bub
This game is great. Except I get too attached to my troops and if someone happens to die on a mission it f-ing breaks my heart, and yes I play with Ironman on (why wouldn't i).
Just heard about this recently, after learning about X-COM from a friend, and I can agree with the articles: Zemalf's luck was UNREAL. His moves were no better or more insightful than any I make, but most of those 65% shots would have missed for me. that would have EASILY been a two-loss mission at best.
I know this is almost a decade ago but appreciate you for doing this LP @Zemalf. I just bought my copy of the game now and I'm having so much fun (I've finished the game before when I was still a pirate lol). I love your playstyle and contents. Keep it up!
5:38 This is how you get killed in Xcom, I hope I dont trigger more aliens if I move here (while I already have an active group of hostiles attempting to maneuver around me).
The moment I clicked on this, I knew I was watching a good player. Soothing voice too, easy to fall asleep to. You remind me of the Emotion FM host Fernando, from GTA Vice City. Good work sir.
That first mission was most likely the most exciting X-Com mission I've ever witnessed. The fact that it was an all-rookie engagement, combined with your reliance on pure luck made my heart pound out of chest.
It really feels like some games` quality very much scales with the difficulty levels you play them. While Normal is some fairly entertaining shooter action in this one, but absolutely nothing too special, the Nightmare mode really gives you the chill and the thrill: Heart-pumping in a turnbased tactics does not appear all that often.
Wow very well played! I think your use of heavy cover greatly improved your rookies' survival while only shooting when the enemy had no cover increased their odds of killing the aliens..
HI, found your lets play from an online PC Gamer article about your epic X-Com feat. Really enjoying your in depth knowledge of the game & easy going attitude making it a really pleasant/relaxing viewing experience. Has certainly encouraged me to pick up the game again & employ some of your tactics, thank you. All the best.
His channel description states his LPs are slow paced. I agree they are not for everyone, but it is nice seeing someone play at their own pace for once. This is actually my second time watching these.
Love the lecture about game mechanics at the start. And thanks for showing how to turn action camera and third person view. Somehow i didn't ever look through the options to check if they could be turned off, and thought that they were hardcoded. Very nice start on the field.
Mate epic lp's thank you , you got a new follower here thats for sure. Found you while looking for a decent lp on civ 5, Zulu campaign was just sick. Like the way you always so chilled and actully explain whats happing and what you doing. The only problem is now i find myself watching your lp's rather than playing myself lol. one question, will you be doing a beyond earth lp? Please say yes lol cool keep em coming bud ill keep on watching!
Epic luck lol. Haha that one where he's right by the alien and the % is 30 is usually the chances I get. "What? How!" lol Nice playthrough I like your strategies.
You are the first person I have viewed who is using area weapons to remove cover and knocking out the mind link creator to kill two aliens at once, and you were trying to flank when you could, which is the same deal as them not being in cover, basically you are using the mechanics of the game and not ignoring them like other vids. One suggestion, when you know the enemy is not going to move away and they are in cover, keep a guy in full cover and bunker down, while another unit tries to flank.
you did so well on the first mission, using all the grenades and getting pretty lucky too. that's a nice start. can't wait to see if earth gets saved, again.
You sound much confident this time around. Well, of course it's because you already know what's going on and how things work. Looking forward to the rest of this series. :D
Nicely done. Also you got lucky out there a few times. You did hang a soldier or two next to a wall that had evaporated. I was like "OMG, move that guy man, he is exposed!". Also, fun fact, you and doctor Vahlen have the same accent :).
Not to be one of those backseat driver players (you're definitely better at this game than me), but one tip is to switch to your pistol whenever you're shooting at an alien with 1 HP. Pistols have unlimited ammo, and it doesn't cost an action to switch weapons, so it's a nice easy way to keep your weapons loaded for when you most need them.
I was thinking that some of these comments were exaggerating but not that I've watched the vid... geeeeez. That was SO unbelievably lucky XD Looking forward to the rest of the LP and to see how your tactics might've improved.
Your playthroughs are awesome. I've been watching since you started your Mount and Blade:Warband playthrough and I've been enjoying it alot. You inspire me to attempt my own playthrough. Keep it up, my Finnish friend!
dude , i enjoyed your critical thinking and you matured enough to play this game ! i rate you 10 of 10 , you deseerve it bro .. keep the good job :) thanks alot . i will buy this shit :) very fun to play this game .
I started watching this cuz I gave up on actually playing XCOM (unluckiest player alive) and i have to say the voice, the tactics, they are all great :D
I watched some of your videos up to 15 or so and it seems that you tweaked not only graphics, because Zemalf impossible aliens don't really act as impossible,for some reason they stay without cover, choosing to shoot soldiers in full cover instead soldiers in half cover, and when they do shoot at that half ones - they keep missing, Zemalf aliens act more like in classic difficulty or even normal, there was few instances where aliens moved out of their cover in the wrong side of the cover basically placing themselves in flank position for humans, that's no way an impossible difficulty, or somehow Zemalf AI was tweaked in files.
Fully agree. Looks like a game on normal or easy difficulty with alien hp and everything else directly visible like funds etc tweeked to impossible level.
Thanks, and yes - lucky with the alien shots, and mostly lucky with my own shots as well, but I was happy with my own tactics there. After finishing recording the series 1, I've watched other let's plays and videos, including yours, and I know a whole lot more about the game, in addition to my first-hand experience - with all that, I'm quite confident I'll at least beat my last result, if not the game :)
Excellent start! I am glad you upped the ante and went for impossible, now I have to try it myself. Your solid base plan and excellent tactics should serve you well. I am so glad you picked firepower over armor. A soldier in his under ware with a laser rifle is better than 3 armored soldiers with sling shots any day. I look forward to your next episode.
Cogito ergo sum. As I say in my channel - I love games that allow me to think - wouldn't call it overthinking thou, just thinking, because I don't think one can never think too much :) I do it in other games as well, but this game (on the Ironman mode) requires it, after an action is done, there's no way back.
Wouldn't say perfect...the ending could be better, and the geoscape was actually worst than the original...really kinda useless, you just press search and wait for 3 options, no interactivity at all...but the rest is just awesome
@@lcg3092it's subjective so... it can be perfect to him if he wants it to be. And also, i just so happen to agree with him. So that's you in the minority to boot.
Well i wasn´t expecting you to go in impossible right away after the first series. But seeing how well this is starting and how munch you have improved, you will have a chance to succes or at least resit more time. Goog luck, and remenber commander, we will be wacthing you.
With bit of bad luck that might've been a lot worse, but that's how it is with this game. I think part of the appeal of this game is that the danger of that happening is always looming. All it takes is the alien getting lucky critical or solid hit through cover and me missing one "sure hit" - and suddenly they have one more and I have one less, which can turn a fight around.
Rewatching this because I decided to play this game again. I’m still a newbie, but I think the Impossible actually makes things easier on the long run because I’m getting half of the rewards in Normal (and half of kills as well).
The masters of Desasters & the Real Turricans of Fubar present Arms to Zemalf & his X-Com Let´s Play! xD Extra cute pawy Kitty to this Show! q^.^p CU & BYEBYE! :D
Nah, his play was really bad. I will agree that for about the first five missions of an Ironman Impossible run, there is a pretty high amount of luck in the equation if you're looking to survive, but there were plenty of things he could've done to minimize his chances of losing, and plenty of really rookie mistakes he made that any non-buggy AI would've exploited and punished him for. For example: Dashing into unexplored territory. I forget when this happens, but he does it pretty early on, and triggers a pack of 3 in addition to the pack of three he already has activated. You NEVER do that. Even if it's into full cover, dashing when you have a team full of rookies against aliens that have much more accuracy than they do staring them down is asking to have them shot in the face. Also, you don't split your troops up in Impossible. If it was easy or normal, or hell, even classic to an extent, splitting troops into cover would be viable, but every person who's attempted an Impossible run has noted that keeping your troops in a straight line is the most efficient tactic by far, even if it leaves them out of cover, as it allows you to trigger aliens more or less when you want to. That sectoid that moved twice instead of shooting early in the episode would not have happened to the vast majority of xcom players, therefore that is not a good outcome to rely on. 99% of players would have had to deal with that sectoid either shooting at or suppressing them. That's not luck. That's buggy AI, and any competent player would not have gotten themselves in that situation. What Ze should've done instead of splitting into garbage half cover on his first turn was immediately start heading for that high cover van on the right, and leapfrog from there to the pipe that led up to the roof. The fact that he didn't immediately start looking for a way to secure that rooftop while avoiding triggering extra alien pods shows inexperience, and I frankly think it's bs that he wasn't punished for some of the moves he made.
Dmytro Bogdan where is your ironman impossible run? Lets all watch it and see how great you are. Or better yet show us how good you are on multiplayer. Maybe you can disconnect like all the cowards that don't want their rank to go down.
Thanks. The difference between S1 and S2 is quite big. All the helpful comments and critique in the S1 and couple of hours of practice in between made quite a difference. Oh, and while replying to you, thanks for all the likes and comments on series 1 videos :)
He is getting *very* lucky, but he's playing well enough that even with bad luck he'd be doing well. He rarely has more than a one or two units that can be hit per turn at worst (can hit more units than sectoids-mind mergers).
Most turn-based fantasy games are more on the strategy level than squad-level tactics. Can't really think any fantasy-themed one that would be XCOM-like (or Silent Storm, Jagged Alliance, etc.). There's plenty of RPGs with turn-based combat of course, some more tactical than others.
Nice video, you are a good player, but you got extremely lucky here in begining/middle paty of the mission, all those aliens missing, and you hitting all those shots, it doesnt happen to often on impossible:)
Here, an experienced player, lost one soldier at the first mission and the squad got wiped at the second mission. Guess it's back to classic ironman for me.
No, not really random. You get the same type of missions each month, but what day they occur is somewhat random. Maps are always the same, but they're rotated, so you probably won't see the same map until you've seen them all.
Great gameplay! I just downloaded PS3 version of game and started playing on nomal mode and its is really hard! I didn't even know if you kill the mind boost sectoid the booster one is instantly killed too
man you're lucky i legit just tried to play impossible iron man but missed every attack and then got my entire team 1 hit on first contact about 10 attempts in a row
Well played, although you were a bit lucky (as others have pointed out). But that is no doubt required in impossible+ironman. I hear it is quite punishing an that few people actually makes it, including experienced players.
Did they tweak the alien's values? Whenever I started a game on Impossible after release my team got instant wiped out with every enemy shot being a critical hit. No matter what cover, even from almost the edge of viewing distance.
It's not my fault if the random numbers go my way. Don't get me wrong, I agree, I'm very lucky in this episode, and in couple of occasions as the LP goes on. However, while "luck" plays a part, being careful and doing the right moves is what matters more in the end.
I don't know. The amount of sheer luck you have is suspicious. You never get punished for anything. They never hit you when it matters. Heck, they never hit you period.
It's full cover because the tile the soldier is standing on is on the other side of the line that the full cover would draw. That being said, I think it's silly too given the position. Hopefully fixed in Enemy Within.
Well holy shit. I first heard of you years ago when you played Mount and Blade, and I think you played Dark Souls. So, go figure when I see you on the Steam page.
When I played this once on Ironman, on the first mission when an Alien shot at my soldier and missed the soldier instantly paniced, how come that never happens here? It was something that happened almost everytime for me which I found ridiculous, like omg you're a soldier did it never cross your mind that you might get shot at?? ;P
Hi Zemalf, I've watched the first few hours of your playthrough here, and i've learned a lot about base management and planning your budget effectively between the end of month reports. I've also gotten some good advice for the tactical part of how the enemies spawn etc. What i'm having difficulty finding out is why the enemies takes shots at me far more often than they do in your playthrough. I've started a game on Normal. From what i've read the AI will be limited in that it will very rarely use grenades or other abilities compared to playing on Classic or Impossible. As xcom.wikia.com says "Aliens can make sub-optimal actions and are less likely to use grenades and abilities.". What i'm wondering about here is if they take more low percentage shots at you on lower difficulties. As i said earlier, i noticed that the enemies takes very few shots at you. This seems logical as you plan every move very well, and you will most of the time have full cover, smoke cover or similar to protect your team. Will this keep the smarter enemy AI from taking these "potshot" low percentage shots at you, effectively (when played as good as you do) keep them from firing almost any shots at all? Example, in the first ufo-crash mission i moved my team very carefully from mostly 100% cover all the time, and also was very careful not to pull/aggro more than one group at a time. i activated a group of 2-3 sectoids, and one of them took a far away shot at one of my soldiers who was in 100% cover, in an elevated position. It killed my soldier instantly with a critical hit. I got a bit irritated as i had been very carefull, and taken every (to my knowledge) precaution, and still the sectoid took this low percentage shot, which could fit the description of "sub-optimal action". Problem is that if they keep doing that all the time, even though it's probably a lot easier than having a classic/impossible AI opponent, i will still get hit and (in worst case if it crits) loose a team-mate now and then. like every 10th shot if they are all 10% shots. I got the feeling from watching the first few hours of your playthrough that the Impossible AI didn't take such shots that often, which again, with you playing very smart and not giving him good angles and low/no-cover targets, resulted in a more controlled and less reliant on the dice. These are just some of my thought. And as i'm not an experienced xcom player and don't know the specifics and small details in the combat system, i could be totally wrong here. What are your experiences and thoughts on this matter? regards, André (also, if anyone else have some good advice here, i'm VERY grateful for all the help i can get :))
In the playthrough above I think pretty much every enemy that could shoot at him did shoot at him each turn it was able. The reason I there isn't a lot of alien fire is that there are very few aliens per turn that have sight to his units. Usually he takes out at least one directly after activation. Given that sectoids boost eachother that means you'll likely only get a single attack the next turn. If you then kill the merge originating sectoid that means the enemy would get exactly one shot per encounter. (To give you an idea.) Remember they can't shoot you if you're out of range or they can't move to see you -- and they won't move to bad cover to do so. Note: when Zemalf couldn't drastically reduce the number of aliens in a turn he moved an exposed unit away where it was unlikely to be targetted. I've never played below Classic -- it may be that aliens will stretch themselves thinner to take unlikely shots (which given the large health boost and lower crit chance at lower difficulties should be nbd) -- but in my experience on Classic and Impossible: aliens will shoot you even if you're in high cover in general as long as no easier targets are available most times (sometimes they'll overwatch -- but they'll almost never do nothing if there are targets in range and they have cover). You probably just need to be more binary in your aggression: go all out or fall back/hunker down. (Probably don't hunker down (-80% aim with high cover) if more than one alien is likely to target you and you're behind destructible cover [most of it] though -- first miss might hit cover and leave you exposed for second shot)
Actually the hardest is first mission, second mission and slingshot mission within first month. You did pretty good, but you was actually pretty lucky. I mostly get one shot under full cover, or i miss 90% chance to shot. Like on 17:32, your soldier get first miss from one alien, it destroyed wall, and second alien was shooting different guy under full cover, and also miss (he could move closer and kill your soldier who was without any cover). All of this is really never happening in my games.
@sscr1p7 100 percent. This is manipulated rng for SURE. The aliens missed 100 percent of their shots in that mission. That doesn't happen. Especially in fuckin impossible iron man runs.
@@idrinkmilk282 I finished impossible ironman 5 month ago. It tooks me about 350 games (which can looks a lot, but around 320 games was insta cancelled because of bad first map). The first month is hardest, first and second mission are crucial. There are some map layers, that are pretty hard (like trains map, fountain, graveyard). So to success this, you must spam first mission until u find a good one (very good ones are with roofs, on roofs u can just wait to alliens and then shoot them with better %). Then all your soldiers must do kill (so they promote) and nobody can die or be injured. Then u go to mission 2, which again must be good map (and this is really tricky). But on second mission u have Heavy with rocket. Rocket can kill full allien trio, or better two alliens with mind (so 4 alliens total). This is huge benefit. Sniper on first level is worse then non-promoted with gun, because u can't move and shot. U need two action points to shot and that is so bad. So sometimes its better go to second mission with rookies instead of sniper (but u also need sniper to get promoted to get shooting on long-distance), so it depends on many factors. There are also slingshot maps, if u roll subway with bombs or anything with timer, it's better just skip it. Slingshot maps are always the same, especially places where u are triggering allien agents, so if u know the places, you can prepare and kill them instantly. If u trigger 2 at once or miss the shots, then you are mostly dead. Otherwise slingshot maps can be really good for leveling your soldiers, some panic reductions and other bonuses.
![Let's Play XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Part 2 (S2) [Impossible][Ironman]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wTNh6j1t1kE/mqdefault.jpg)
![Let's Play XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Part 2 (S2) [Impossible][Ironman]](/img/tr.png)
![Let's Play XCOM: Enemy Within - Part 1 [I/I] [Impossible] [Ironman]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TpbTkbv4L2Y/mqdefault.jpg)
I love how you give each NPC time to introduce themselves despite skipping the cutscenes. It's so polite of you!
Ironman is the worst for the feels, when an honoured soldier who've served you for so long and successfully managed to become a colonel and highest commander of the xcom land forces, dies in front of your eyes and there's nothing you can do about it ;-;
thats feeling is the best, first time i play this game, i dont know about the save and load, and its so thrilling when im manager to clutch 5 floater with my ace assault, leave her just 1 HP.
And then she stay with me to the very end.
It's especially heartbreaking if it was due to bad luck or a miss click ;-;
wow, so lucky. In my playthroughs, i miss all those 65% shots while aliens crit me even when i'm hunkering down behind full covers.
Odenat when you are hunkered down you cannot be critical hit
The description lied
It's not luck lmao. Blatant rng manipulation
Be warned if your here for the fastest speed run every you came to the wrong place this guy takes his time and USES HIS HEAD if you don't have the patience please take your " wow your sure taking your sweet time" comments and your dislikes else ware bub
The RNG Gods love you.
Thank you very much, I'm happy you're enjoying the slower-paced ride :)
This game is great. Except I get too attached to my troops and if someone happens to die on a mission it f-ing breaks my heart, and yes I play with Ironman on (why wouldn't i).
Just heard about this recently, after learning about X-COM from a friend, and I can agree with the articles: Zemalf's luck was UNREAL. His moves were no better or more insightful than any I make, but most of those 65% shots would have missed for me. that would have EASILY been a two-loss mission at best.
It's called rng manipulation or save scumming. He did either one or a combo of both.
I know this is almost a decade ago but appreciate you for doing this LP @Zemalf. I just bought my copy of the game now and I'm having so much fun (I've finished the game before when I was still a pirate lol). I love your playstyle and contents. Keep it up!
5:38 This is how you get killed in Xcom, I hope I dont trigger more aliens if I move here (while I already have an active group of hostiles attempting to maneuver around me).
You are so so lucky or you have some hacked RNG in CPU. Ending a turn not beeing hunkered down in hardcover is almost certain death in Impossible ;]
The moment I clicked on this, I knew I was watching a good player. Soothing voice too, easy to fall asleep to. You remind me of the Emotion FM host Fernando, from GTA Vice City. Good work sir.
"You sound like the xcom guy that says "We will be watching" had a child with Sean Connery."
LOL.
Good videos and your voice actually kicks ass.
I like the part where you say ' This Game is much less fun' in the beginning. Well done Man. We all love XCOM. Really Plays with your brain.
That first mission was most likely the most exciting X-Com mission I've ever witnessed. The fact that it was an all-rookie engagement, combined with your reliance on pure luck made my heart pound out of chest.
You have the sexiest voice of all time.
It really feels like some games` quality very much scales with the difficulty levels you play them. While Normal is some fairly entertaining shooter action in this one, but absolutely nothing too special, the Nightmare mode really gives you the chill and the thrill: Heart-pumping in a turnbased tactics does not appear all that often.
Wow very well played! I think your use of heavy cover greatly improved your rookies' survival while only shooting when the enemy had no cover increased their odds of killing the aliens..
HI, found your lets play from an online PC Gamer article about your epic X-Com feat. Really enjoying your in depth knowledge of the game & easy going attitude making it a really pleasant/relaxing viewing experience. Has certainly encouraged me to pick up the game again & employ some of your tactics, thank you. All the best.
His channel description states his LPs are slow paced. I agree they are not for everyone, but it is nice seeing someone play at their own pace for once. This is actually my second time watching these.
Thanks for playing this I am going to copy what you do outside the missions, as I am new to the game.
May RNGesus be with you
Love the lecture about game mechanics at the start. And thanks for showing how to turn action camera and third person view. Somehow i didn't ever look through the options to check if they could be turned off, and thought that they were hardcoded. Very nice start on the field.
every time i come here too see how you do....its amazing
Mate epic lp's thank you , you got a new follower here thats for sure. Found you while looking for a decent lp on civ 5, Zulu campaign was just sick. Like the way you always so chilled and actully explain whats happing and what you doing. The only problem is now i find myself watching your lp's rather than playing myself lol. one question, will you be doing a beyond earth lp? Please say yes lol cool keep em coming bud ill keep on watching!
Steam news brought me here. Well played!
Ja koskaan ei voi olla liikaa mahtavia suomalaisia Let's Play- videoita.
Enjoyed your video ... one of the best walkthrough channels I've come across.
Epic luck lol. Haha that one where he's right by the alien and the % is 30 is usually the chances I get. "What? How!" lol
Nice playthrough I like your strategies.
You are the first person I have viewed who is using area weapons to remove cover and knocking out the mind link creator to kill two aliens at once, and you were trying to flank when you could, which is the same deal as them not being in cover, basically you are using the mechanics of the game and not ignoring them like other vids. One suggestion, when you know the enemy is not going to move away and they are in cover, keep a guy in full cover and bunker down, while another unit tries to flank.
you did so well on the first mission, using all the grenades and getting pretty lucky too. that's a nice start. can't wait to see if earth gets saved, again.
You sound much confident this time around. Well, of course it's because you already know what's going on and how things work. Looking forward to the rest of this series. :D
Nicely done. Also you got lucky out there a few times. You did hang a soldier or two next to a wall that had evaporated. I was like "OMG, move that guy man, he is exposed!".
Also, fun fact, you and doctor Vahlen have the same accent :).
...I can't help but imagine Jean-Claude Van Damme when I hear your voice.
Not to be one of those backseat driver players (you're definitely better at this game than me), but one tip is to switch to your pistol whenever you're shooting at an alien with 1 HP. Pistols have unlimited ammo, and it doesn't cost an action to switch weapons, so it's a nice easy way to keep your weapons loaded for when you most need them.
He sounds like a Finnish Morgan Freeman
Very very lucky! Multiple misses from enemy shots on your guys, and also multiple successful shots from your guys with only 60% or 65% hit chance.
Zemalf, did you know you are in the steam description of the game for best play-through?
I was thinking that some of these comments were exaggerating but not that I've watched the vid... geeeeez. That was SO unbelievably lucky XD
Looking forward to the rest of the LP and to see how your tactics might've improved.
Your playthroughs are awesome. I've been watching since you started your Mount and Blade:Warband playthrough and I've been enjoying it alot.
You inspire me to attempt my own playthrough. Keep it up, my Finnish friend!
dude , i enjoyed your critical thinking and you matured enough to play this game !
i rate you 10 of 10 , you deseerve it bro ..
keep the good job :)
thanks alot .
i will buy this shit :)
very fun to play this game .
I started watching this cuz I gave up on actually playing XCOM (unluckiest player alive) and i have to say the voice, the tactics, they are all great :D
You have great tactics! I'm getting better, but I'm still not the best.
I watched some of your videos up to 15 or so and it seems that you tweaked not only graphics, because Zemalf impossible aliens don't really act as impossible,for some reason they stay without cover, choosing to shoot soldiers in full cover instead soldiers in half cover, and when they do shoot at that half ones - they keep missing, Zemalf aliens act more like in classic difficulty or even normal, there was few instances where aliens moved out of their cover in the wrong side of the cover basically placing themselves in flank position for humans, that's no way an impossible difficulty, or somehow Zemalf AI was tweaked in files.
Fully agree. Looks like a game on normal or easy difficulty with alien hp and everything else directly visible like funds etc tweeked to impossible level.
AkelaLT I doubt the place the graphical change goes Is the same as the AI of the enemies.
I’m wondering about this also. You cannot play Impossible using these tactics and hope to win
Thanks, and yes - lucky with the alien shots, and mostly lucky with my own shots as well, but I was happy with my own tactics there. After finishing recording the series 1, I've watched other let's plays and videos, including yours, and I know a whole lot more about the game, in addition to my first-hand experience - with all that, I'm quite confident I'll at least beat my last result, if not the game :)
Excellent start! I am glad you upped the ante and went for impossible, now I have to try it myself. Your solid base plan and excellent tactics should serve you well. I am so glad you picked firepower over armor. A soldier in his under ware with a laser rifle is better than 3 armored soldiers with sling shots any day. I look forward to your next episode.
You're a great tactician, I'll enjoy this playthrough throughout the entire thing i hope.
Cogito ergo sum. As I say in my channel - I love games that allow me to think - wouldn't call it overthinking thou, just thinking, because I don't think one can never think too much :) I do it in other games as well, but this game (on the Ironman mode) requires it, after an action is done, there's no way back.
They almost always miss the reactions shots.... :D nice vid
AFRICA!
wait wrong comment...
XCOM is the perfect game. Its really great to see someone good playing with insightful commentary!
Wouldn't say perfect...the ending could be better, and the geoscape was actually worst than the original...really kinda useless, you just press search and wait for 3 options, no interactivity at all...but the rest is just awesome
lcg3092
Ending matched the game, especially if you played through the entire game with him/her.
not perfect, you're right.... i just love it, even with its imperfections :-D
@@lcg3092it's subjective so... it can be perfect to him if he wants it to be. And also, i just so happen to agree with him. So that's you in the minority to boot.
@@idrinkmilk282 You literally said it's subjective, so why so passive agressive about me giving my opinion?
You do a really good job explaining things.
My favorate youtubers, on the same pair of messages! That just made my year. :D
Great to find a chilled out LPer. I need all the help I can get (about to run a C/I full 2nd Wave set up!).
Hope you return for XCOM: Enemy Within!
Love this. Thanks for posting.
Well i wasn´t expecting you to go in impossible right away after the first series. But seeing how well this is starting and how munch you have improved, you will have a chance to succes or at least resit more time. Goog luck, and remenber commander, we will be wacthing you.
Zemalf! You just said one of my reasons why i play on PC = You can make the game look even better with PC
With bit of bad luck that might've been a lot worse, but that's how it is with this game. I think part of the appeal of this game is that the danger of that happening is always looming.
All it takes is the alien getting lucky critical or solid hit through cover and me missing one "sure hit" - and suddenly they have one more and I have one less, which can turn a fight around.
Oh my god.... when you said slow paced you really meant it.
up to this day, whenever i play xcom, i mostly have zemalf on the background thinking outloud
Rewatching this because I decided to play this game again. I’m still a newbie, but I think the Impossible actually makes things easier on the long run because I’m getting half of the rewards in Normal (and half of kills as well).
The masters of Desasters & the Real Turricans of Fubar present Arms to Zemalf & his X-Com Let´s Play! xD
Extra cute pawy Kitty to this Show! q^.^p
CU & BYEBYE! :D
Dude, what a voice.. O_o
That mission was almost pure luck. Notice aliens did not hit single time. And AI choices was weird to say the least.
That's what it takes to beat the highest difficulty. Lots and lots of luck.
Nah, his play was really bad. I will agree that for about the first five missions of an Ironman Impossible run, there is a pretty high amount of luck in the equation if you're looking to survive, but there were plenty of things he could've done to minimize his chances of losing, and plenty of really rookie mistakes he made that any non-buggy AI would've exploited and punished him for.
For example:
Dashing into unexplored territory. I forget when this happens, but he does it pretty early on, and triggers a pack of 3 in addition to the pack of three he already has activated. You NEVER do that. Even if it's into full cover, dashing when you have a team full of rookies against aliens that have much more accuracy than they do staring them down is asking to have them shot in the face. Also, you don't split your troops up in Impossible. If it was easy or normal, or hell, even classic to an extent, splitting troops into cover would be viable, but every person who's attempted an Impossible run has noted that keeping your troops in a straight line is the most efficient tactic by far, even if it leaves them out of cover, as it allows you to trigger aliens more or less when you want to.
That sectoid that moved twice instead of shooting early in the episode would not have happened to the vast majority of xcom players, therefore that is not a good outcome to rely on. 99% of players would have had to deal with that sectoid either shooting at or suppressing them. That's not luck. That's buggy AI, and any competent player would not have gotten themselves in that situation.
What Ze should've done instead of splitting into garbage half cover on his first turn was immediately start heading for that high cover van on the right, and leapfrog from there to the pipe that led up to the roof. The fact that he didn't immediately start looking for a way to secure that rooftop while avoiding triggering extra alien pods shows inexperience, and I frankly think it's bs that he wasn't punished for some of the moves he made.
Dmytro Bogdan where is your ironman impossible run? Lets all watch it and see how great you are. Or better yet show us how good you are on multiplayer. Maybe you can disconnect like all the cowards that don't want their rank to go down.
Thanks. The difference between S1 and S2 is quite big. All the helpful comments and critique in the S1 and couple of hours of practice in between made quite a difference. Oh, and while replying to you, thanks for all the likes and comments on series 1 videos :)
he is getting INSANELY lucky
He is getting *very* lucky, but he's playing well enough that even with bad luck he'd be doing well. He rarely has more than a one or two units that can be hit per turn at worst (can hit more units than sectoids-mind mergers).
Most turn-based fantasy games are more on the strategy level than squad-level tactics. Can't really think any fantasy-themed one that would be XCOM-like (or Silent Storm, Jagged Alliance, etc.). There's plenty of RPGs with turn-based combat of course, some more tactical than others.
Even though you were really lucky, I learnt a lot from your play style. Great vid :D
Wating too long to see this awesome walkthough.. Love it : )
You get so friggin lucky in this LP whenever I play I either get shittons of the same unit, miss 90% of the time or just run out of money
Nice video, you are a good player, but you got extremely lucky here in begining/middle paty of the mission, all those aliens missing, and you hitting all those shots, it doesnt happen to often on impossible:)
When you kill an alien that is Mind Merging into another alien and both die, does your soldier get credit for both kills?
I believe so.
Yes I wondered this too at one point the answer is yes!
yup!
Very well played. And I love the accent.
Hey I heard about you on steam news great job!
daaaaaaaamn that was a lucky start!
Thanks. I hope you enjoy the series :)
Here, an experienced player, lost one soldier at the first mission and the squad got wiped at the second mission.
Guess it's back to classic ironman for me.
Thanks, I'm happy you're liking my videos. And welcome to the channel :)
oh wow, impossible is...impossible. nice to see the new series though.
No, not really random. You get the same type of missions each month, but what day they occur is somewhat random. Maps are always the same, but they're rotated, so you probably won't see the same map until you've seen them all.
best start ever.
Great gameplay! I just downloaded PS3 version of game and started playing on nomal mode and its is really hard! I didn't even know if you kill the mind boost sectoid the booster one is instantly killed too
This is awesome. Dracula is playing XCOM! Eu sunt Dracul!
Thanks Squee! I hope you enjoy the ride :)
man you're lucky i legit just tried to play impossible iron man but missed every attack and then got my entire team 1 hit on first contact about 10 attempts in a row
Well played, although you were a bit lucky (as others have pointed out).
But that is no doubt required in impossible+ironman. I hear it is quite punishing an that few people actually makes it, including experienced players.
Thank you kindly
Yes, I believe on Easy and Normal you start with the OTS. On Classic or Impossible, you start without.
Well that first mission went about as well as you could've hoped.
Did they tweak the alien's values? Whenever I started a game on Impossible after release my team got instant wiped out with every enemy shot being a critical hit. No matter what cover, even from almost the edge of viewing distance.
It's not my fault if the random numbers go my way. Don't get me wrong, I agree, I'm very lucky in this episode, and in couple of occasions as the LP goes on. However, while "luck" plays a part, being careful and doing the right moves is what matters more in the end.
That's true, but you can play really good and have odds on your side, u can still easy lose even 5 games strake in row.
The first rookie squad you get in every non-tutorial game always has one of each class.
I don't know. The amount of sheer luck you have is suspicious. You never get punished for anything. They never hit you when it matters. Heck, they never hit you period.
It's full cover because the tile the soldier is standing on is on the other side of the line that the full cover would draw. That being said, I think it's silly too given the position. Hopefully fixed in Enemy Within.
Your Voice is EPIC I had to watch you vid and sub
Hey, there are other people who like Sledge Hammer too. If you want you can rewatch all of them at Riku Ville Raitala's channel.
Well holy shit. I first heard of you years ago when you played Mount and Blade, and I think you played Dark Souls. So, go figure when I see you on the Steam page.
When I played this once on Ironman, on the first mission when an Alien shot at my soldier and missed the soldier instantly paniced, how come that never happens here?
It was something that happened almost everytime for me which I found ridiculous, like omg you're a soldier did it never cross your mind that you might get shot at?? ;P
Be careful zemalf, I'm pretty sure Mutons have 100% aim on impossible...good luck man!
Hi Zemalf,
I've watched the first few hours of your playthrough here, and i've learned a lot about base management and planning your budget effectively between the end of month reports. I've also gotten some good advice for the tactical part of how the enemies spawn etc.
What i'm having difficulty finding out is why the enemies takes shots at me far more often than they do in your playthrough. I've started a game on Normal. From what i've read the AI will be limited in that it will very rarely use grenades or other abilities compared to playing on Classic or Impossible. As xcom.wikia.com says "Aliens can make sub-optimal actions and are less likely to use grenades and abilities.".
What i'm wondering about here is if they take more low percentage shots at you on lower difficulties. As i said earlier, i noticed that the enemies takes very few shots at you. This seems logical as you plan every move very well, and you will most of the time have full cover, smoke cover or similar to protect your team. Will this keep the smarter enemy AI from taking these "potshot" low percentage shots at you, effectively (when played as good as you do) keep them from firing almost any shots at all?
Example, in the first ufo-crash mission i moved my team very carefully from mostly 100% cover all the time, and also was very careful not to pull/aggro more than one group at a time. i activated a group of 2-3 sectoids, and one of them took a far away shot at one of my soldiers who was in 100% cover, in an elevated position. It killed my soldier instantly with a critical hit. I got a bit irritated as i had been very carefull, and taken every (to my knowledge) precaution, and still the sectoid took this low percentage shot, which could fit the description of "sub-optimal action". Problem is that if they keep doing that all the time, even though it's probably a lot easier than having a classic/impossible AI opponent, i will still get hit and (in worst case if it crits) loose a team-mate now and then. like every 10th shot if they are all 10% shots.
I got the feeling from watching the first few hours of your playthrough that the Impossible AI didn't take such shots that often, which again, with you playing very smart and not giving him good angles and low/no-cover targets, resulted in a more controlled and less reliant on the dice.
These are just some of my thought. And as i'm not an experienced xcom player and don't know the specifics and small details in the combat system, i could be totally wrong here.
What are your experiences and thoughts on this matter?
regards,
André
(also, if anyone else have some good advice here, i'm VERY grateful for all the help i can get :))
In the playthrough above I think pretty much every enemy that could shoot at him did shoot at him each turn it was able. The reason I there isn't a lot of alien fire is that there are very few aliens per turn that have sight to his units. Usually he takes out at least one directly after activation. Given that sectoids boost eachother that means you'll likely only get a single attack the next turn. If you then kill the merge originating sectoid that means the enemy would get exactly one shot per encounter. (To give you an idea.) Remember they can't shoot you if you're out of range or they can't move to see you -- and they won't move to bad cover to do so. Note: when Zemalf couldn't drastically reduce the number of aliens in a turn he moved an exposed unit away where it was unlikely to be targetted.
I've never played below Classic -- it may be that aliens will stretch themselves thinner to take unlikely shots (which given the large health boost and lower crit chance at lower difficulties should be nbd) -- but in my experience on Classic and Impossible: aliens will shoot you even if you're in high cover in general as long as no easier targets are available most times (sometimes they'll overwatch -- but they'll almost never do nothing if there are targets in range and they have cover).
You probably just need to be more binary in your aggression: go all out or fall back/hunker down. (Probably don't hunker down (-80% aim with high cover) if more than one alien is likely to target you and you're behind destructible cover [most of it] though -- first miss might hit cover and leave you exposed for second shot)
it's your awesome accent, it gives you hax :D
Actually the hardest is first mission, second mission and slingshot mission within first month. You did pretty good, but you was actually pretty lucky. I mostly get one shot under full cover, or i miss 90% chance to shot. Like on 17:32, your soldier get first miss from one alien, it destroyed wall, and second alien was shooting different guy under full cover, and also miss (he could move closer and kill your soldier who was without any cover). All of this is really never happening in my games.
This is a fake run. He either save scummed or modded. No chance this run was real.
@sscr1p7 100 percent. This is manipulated rng for SURE. The aliens missed 100 percent of their shots in that mission. That doesn't happen. Especially in fuckin impossible iron man runs.
@@idrinkmilk282 I finished impossible ironman 5 month ago. It tooks me about 350 games (which can looks a lot, but around 320 games was insta cancelled because of bad first map). The first month is hardest, first and second mission are crucial. There are some map layers, that are pretty hard (like trains map, fountain, graveyard). So to success this, you must spam first mission until u find a good one (very good ones are with roofs, on roofs u can just wait to alliens and then shoot them with better %). Then all your soldiers must do kill (so they promote) and nobody can die or be injured. Then u go to mission 2, which again must be good map (and this is really tricky). But on second mission u have Heavy with rocket. Rocket can kill full allien trio, or better two alliens with mind (so 4 alliens total). This is huge benefit. Sniper on first level is worse then non-promoted with gun, because u can't move and shot. U need two action points to shot and that is so bad. So sometimes its better go to second mission with rookies instead of sniper (but u also need sniper to get promoted to get shooting on long-distance), so it depends on many factors.
There are also slingshot maps, if u roll subway with bombs or anything with timer, it's better just skip it. Slingshot maps are always the same, especially places where u are triggering allien agents, so if u know the places, you can prepare and kill them instantly. If u trigger 2 at once or miss the shots, then you are mostly dead. Otherwise slingshot maps can be really good for leveling your soldiers, some panic reductions and other bonuses.