For most of the pandemic, I’ve been playing this insane megamod for the original X-Com entitled “The X-Com Files”, which I was turned onto thanks to Toad22484’s playthrough.
I’ll be using this thread to document my playthrough of this absurdly robust mod, posting what screencaps I’ve taken up until present, and adding new ones as I keep playing.
If anyone would like a character named after themselves, let me know in this thread.
Ostensibly themed around The X-Files, this mod combines like 500 other mods into one pretty impressively cohesive game. There’s a huge number of new factions, enemies, units, weapons, armor sets, base buildings, interceptors, UFOs, environments, and delightful one-offs, all well-balanced and metered out at a reasonable rate.
I’m a big sucker for any game that lets you capture or control some of the more bizarre units you encounter, and X-Com Files essentially lets you play as some version of most things you encounter. I have a rag-tag group of attack dogs, humans, giant cryptid rats, AI cores installed into tanks, sectoid/human hybrids, just, a lot of weird shit. Gives you squad a lot of flavor.
I also love that X-Com lore, and this mod does a great job essentially bringing every tangentially-related piece of X-Com property together into a cohesive universe - Enemy Unknown, Terror from the Deep, Apocalypse, The Beureau, XCom 1 and 2, and even shit like Rebelstar. It’s a real treat.
To start, I'll list off a few of the key adds this mod makes to classic X-Com:
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XP and awards system for individual units. My AI core, giant rat, or greenhorn rookie will all gain experience from scoring kills, healing, or being wounded. Over time, this increases their time units, health, reaction speed, yadda yadda. There’s a lot of individual stats that increase based on what the unit has lived through.
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Weaponry has been greatly expanded, perhaps too much? You have access to like every modern firearm I can think of - P90’s, colt commandos, AKs, pump-actions, jackhammer auto-shotguns, deagles, sniper rifles, flamethrowers - which in most cases is great, but does result in you doing a lot of inventory management and stat-comparison to find the One Actually Good Rifle to use.
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Morale systems that expand on the “panic” and “berserk” states. If you can kill enough commanding officers and heavy units, the weaker humanoid enemies may reach a point where they just surrender, ending the mission and granting you large amounts of live hostages for interrogation. That “routing” is a great quality of life change.
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Research teams in different bases can collaborate on the same project. This means you can put every team at every base on the same task and get it done much more quickly.
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Lots of “sell all”-type options for inventory management.
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Expanded base building options, including buildings that require certain other buildings (and materials) to be constructed.
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Your unit will stop when they have spotted an enemy, rather than continuing forward until complete. You can toggle this on/off, as you can with everything.
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Interrogated aliens will show up in your inventory as corpses to be sold at the grey market.
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Percentage to-hit is shown right above the aiming reticle, giving you a clear idea of what kind of a chance in hell you have of landing this shot.
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Vehicles now require an AI core, which can be moved from vehicle body to vehicle body. I love this addition a lot, it allows tanks and drones to become true units with experience and growth.
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Greatly expanded UFO types, making interception a mini-game of its own, with you picking certain specialized craft for certain UFO types.
I'd say for downsides...
…you are going to be doing a LOT of missions. Too many. The amount of content in this mod means that in order for them to show it all, you are inundated with encounters for a long while. Those encounters are also pretty difficult! I would strongly recommend going with a medium or easy difficulty, because the sheer number of enemies in most encounters is pretty impossible to survive without save-scumming or an easier difficulty. It remains a flaw with this genre - the punishment for losing a squad is far too great to survive it happening more than once. A system that would keep all soldiers but leave them greatly wounded for a period would be welcome, in my eyes, because resetting to 0 with a fresh squad of rookies even slightly later in the game becomes impossible.
I would also say the sheer number of weapons leads to a ton of bullshit to sort through and sell off. I wish there was an easier way to compare these million different gun variants. I’d love to use all AK-47s for flavor, but if I have M4s right here that have better stats, there’s zero reason I would use the AKs. You end up with a lot of garbage that you wonder why they included.
So, I’ll begin adding entries into this as time permits. I started playing this in February of this year, so, five months of very constant play so far. Lot of bang for your buck.
