Massive Chalice

I'll have more to say about this as I play further, but I've started playing Massive Chalice.  I'm probably about two hours in at this point, and I'm mostly enjoying it.  There's a good amount of interesting differences I'm noticing between XCom and Massive Chalice that I'm seeing since I've played both back-to-back.

First off, XCom's cover system is a real cornerstone of that game, and one I think may be underrated.  By having a cover system, it allows the game to be a lot harder. The tutorial, opening missions, and reaction VO make it very clear: if you're not in cover, you're doing it wrong.

This forces you to take a very cautious,almost puzzle-solving path when advancing. The world feels dangerous, and it in fact is dangerous. It also looks and feels really badass, like you're an alien-killing SWAT team, which fulfills the fantasy nicely. I also enjoyed the gamble you sometimes had to make to stand somewhere unsafe for that chance to finish off a dangerous enemy or save an ally. Overall it made for great drama and tension.

Massive Chalice has no cover system. Instead, characters can only rely on visibility to protect themselves from threats. Since defense is so limited, it seems as you're supposed to expect more death. You can't prepare for attacks well, and you have limited responses if you're overwhelmed. Like XCom, this is reinforced through tutorials and reaction VO. Upon my first death, the chalice made it very clear that that was the first of many.  Separate from combat, characters also die from old age at an astonishing rate. I'm just learning characters' names as they enter their golden years.

The result is that I'm already less attached to my characters than in XCom.  This is a common reaction. Kotaku's review makes the same complaint. While I enjoy playing matchmaker, and I get excited as they have babies and the babies grow up, I have trouble keeping track of individual heroes. When my first character died of old age, my first thought was "Who?"

I'm not sure yet if this is such a bad thing, though. The dark side of being so attached to my XCom characters is that I would reload saves when they died. This is clearly not the intended way to play, but I felt a single death was a game over sentence for me. I also very obviously had my favorites, and I would never bother bringing anyone else to battle. I probably would've enjoyed some more variety, but comfort kept me with the same six heroes. It also meant I had to have my core team survive because I wasn't leveling up any alternates.

So which is better? I think the verdict is still out, but I'm leaning toward higher attachment. I'll give it some more thought as I play through Massive Chalice further, and I'll share my thoughts on how you could hybridize the two in a future post.