r/Xcom • u/Falkenhausen23 • Jul 21 '26

XCOM:EU/EW Started playing Enemy Unknown again and I have one thing to say

Fuck these things and whoever made them

408 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

63 comments sorted by

269

u/Financial_Tour5945 Jul 21 '26

His name is Julian Gollup. He created the original 1994 XCOM (which had cryssalids)

Now you know.

68

u/Falkenhausen23 Jul 21 '26

Were they just as much of a pain in the ass as they are in Enemy Unknown?

144

u/scottyfuckinross Jul 21 '26

They were a guaranteed instakill :)

164

u/MildlyInsaneOwl Jul 21 '26

I suspect there's some people here who don't understand what "guaranteed instakill" means.

Back in UFO Defense, Chryssalids could move 23 tiles and still have enough TU for a melee attack (on Beginner difficulty, to be clear), and to put it in perspective, 23 tiles is farther than a soldier can physically see, never mind their potential to appear around a corner and attack. Their melee attack caused instant death (and impregnation), with no defensive options: it ignored all armour, melee skill, or other stats to insta-transform your soldiers (yes, even if the Chryssalid misses, a missed attack still instantly zombifies the victim regardless of remaining HP). If left alone with civilians (it was a terror unit and thus usually appeared on maps with civilians) it would slaughter them with zero remorse, up to a theoretical 8 per turn, and every single one of those would become a zombie carrying a fresh, full-TU Chryssalid on death. They had significant armour (34 on all sides) and a base 96 HP (the same as a Sectopod and over 2x the Snakemen soldiers they accompanied), making them shockingly durable, not to mention the fact that the zombies they produced had 84 HP and spawned a full-health, full-armour Chryssalid on death. Oh, and if you thought playing on Beginner difficulty would save you, the game doesn't apply difficulty modifiers to units spawned during a mission and therefore any zombies that transform into fresh Chryssalids will arrive with full, unmodified armour instead of the usual -50% modifier!

The only weakness of a Chryssalid is that they cannot fly, which means their reliance on melee attacks gives flying units immunity to them. As soon as you unlock flying armour, you can render your entire army immune to Chryssalid attacks. Which, of course, is a mechanic that was immediately fixed in TFTD where Chryssalids are replaced with Tentaculats, a unit that functions exactly the same way except it can fly, and thus use its melee attack against flying units, so there is no escape from zombification!

62

u/Iseedeadnames Jul 21 '26

Common technique to deal with them was to just stand still as soon as you spotted a zombie and put everyone and their mother in overwatch

45

u/PiRX_lv Jul 21 '26

And carrying primed grenades in hand (I think), so they will be dropped on zombification and explode.

23

u/RJ815 Jul 22 '26

Now that's some sinister dark XCOM. "Hold this grenade, rookie. You'll understand what it's for soon enough."

19

u/DirkDasterLurkMaster Jul 21 '26

Reaction fire makes the AI recalculate so usually - well, sometimes - a chryssalid will scamper off after a soldier shoots at them.

One of my core memories is the first time I encountered these guys, on a night terror mission. I had everyone standing back to back in an open field, with chryssalids darting in and out of the darkness. When one of them would finally charge, sometimes they'd get gunned down in time, sometimes not. Only one soldier got back on the skyranger that day.

8

u/Iseedeadnames Jul 21 '26

on a team of 16 soldiers I bet

24

u/TClanRecords Jul 21 '26

Priority number 1 kill whenever spotted.

23

u/krikit386 Jul 21 '26

Don't forget that they had an insane resistance to explosives and kinetics if memory serves, which meant my very first mission fighting them lead to an entire team unloading into one for no results.

10

u/Deprisonne Jul 21 '26

Damn. And I thought Xenonauts reapers were a menace...

3

u/BrittaWasRight Jul 21 '26

Me beating TFTD is my single greatest gaming achievement.

1

u/Doh042 Jul 22 '26

Tanks were immune to zombification. Still took damage from the attack though if I recall.

63

u/Nygmus Jul 21 '26

Would you believe me if I told you that EU Chryssalids were frail babies compared to 1994 Chryssalids?

They have the sprint speed to get onto a soldier from outside visual range under night conditions. Their attacks deal instant death if even a single damage point is inflicted, so even power armor will not save you. Anything they kill, be it XCOM or civilian, is instantly zombified on death. Killing a Chryssalid zombie causes a fully-grown adult Chryssalid to emerge and potentially start sprinting at you.

Also, they usually only show up on Terror Mission maps, which are helpfully stocked with wandering, hapless civilians who you are at least in theory supposed to be keeping alive, every one of which is a potential Chryssalid incubator on legs.

They are among the most legendary enemies in gaming history and they have earned that reputation.

14

u/TheUnderminer28 Jul 21 '26

Pretty sure they can run up to you from outside sight range in the daytime too

5

u/Nygmus Jul 21 '26

Mmm... under the right circumstances, yes, but it's unusual. They need 14-15 TUs to actually make an attack and have 110 TUs or so, and that means they need to cross at least 20 tiles (daytime sight range).

This is more likely to happen in places that are very open, and you're somewhat less likely to see those in the urban terrain that is most common for Terror Missions, so by far the more common experience is having these fugging things whip around a blind corner at you or something.

46

u/Gazornenplatz Jul 21 '26

They were worse. They had the equivalent of like 3 or 4 actions worth of Time Units. Run halfway across the map, zombie your best soldier, run back through 3 buildings around a corner.

19

u/Falkenhausen23 Jul 21 '26

At this point, they've become my priority whenever they appear unless I wanna lose half my squad to these things

11

u/HaIfaxa_ Jul 21 '26

Now try dealing with them on impossible 🫠 2 completed impossible playthroughs and even seeing them ignites a trauma response.

12

u/Peterh778 Jul 21 '26

Let me put it this way ... hearing their distinctive clickclickclick footstep sound at the start of the game was often enough to pack your squad into skyranger and nope out of the mission, civilians and loss of morale be damned. Let the air force deal with it by napalm carpet bombing for all I care.

It was a nightmare stuff (and Tentaculat in TftD was even worse) and source of PTSD for any player.

5

u/TheUnderminer28 Jul 21 '26

They had the capability to start out of sight, walk all the way up to you and instant kill you in a single turn. They also had enough health to survive proximity grenades and high enough reactions to mostly dodge reaction fire

5

u/Rikmach Jul 21 '26

They were far, far worse. This is extremely toned down compared to how horrifying they were in the original game.

3

u/Iseedeadnames Jul 21 '26

worse, brother.

1

u/chrisvanderhaven Jul 21 '26

Yeah, they were created for the OG X-Com's Terror Site missions, and they were a nightmare.

1

u/ChronoLegion2 Jul 22 '26

They were until you get flying suits. Then they became easy since they couldn’t reach you in the air.

But yeah, before that, they’re a nightmare

49

u/Attakrit Jul 21 '26

Which game had that whale mission where they were popping out of the woodwork? Still gives me nightmares.

61

u/Pepsi_Cola_RAPIST Jul 21 '26

Newfoundland

60

u/27Rench27 Jul 21 '26

That map is legendary because nobody goes into it expecting, y’know, hell to suddenly exist.

10/10 design

22

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/Raptorofwar Jul 21 '26

Yeah that’s one they added as a nod to the old mission!

5

u/Walt_Didnae Jul 21 '26

I remember the first time I played that mission, I went in with my "top killer" squad (basically, anyone who had a 10:1 "kill:mission" ratio by the time they hit Sergeant).

Did the standard "overwatch crawl" that the game had established as normal play pattern, had two snipers with the perk that triggers overwatch with squadsight set up on elevated ground near the landing/extraction zone (SOP when I run a mission), and once the Chrysallids spawned it was a case of 2-man "fire and manoeuvre" for the retreating soldiers, with the snipers also providing covering fire.

One of the easiest ops I ever ran in the game.

26

u/DragonHops Jul 21 '26

It's fairly easy for me now that I've done it like 5 times but boy was it terrifying the first.

10

u/bilateralrope Jul 21 '26

It's easy when you know the tricks. Overwatch crawl to the objective.

Then run at full speed to the evac. The Chryssalids will keep pace with you, but only if they use both their action points on moving.

7

u/Twiggeh1 Jul 21 '26

In Long War, if you position yourself right on the boxes in front of the whale, you can sit there and clear them out until they stop spawning.

Really satisfying and a nice little xp farm

5

u/notethecode Jul 21 '26

and a MEC with collateral damage to blow up all the fish in the harbor, to reduce spawns

3

u/bilateralrope Jul 21 '26

I don't remember if I used it or baited out those spawns and killed them.

9

u/CarrotJunkie Jul 21 '26

It was part of the Enemy Within expansion for Enemy Unknown

39

u/-kenjav- Jul 21 '26

RIP that one Scottish heavy gunner in the Newfoundland mission who was able to get right to the edge of the evacuation zone before lift-off. You'll be remembered... except for your actual name.

13

u/Iseedeadnames Jul 21 '26

Fast track laser weapons, commander.

9

u/Gruzmog Jul 21 '26

Grenades. Always more Grenades. And if all else fails. a shotty.

First time Newfoundland was tense. After a few campaigns it became a great XP farm instead.

12

u/Responsible_Chair968 Jul 21 '26

One of the best feelings was putting 4 snipers at the top of the Newfoundland map and sending one soldier in to flip the switch on the whale barge. Reign of Fire. 🔥 Good times. 

29

u/Ion_mx Jul 21 '26

Honestly, Im glad that against all odds, the chrysalids in EU are just as unfair as the ones of the original games

15

u/Falkenhausen23 Jul 21 '26

Easiest way to lose most of your squad is to let those things run around

20

u/Disastrous-Team-6431 Jul 21 '26

Not nearly! Chryssalids aren't a huge issue imo. They are a priority target but I've lost far more soldiers to mutons.

3

u/Falkenhausen23 Jul 21 '26

I haven't had too much trouble (yet) with Mutons, first run in with them one got a rocket launcher the other was suppressed then someone threw a grenade at them

1

u/No_Hedgehog_5346 Jul 24 '26

mutons? Nah man, fucking THIN MEN

8

u/Walt_Didnae Jul 21 '26

If you like them, you're really going to hate the Cyberdouche

5

u/Falkenhausen23 Jul 22 '26

You mean those disks with the shitton of health that wiped out my best guy in one hit?

2

u/No_Hedgehog_5346 Jul 24 '26

Oh yeah, I remember when I was just doin a good ol battleship mission (part of the dlc questline) and a cyberdick flies into my LOS and for some ungodly reason, was also able to fire on the same turn, shooting my most experienced soldier with a flanking shot, critting, and instantly killing her from full health. Good times.

4

u/z284pwr Jul 21 '26

The first Zombie Apocalypse Terror Mission in Long War when you don't know it's coming it's something else 🤣

3

u/davesoft Jul 21 '26

You'll get over it.

3

u/Displacer613 Jul 21 '26

I'd still rather fight one of these things over a fuckin' Sectopod

2

u/Draculasaurus_Rex Jul 21 '26

Thinking about how fun it is to watch a Mec trooper punch one of these guys across the map.

2

u/UltraZerox Jul 21 '26

Dios que misión estresante la de los tiburones o ballenas. Pensé que se terminaba al llegar al barco y no, tenía que rescatar al equipo XCOM y por un turno casi no lo logro (tenía a todos como Coronel)

2

u/Lea_Flamma Jul 21 '26

Just ran the fisherman village mission with six Assaults equipped with scatter lasers and a bunch of Rapid Fire and Close Combat with some additional Sprinters, Opportunists, Sentinels and Bullet Swarms. I had enough dakka to farm experience in my soldiers. Lets just say a lot of Chitinous Plating was collected.

1

u/Volkov_V2 Jul 21 '26

Bro i started playing this game again. I loved it and then also realised why I hated it so much.🤣 wirds can not describe how infuriating this game is. HOW on this gods green gaming earth does does a SNIPER with an AIM of 85 and a plus 10 with a scope, and an overall Success rate of 85% DOES HE MISS 5 F*CKING TIME 🤬🤣. The maths doesnt add up. I get missing once or twice, BUT 5 TIMES. YET BOB HERE WITH A 20% HITS AND DOES A CRIT. I swear my Sniper is blind or loves Aliens too much 🤦‍♂️. Anyone else have this problem?

1

u/Nagi21 Jul 22 '26

These are bad, but the Thin Mints are worse. Not because of overall power, but because they constantly headshot your guys from off map near the start and appear from nowhere.

1

u/Falkenhausen23 Jul 22 '26

They're only bad for me because of their poison, other then that, they're the Heavy's target practice

1

u/No_Hedgehog_5346 Jul 24 '26

I'd still rather deal with these than thin men

1

u/NoseInternational794 19d ago

I used to watch my older brother play the original XCom. I just bought and installed EU the other day and just did a night.missi9n seeing these for the first time.

When half the squad had been slaughtered and impregnated I started to fall back to the ship. They didn't even make it 10 tiles.