XCOM 2 and learning from failure
So recently, I had an itch to replay XCOM 2 again. I first played the game a couple years ago, and something about that playthrough was that I save-scummed a lot! Pretty much anytime something didn't go my way, I'd reload a save and play through it again. This time, however, I wanted to do something different, so I played the game on Ironman mode. How Ironman works is simple. Instead of having control of when you save, the game instead saves automatically every time you perform an action. What this results in is an experience where you can't do a mission over if something goes wrong, and you just have to live with the mistake and keep going.
My first attempt at an Ironman run went...bad. It started out okay at first, but then the moment everything went downhill was when I got the mission to go rescue Mox. For some reason, I didn't get the memo that this was supposed to be a stealth mission, so I played through the mission as I would any other, killing everything that stood in my path. Because I played it like this, the facility was already on max alert before I even got to Mox's cell and I didn't know how fast the reinforcements were going to overwhelm me until it was already too late. The mission failed with all my soldiers dying, including my reaper, a unit that took much more effort to replace. The second blunder came with a retaliation mission, where I bunched up my units near cover that I didn't know was explosive. My last unit accidentally triggered a pod of enemies, and because of the explosive cover, one volley of bombs from a MEC blew the cover up, causing half of my squad to die in an instant, forcing me to evac out. My third failure resulted in another squad wipe, partly caused by me misclicking when choosing a target, causing an enemy I wanted to kill to end the turn alive.
At that moment I decided, "Okay, this isn't working. The mistakes are piling up, I'm running out of resources. I'm gonna abandon this run and start a new one". Now, I'm sure in theory it might've been possible to salvage this run, but I do not think I would've been able to pull it off, so I figured cutting my losses was the best choice, especially since it was only a few hours into the campaign. For my second run, it went significantly better, as the mistakes from my first run served as lessons for how to play the game better. I learned how to make proper use of concealment, made sure to actually be stealthy on the rescue missions, and spaced my units further out. As a result, I had way less casualties compared to my first run. Yeah, I did have some units die on me, especially at the beginning, but I was a lot better at keeping my units alive. What also helped matters was that I got really lucky in the early game. I got a mission that only spawned beast enemies and at the end of it, I had enough Faceless corpses to craft two Mimic Beacons, which were basically "get out of jail free cards" in case I fumbled a turn.
So what did I learn from my XCOM 2 Ironman playthrough? When it comes to learning a skill, you'll learn more from your failures than your successes. It's true that it felt unpleasant to have my mistakes be permanent, but being forced to live with them made me analyze why the mistake happened. Instead of just blaming the game (which is easy to do because it's XCOM), I had to actually be honest with myself and admit that poor planning on my part was what got my soldiers killed. And being able to come to terms with setbacks and learn from them wound up making my victories feel all the more satisfying.
When it comes to XCOM, people's fondest memories with the game aren't the missions where everything went off without a hitch. The XCOM missions people remember the most are the ones where things go wrong and they manage to still come out on top. And my favorite mission of my run was a mission where I did just that. Towards the end game, the danger I felt earlier in the run had all but vanished. I had so many souped up soldiers and so many powerful weapons that even the toughest enemies were now complete jokes. However, I got thrown for a loop when one mission forced me to only bring 3 soldiers into battle, half my usual squad size. As a result, I had to play way more cautiously and had to make full use of each soldier's abilities to take out the pods. As I begin my next turn, I reveal a pod of enemies, and as soon I saw a Sectopod amongst the other troops, my heart dropped. If that thing got a turn, I was fucked, but luckily, my Specialist had Haywire Protocol, which could turn the Sectopod off for two turns. However, it only had a 53% chance to work, and I remember starting the hack and waiting with bated breath to see if it succeeded. It did not.
At that moment, I thought the mission was fucked. I thought I should just evac out of here now and save myself from the wrath of the Sectopod. Despite that, I stuck it out. One of my soldiers wound up in critical condition from eating a Sectopod blast to the face, but thanks to the skills from my Psi Op soldier and bluescreen rounds from my Specialist, I took the Sectopod down and finished the mission without anybody dying. The euphoria I felt when I completed that mission is something I'll remember for a very long time, and it's a moment I never would've gotten if I just reloaded my save as soon as the Haywire Protocol failed.