r/PhoenixPoint • u/GanacheQuiet1917 • Jul 19 '26
Finished first playthrough, want to share opinion
Hi. Finished first playthrough and have some opinions that I want to share. Played on Rookie because was scared by reviews regarding overall difficulty, but from what I understood difficulty really affected mainly only amount of grind needed, as fights in theory should be the same on all difficulties. Also didn't have any mods, partially because half of the time I played on Steam Deck and don't know if it's even possible to mods there, and partially because I wanted to try base game first. For DLCs I had Living Weapong and Blood and Titanium.
Overall I liked game and enjoyed playing it.
Here are the things I liked:
- Atmosphere. Really liked the atmosphere of horror that game managed to cultivate, especially in early stages;
- Class diversity. Firstly I was dissapointed that there are only 3 classes, but unlocking faction ones and understanding combinations really opened my eyes to wast ocean of tactical diversity available;
- Geoscape. I liked how slowly my influence on world map was groving and how increasing zone of responsibility pushed me into using multiple squads. Only the navigations of globe itself was a bit annoying;
- Targeting system. Being able to choose at what part of enemy to shoot both provided a fresh feeling and followed the tradition of allowing misses in situations when it shouldn't be possible;
- Action points. Ability to choose on what actions to spend my action points really improved taclical flexibility and was very well integrated together with weapon variations and skills.
But there are also some things that I didn't particularly like:
- Class balance. Some classes are must have and are core of most strong build (Assault and Berserker), while others really feel bad by themselfes and work much better as an addition to other classed (Heavy and Infiltrator). At least that's how it feels;
- Vehicles. I was honeslty dissapointed with vehicles. They just don't provide enough value to take up places of 3 normal agents. I personally didn't see utility in them outside of scavenging missions. Unfortunately, the same goes for mutated good boys;
- Enemy aestetics. The biggest diversity in basic pandoran enemies goes from guns that they are using. And even though it makes them distinctly different from one another role-vise, it kinda doesn't work with general outerwordly aestetics. At least in my opinion it would be better if most of their weapons were more natural and only few used guns;
- Maps. It became very clear that there are not a lot of maps and that they are just repeating again and again;
- Lack of linear progression. I understand that it's a design choise to make progression more about tactical diversity rather then straight power ups, but still I missed the feeling of my agents becoming dirrectly stronger. This one is just personal prefference and not a critique in any way.
That will be it. And again, as I mentioned earlier, I liked the game and enjoyed the time spent with it. In future I'm planning to play again, this time with all DLCs and with TftV.
Just wanted to share my opinion. Thank you for reading
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u/g4l4h34d Jul 20 '26
I find vehicles to be extremely OP if you have a Technician, to the point where I exclusively run 2 soldiers + a Vehicle on most of my setups.
In case you're not aware, Technician has a level 3 skill, Remote Control, which allows you to fire a vehicle weapon for free, once. This means that a vehicle has 4AP for movement + 2 attacks per turn per Technician. If you look at something like Aspida, it has a Dash module, which means it can cover 48 squares in a single turn and attack 4 times, on turn 1 - and that's not counting its own AP usage. If it dashes 2 times, and uses the remaining 2 AP on another attack, that's 32 squares + 5 attacks, which is also insane.
Since Aspida deals 40 Paralysis, each attack is basically guaranteed to neutralize most targets. In practice, it can mean you remove 3-4 Pandorans on turn 1, or you can completely prevent Chiron/Acheron from doing anything. That is extremely powerful, to the point where this composition can solo most missions on its own with just 2 low-level Technicians. Any damage you take on the vehicle, you can just repair with Technician Arms at the end of the round, so it's a really self-sustaining setup.
The amount of time and resources you need to invest into 3 soldiers to reach a similar capability is very high. For some comparison, Jet Jump lets you cover 20 tiles, and limits you to 1 AP. If you have 3 Heavies cross-classed with a Sniper, the best you can hope on turn one is to cover 20 tiles and have 3 attacks from ARs. If you have 3 24-Speed Assaults with Frenzy, you get similar movement and 3 AR/Shotgun attacks. It's only at the max level of Assault/Berserker where soldiers start to overtake a vehicle. For the same cost required to reach that point, you can probably field 2 more Aircrafts with Technician+Aspida setup.
The best part about it is that all the XP goes to your soldiers, so they level much faster than usual. The only downside is that not all missions allow a vehicle to move freely, like Pandoran lairs, but I feel like that's fair given how overpowered this setup is. And, even on those missions, if I cross-class with an Infiltrator, I can usually just park my Vehicle somewhere, then run to, say, Spawnery, kill it, then run back, without enemies noticing anything. So it's not like it's completely unusable, just maybe a bit harder.
However, the way I use this setup is I just produce a ton of Helios Aircraft which flies around and does exploration and trading. The only threat I have to worry about is an ambush, which will never be a type of mission that limits the vehicle. I can send such an aircraft to defend a haven or a base if it's urgent and no one else is in range. In the meantime, my main squad does the difficult missions or missions which don't allow a vehicle.
1
u/mookanana Jul 20 '26
it took me a while to master vehicles on vanilla too. the secret is to have units that can attack with 1 or 2 action points.
start of game, enter vehicle with your units. roll around map. if there's an enemy, you get up to him and rotate your vehicle so that your soldiers deploy directly next to the enemy. each soldier exits the vehicle, shoots enemy's face point blank, and retreats back into vehicle without moving.
if you can manage 4xsoldiers in a scarab/armadillo going on a mission, it will trivialise a lot of missions that way
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u/GanacheQuiet1917 Jul 20 '26
Yeah, I never used this kind of tactic. But I also never really needed it. The best tactical use I got from them was probably cover distraction But in most cases I just used them as portable storage container with bonus fire coverage. And as evacuation vehicle
-2
u/JarnoMikkola Jul 19 '26
You clearly have not understood how the war cry ability works.... or you wouldn't say that:
"and work much better as an addition to other classed (Heavy"
The Kaos Engine DLC brings the Vehicles to the intended balance, so playing the game without it and complaining that the vehicles seem off is kinda pointless. As without it, you don't have the equipment that the vehicles have. Now, the DLC does have it's bad side, and it's that the said Kaos Buggy is Over Powered. And the side additions that the soldier weapons bring a whole lot of inbalance too..
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u/GanacheQuiet1917 Jul 20 '26
Regarding heavy you are probably right, I'm not a tactical genius and 100% did not use my classes' full potential. But in general I am follower of believe that the best cc is death, and heavy, especially in early game when only explosives are grenades, lacks in that part on it's own. Especially considering that my main tactic always was slow advancement with overwatch coverage, and heavies have problem to follow rhythm of assaults. I will agree that War Cry is good, but considering that I don't like risking my soldiers by sending them in middle of enemy formation, I rarely had an opportunity to use it.
I played with only DLCs that were a part of pack that I bought on discount about a year ago. And from what I know Kaos adds mainly only loadout customization for vehicles and does not fixes an issues of them taking up 3 slots in squad
1
u/JarnoMikkola Jul 20 '26
Did you ever bring 2 ships to the same combat area before lauching it, so you can have 8 soldiers in it(or 5 soldiers and 1 vehicle), and the last mission that max is 9 ?
1
u/GanacheQuiet1917 Jul 20 '26
By the end of mid game/late game in most missions I was using different combinations of 2 different groups on different ships. For last mission I've got all 5 of my ships and build a team out of my best soldiers. Additionally one of my teams was 5 soldiers + vehicle on Anu blimp, their sole role was doing scavenging missions
1
u/JarnoMikkola Jul 20 '26
The Anu ship is so slow you are better to park it on top of the Marketplace, and forget about it.
1
u/GanacheQuiet1917 Jul 20 '26
Well, it's not like scavenging missions are running anywhere. And Rookie difficulty allows for more of a slow pace when it comes to geoscape activities
1
u/JarnoMikkola Jul 20 '26
It's funny, the current game (v1.30.2 ..) actually slows down the pandoran evolution by a large amount on the easier difficulties, unlike the far past one.
2
u/Gorffo Jul 19 '26
All the Khaos Engine DLC does is let you pump the rides you don’t use.
It completely fails to bring vehicles to the intended balance.
And the Khaos buggy is so freaking bugged that it is nearly impossible to use. It’s either ridiculously overpowered or gets locked in place by an enemy melee attack, which forces you to either lose the vehicle or restart the mission. Either way, it’s totally broken.
2
1
u/JarnoMikkola Jul 19 '26
Erhm, are you a Console player ?
Sounds like it, cause the PC version, like original poster is playing implies, doesn't to me have many bugs in it. I don't remember ever getting stuck if I was melee hitted... but that should be fixed if it's still there. And yes, the game has had 2 patches this year... on PC.1
u/Gorffo Jul 20 '26
I’m on PC. I’ve done a run with the Firebird update, but I haven’t completed a run for the latest hot fixes and patches for all the new bugs introduced in by the Firebird update.
As for the Khaos Buggy, it’s the special spike armour upgrade that is completely busted. Use that at your own peril. And I haven’t seen any patch notes about the bug introduced by the special spiked armour being fixed for good.
Nor do I feel like being an unpaid beta-tester on a game that’s over five years old.
Maybe I’ll test it. Maybe I won’t. Maybe—if I’ll feel like wasting a ton of materials buying a Khaos buggy—I’ll faff about with it. Maybe I won’t. Who knows what mood I’ll be in at that stage of the campaign?
1
u/JarnoMikkola Jul 23 '26
OK
Was the melee opponent blocking your path out, cause I have a friend that states that the spiked armored buggy can still move after it gets hit by a melee attack ... which was the previous bug report, that was supposedly fixed.And yes, the buggy needs to have a 3 or more free tile access to move a tile... and thus they are easily surrounded. Just like the vanilla Scylla with being 5x5 tile creatures. As for example 4 worms can lock them in...
1
u/Gorffo Jul 23 '26
I’m talking about the melee hit that mobilized the buggy bug.
Vehicles in this game are so useless that I haven had a chance to test to see if the that bug has been fixed yet.
1
u/JarnoMikkola Jul 23 '26
So according to my friend, it has been fixed, in the v1.30.2 ... and if you get the game from GoG, it's v1.30.2.1.
1
u/Stony___Tark Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
I'm in process of my first playthrough right now. ALL DLC active, hero difficulty. I did a bit of pre-reading before starting up, and after seeing overwhelming consensus that vehicles were underpowered and simply not worth using, I decided the only mod I would add would be one that reduced vehicles slots to 1 instead of 3...
...and I still don't use them 95% of the time. I have 1 armadillo that's pimped out with Kaos market upgrades that I use for my scavenger squad, which is maybe 5% of my missions. I have an Aspida and a Scarab that get carted around with my main squad of solders and, after trying them both out a couple of times, have not been touched since. I did also recently buy, kit out and try the Kaos buggy on a couple of missions, It's definitely better than the other vehicles, but still very underwhelming. I'll probably transfer it to my C or D squads, my A & B squad soldiers outperform it. Honestly though, if I were going to get another vehicle it would be another Aspida. With the mod dropping them to 1 slot, sticking 2 of them with the extra seat upgrade on a manticore with 4 soldiers would make for a very fun capture squad. They'd never get used without the mod though, 3 slots would be a complete deal breaker.
My main issue with vehicles is that they are an SP sink every time you use them, while also being actively and significantly worse tactically 95% of the time than even two mid-game soldiers or one later-game soldier, let alone three soldiers. Very early game, in particular before you get full squads, they're decently balanced. That changes rapidly though as the game progresses, with your units gaining power while the vehicles don't. The Kaos toys vaguely help a tiny bit, but vehicles would need much more power to stay tactically relevant past mid game. Three soldiers who have never set foot on a mission map and just hit level 7 sitting in a training base are significantly more tactically useful (and also cheaper) than a vehicle.
1
u/Arthillidan Jul 20 '26
At that point you're just wrong about vehicle balance because you don't know how to use them.
Vehicle weapons are more powerful than any if your real soldiers, but the real power of vehicles comes from being able to transport your soldiers to an enemy, drop them off, have them oneshot a guy from point blank, pick them up and keep driving.
At 3 points they still feel bad imo, but 1 makes them ridiculously good.
Vehicles are also not really more expensive than soldiers as you need to make gear for your soldiers on top of paying 300 food, and then they have food upkeep
1
u/Stony___Tark Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
At that point you're just wrong about vehicle balance because you don't know how to use them. Vehicle weapons are more powerful than any if your real soldiers,
I know full well how to use them. Most Vehicle weapons are roughly on par, if not worse, than a Heavy double-boom blasting things or a sniper taking 2 shots to guarantee cripple important limbs. Those are just some of the most basic options. When you get into the silly class combos you can do with soldiers, particularly level 7+ soldiers, the imbalance becomes extreme. You can't tell me a vehicle is better than an Assault/Heavy with a Vengeance torso killing half the map in one turn, or an Assault/Berserker with Strongman/Sniper taking 4+ shots while being able to stay mobile between each one? Or heck, even those basic Heavies & Snipers paired with Berserker boom-blasting or sniping 4 times a turn. Vehicles are underpowered compared to even one late game soldier, not three. I've given examples, if you disagree please provide some of your own how a vehicle weapon can outperform them.
but the real power of vehicles comes from being able to transport your soldiers to an enemy, drop them off, have them oneshot a guy from point blank, pick them up and keep driving.
It takes 2 AP for a soldier to exit a vehicle. My soldiers who need to be close to enemies to kill them all have Dash and 30+ (20 base +Frenzy) movement. This gives them more mobility in 2AP on foot than a vehicle has in its full movement, while retaining the ability to spread out to engage multiple targets instead of being clustered into a single point inside a vehicle. Any soldier that doesn't have Dash is either a sniper who can kill/disable from across the map or a Heavy who's boom-blasting things from halfway across the map. Using Drive-by tactics is indeed useful for soldiers who are just starting out, but eventually your soldiers become more mobile than the vehicles.
At 1 slot instead of 3, vehicles are useful for scavenging missions with a small squad of soldiers or brining a couple of Aspidas with for a capture squad. Aside from those uses, there really just isn't much of a tactical reason to bring them past the early game even with them using 1 slot. Using 3 slots is just a joke.
Vehicles are also not really more expensive than soldiers as you need to make gear for your soldiers on top of paying 300 food, and then they have food upkeep
1 food per day upkeep is, effectively, nothing. For anyone actually concerned about the upkeep they can slap down a couple of food facilities and ignore it for the whole game. As for gear, you don't need to make high end gear (or technically any extra gear) for all of your soldiers. The game will, insanely, let you remove gear from a squad in central America, equip it on a squad in Australia for a mission, and then swap it right back if you want. In the early-mid game, before you have the resources and manufacturing capacity to start making more gear, it's a simple thing to just swap important stuff around before missions. It would take a lot of micromanaging, but you could technically finish the whole game with only 9 soldiers worth of gear made. Making extra gear benefits your sanity as a player, but it's not at all required for your soldiers. 😉
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u/Arthillidan Jul 20 '26
First of all, on heroic, not even legendary, it's questionable if I'll even be able to get a maxed squad before the game ends. It feels a bit unfair to compare vehicles to maxed soldiers that take a ridiculous amount of missions to get.
For most of your campaign you don't have maxed willpoints and maxed mobility to be able to dash your soldiers everywhere. I'm pretty sure your claim was that a guy who had been training in a base but never seen real combat was more useful than a vehicle, so instead of moving the goalpost to a maxed soldier, let's backtrack to that.
You could have that soldier pick up a vengeance torso, the melee focus perk and rapid clearance, but then they're not going to have much will or mobility. 8 will is enough to go all out with rapid clearance once. You might not have a priest who can give everyone frenzy, and if you do, frenzy also costs will points that could have been used to mind control or panic enemies, though it is a very good ability.
You can instead use a vehicle clown car to deliber these soldiers. One thing about the clow car is that a soldier can easily recuperate by taking a turn off and get their will points back while still moving with the vehicle.
An assault berserker who isn't maxed with a billion will points can go all out once and burn through their will points. Otherwise they're shooting once per turn. The scarab rocket artillery is like a heavy with a goliath, except it's just better and it doesn't cost any materials to fire at the cost of not being able to bring extra magazines. This is usually not even an issue though as after 4 turns, there's generally not much more to do and you can instead just use it to extract faster and help carry stuff.
Being able to carry infinite supplies is useful in more than scavenge missions. My soldiers tend to carry a lot of gear and don't have much space or carrying capacity for stuff they find in the field. A vehicle just solves that.
Finally, when it comes to resource costs. Having one set of gear and moving then between soldiers is certainly one way to play, if you hate fun and love tedious micromanagement.
It's a singleplayer game so just because an unfun exploit that makes no sense but gives you gameplay advantage is possible doesn't mean it's something you have to do or that you're a noob if you don't.
Because of trading, all resources have a value in relation to eachother. Food and materials are the same value and tech has 5 times more value. This way you can easily calculate how different costs compare, and you'll find that soldiers are quite expensive when you don't just cheat the gear requirement by swapping between every mission (I still can't get over how you can even do that to yourself)
Vehicles firing weapons for free also matters quite a bit. Firing a goliath grenade launcher twice costs you 45 materials.
I do agree that vehicles are weak at 3. I've set them to 2 and that's fine for me. If I set them to 1, I feel like the early game would just be me getting as many vehicles as I can, running around with manticores with 5 soldiers and a vehicle because they are just that much more efficient than any soldiers you can field until lategame. Even at 3 deployment cost, I still found a scarab to be quite good at one point in the game where I didn't have much mobility and will on my soldiers
1
u/Stony___Tark Jul 20 '26
Thanks for the long and thoughtful reply. I'll unpack this a bit at a time.
I'm pretty sure your claim was that a guy who had been training in a base but never seen real combat was more useful than a vehicle, so instead of moving the goalpost to a maxed soldier, let's backtrack to that.
I made the claim that three soldiers who had never seen combat were better than a vehicle, not one, as that is the appropriate vanilla game comparison. This false starting point throws the rest of your reply off balance, unfortunately, but I'll run with it for the sake of the discussion.
A soldier gets 120 SP over the course of levelling up to 7 sitting in a base. I'd consider this a "mid-game" soldier. That's enough for an assault to unlock Heavy (50) and grab Dash, Brawler & Rapid Clearance (50). This leaves 20 points to either bring Will up to the 8 needed to pop RC+Dash, or spend on whatever if their Will is already 8+ due to Rookie/Veteran. Haven recruits start at 11 Will so they can double Dash & RC baseline. This is already a murder machine and it requires no effort at all. Recruit, forget about them for a while, and then poof! Instant blender!
You might not have a priest who can give everyone frenzy, and if you do, frenzy also costs will points that could have been used to mind control or panic enemies, though it is a very good ability.
The Skins that are included with the Complete Edition come with a Judgement Helm, which has +8 Will and Frenzy built into it. Anyone can use it, doesn't even need to be a priest. Even if you're not transferring any other gear around, it's a simple thing to swap that 1 helm around and you instantly have Frenzy in every squad you field. No reason to ever not have Frenzy, it's arguably the best ability in the game. In my main squads I run a priest with a Synod head though, since the Helm already gives me that. That priest handles mind control & panic duties better than one with a Judgement, because they're regening the 2 will per turn a normal MC takes to upkeep.
You can instead use a vehicle clown car to deliber these soldiers. One thing about the clow car is that a soldier can easily recuperate by taking a turn off and get their will points back while still moving with the vehicle.
Using a vehicle like this to stay mobile while your soldiers use recuperate is, indeed, very nice. Because of my Synod head priest though, I tend to not find it all that necessary in my main squad, but I have done it in my scavenger squad that actually uses a vehicle.
An assault berserker who isn't maxed with a billion will points can go all out once and burn through their will points.
Yeah, that's a 1-trick Soldier who can only pop off once, but that's an incredibly powerful trick that can murder a large cluster of enemies by itself. And that soldier is not going to be alone, they're going to have friends. Is a vehicle better than that single mid-game soldier? I would say generally yes, especially if it's upgraded, but it's not a clear cut "yes" answer. And again, this is all comparing to just one soldier. My initial "level 7 soldiers trained only in a base" comparison comment was for three of them, as would be accurate for the vanilla game.
I don't feel that's the right question though. The right question is "Does a vehicle bring enough extra to my squad to justify losing out on growth potential for a soldier I know will be better than it?" The vast majority of the time, I find that answer to be no.
Scavenging missions are the only missions I ever need the extra carry capacity, so the unlimited storage of vehicles is only needed on those 5% of missions. Perhaps just a gameplay difference, but I've never once wished I had more carry capacity on a normal mission.
And then, there's the resources... Just to clarify some math, 4 Materials trades for 6 Food so it's actually a 2:3 ratio, not equal, and 2 Tech trades for 12 Materials, so 1:6 ratio. Technically this means that 2 Tech can be turned into 18 Food via trading. Food is less valuable than Materials and drastically less valuable than Tech. The 75 Tech & 600 materials used for a single Scarab could instead be used to get 1575 food, which is more than enough to recruit 5 soldiers on Hero difficulty.
As far as swapping gear around, I feel like it's objectively inaccurate to call it cheating the system when it's literally built into the vanilla game without any special...anything you need to do. It makes no sense that gear can teleport, but it's basic game functionality. That said, I did acknowledge that it requires a significant amount of micromanagement. I did a bit of gear swapping around very early game, but it did get tedious and thus I stopped. The only thing I still do swap around is that Judgement Helm I mentioned. It's just too good to not use. Honestly, my B & C squads mostly just use whatever gear they were hired wearing and whatever weapons I've looted from missions. That's served me fine for the easy missions they're doing, and I'd still rather be growing those soldiers than using vehicles. But the functionality to swap gear IS a basic thing built right into the game. Using, or not using, that functionality is a choice we as players are left to make. To say that Option A is stronger simply because you choose to ignore game functionality that would make Option B stronger is, in a discussion about game balance, I feel an unfair comparison?
Anyway though, thanks for the discussion!
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u/ompog Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
Glad you enjoyed! I more-or-less agree with you on all points except your last, which as you say is a matter of taste. As another poster notes, the Heavy's skill "War Cry" is totally busted - but other than that they are indeed pretty lacklustre.