ranzware
I found Phoenix Point difficult to love, despite wanting to. I didn’t cover its original 2019 release at all, partly preferring to give something else positive coverage instead, and partly suspecting I’d attached hope to it in a way I seldom do, and was overreacting. Perhaps that was a disservice to you, The Reader. We ponder.
Its final form left me ambivalent, and hoping its new modding support might provide the leg up it still needed. Well. It did. Terror From The Void is a major overhaul that touches on just about all the problems I had, while preserving what worked. And after it consumed me for several months, I’m ready to call it the game that Phoenix Point was trying to be.
TFTV rewrites the story to centre on a new strain of the Pandoravirus that reduced the Earth to a wasteland dotted with occasional “havens”. With its spread comes “oneiric delirium”: a Lovecraftian madness presented on the strategic map as “Void omens”. These impose worldwide curse-like restrictions like limited human perception, or a lower soldier-per-mission cap.
Delirium appears directly in tactical missions too, occasionally spawning incorporeal monsters from bodies, and piling up on soldiers exposed to its carrying mist. Low levels are easily mitigated by resting, but otherwise sap the Will Points that serve as both morale and fuel for special abilities. Cyborging or mutating your soldiers provides some optional protection, and investing more levelling juice into their Will Points buys time. You may find that by the time you research the best non-final medicine, you’ve already stockpiled enough resources to make it practically free… but even that treatment has side effects. It’s a hint at what Phoenix Point’s overall strategic dynamic should be – not to exterminate but to explore and seek a permanent solution.
Void omens and side effects are, candidly, more “gamey” than I like. I’d even say “roguelike-y”, an unnecessarily distasteful expression, but that’s more true of squads. Many side missions add a randomised twist to the enemy; idiosyncratic habits and specialties of the individual squad you’re facing. You might fight scrappy bandits whose accuracy increases if they stick together, say, or New Jeric-holes who go berserk when you kill a high-ranking member. They’re generally dispelled when you zap the leader, and a few can be a real pain. But they add a little unpredictability to the still quite limited mission set, and colour in the world a little.
More-common ambush missions discourage the previous strategy of minmaxing to a second dropship with one recruit exploring the globe solo. They double as resource scavenging sites too, incentivising prepared exploration. It’s a measured, carrot-over-stick change, rather than the too-common habit of some mods and games to overcorrect for a minority of powergamers. Expansion is still vital and rewarding, but it’s a more open question when and how, allowing for more personal choice than the one obviously best answer.
Complementing this are changes to “Pandoran evolution”. Phoenix Point’s main villain became stronger over time, but by counter-intuitive means that contradict the premise – Pandorans got stronger the more you defeated them or sterilised their bases. That’s all gone now, and most of their progress comes passively – the more of their strongholds remain intact, the faster they field stronger monsters with more varied abilities. They’re harder to find too, as radar coverage now makes detection more likely, not certain.
Undiscovered NPC havens now broadcast an open SOS, rather than quietly dying. Sure, they’ll still be out of range sometimes, but now you know who you’re letting down, where you should be stronger. The world feels more desperate, actively crying for your help. Since a colony anywhere generates enemy progress, you’re naturally pressed to do what the setup implores – to defend the world, to root them out. The lower detection chance makes expansion more complex – a more distributed network plays the odds better. It also hints, too, at the true path to victory – wiping them out is impossible. You must chase the marked plot missions and press the right research.
Managing their progress now feels more natural than being punished for success, which only accelerated the tendency for the Pandorans to become near invulnerably-armoured damage sponges. That narrowed the range of viable strategies, and led even some reluctant players to the natural solution of puzzling out the most game-breaking perk combinations, which bluntly cheapened the experience.
TFTV requires the complete DLC set, some of which was frankly pretty bad. But they’re rearranged – their major side plots kick off later, instead of piling up almost immediately. Specific issues aside, the shared problem was that most of that DLC was additive, new weapons mostly countering their own additions rather than hooking together and punishing players who didn’t know what was coming in advance. The air game in particular is still dissatisfying, but much less demanding. The evil robots and viral attacks are more manageable, and a rejig of vehicles and modules make them more useful and cost effective (especially in ambushes). The “Kaos Engines” marketplace of unique weapons is readily available, and sells faction research too. Normally, see, access to the best technology depends on allying with one or two of the bickering factions, or stealing it from their laboratories. Those are still true, but the marketplace offers a third, expensive way. You generally have more viable options and fewer mandatory resource sinks.
The most welcome changes, though, are to the class system. As before, a soldier’s starting class grants weapon proficiencies (without which they’re generally useless with a weapon), and seven perks to spend Skill Points on. Where the awkward perks formerly led to absurdities like heavies using their giant guns primarily to whack enemies over the head, or the ostensibly melee-oriented Berserker having almost no actual melee advantage, TFVT rebalances and redistributes so well that every class excels at its core designation, and dramatically increases the room for variety and personalisation.
My particular bugbear with Heavies is immediately improved by moving the Assault-only “return fire” ability to their easily-gained second level, and multiple damage-reducing options. Instead of a slow, inaccurate waste of space until leveling up enough to reach the silly “war cry” power that took away enemy action points (and still rarely getting to shoot anything), they’re now natural tanks who run to the front line and counter-attack when a friendly is shot at. Stealth-specialised Infiltrators benefit from UI tweaks and bonus action points from far more effective sneak attacks to get them out of, or further into, trouble. High level snipers can access a huge “fire twice in overwatch” perk.
Better still, everyone gets a line of seven (formerly three, often underwhelming) “personal perks”, reflecting their randomised background, original faction, and guaranteeing access to a bonus weapon proficiency. They can still multiclass too, opening a potential 21 perks before even factoring in bionic and mutant augmentations. It’s so much better.
The infiltrator who can whip out a shotgun to finish off a newly-armourless target, the sniper who can double-fire a heavy cannon (with a 50% bonus to overwatch accuracy thanks to her faction background) at a charging crabman even before multiclassing. I have a Berserker who can, well, berserk – charge in for multiple taser attacks – and support with a light sniper rifle when the situation changes. The new perks can make even a single class soldier very capable – boosting raw stats instead is often just as useful. And there are still no prerequisites – you can skip or delay any unwanted perk.
If phrases like “axe medic” or “jetpack priest” aren’t enough: it gives room to characterise them. I don’t even change their lurid colour choices now, but try to find armour and tools that lean into their super speed or morale-sapping counter attacks. There are no doubt overpowered combinations, but between the fairer Pandoran progress and breadth of options, it’s no longer necessary to seek them out just to keep up. Their skills generally feel less artificial too, more a product of scrappy post-apocalypse experience than magic and meta-knowledge about how many action points an Arthron needs.
There are some partial misfires. Acheron enemies are still too common and cover every map in absurd amounts of mist (which is wildly more demanding graphically than anything else, and plain annoying to see through), and the Revenants don’t quite work for me. Dead soldiers can come back as mutants who bestow a special power on their pals, ostensibly one based on your established tactics. For example, my focus on single-shot attacks (apparently?) led to a revenant who halved the damage of all my first attacks on an enemy. It’s an effort to realise PP’s initial idea that the mutants would respond to your tactics over time, but the brute force implementation feels too magical for my taste. But hey, it’s a meetable challenge, and varies things a little.
Phoenix Point still has its limitations, but Terror From The Void has finally pushed it from mixed feelings to a recommendation, albeit with a caveat or two based mostly in the need to approach it differently to its peers. It’s been a long time since I played an overhaul mod that felt so much like an effective corrective procedure, and more than ever, I hope we get to see a follow-up that builds on its successes and ambitions.
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Kurt Indovina
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