14 DAY TRIAL // I am not sure how many hours I will end up spending with Xenonauts after all, but as I continue playing and often failing while experiencing the tactical battles I wonder whether I should just grind out a campaign until the end, regardless of whether I reach victory or I am defeated, or if I should just restart as soon as I do a stupid thing in order to get a better shot at winning next time.
I pondered the very same question when playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown and there the answer was a little complicated: I played two or three times until the mid-game and then I restarted it, paid more attention, and managed to get a full game to the final battle.
Unfortunately, a series of circumstances meant that I was unable to complete the Firaxis-made title and abandoned it for about three months before triumphantly returning to once again take the game from the beginning in order to finally finish it.
Xenonauts enhances the finish campaign versus restart dilemma because it delivers a deeper experience and there are enough systems involved that I sometimes fail to actually see I am doomed until suddenly realizing that there is no possible path to victory.
Funding can quickly decline in Xenonauts if the player fails to adequately protect territories, and monetary problems can also appear if the expansion and base-building process is too fast.
There are plenty of research options, and often trying to explore a new one means that critical elements, like new weapons and alien research, lag behind enough that the human forces are entirely outmatched.
And, of course, there are the night missions or the ambushes where my squad, filled with confidence from previous successful missions, moves a little too fast, without proper scouting and solid covering fire, and losses one or two key men before I can react in a coherent manner.
So far, I re-loaded four times after these kinds of losses and fully restarted once. My current plan is to get a Xenonauts game about half way through in order to see the big challenges that the title can throw my way.
I will then try to plan a little, even if no two campaigns are the same, and finally start off a campaign with the aim to win the game outright, which means thinking twice about every move and carefully executing once I make a decision.