Xtra Spicy Enforcer Mission 7

This mission is awful in Xtra Spicy.

Enemies do more damage, and the cage isn't any more durable. Everything costs you more points, and it's entirely probable you've collected less points as a result compared to a baseline game (Because eg you didn't upgrade the Blade Launcher to pick up Data Points as soon, didn't purchase/upgrade the Data Point multiplier pickup, etc), which means you've gotten fewer upgrades. And frankly, the Blade Launcher spawn rate at the end is the primary determinant for whether you beat the mission or fail it -its lingering, bouncing shots are important not only for clearing enemies out the areas you're not actively covering but also because enemies will stop bothering the cage if you do damage to them, zeroing in on you instead. This is vitally important to take advantage of, as the cage just dies way too fast when melee enemies get at it. (I'm not sure why Sectoid shots do barely anything to it on Xtra Spicy, by contrast)

Which means completing the horrible defense section at the end involves a significant element of luck. If the game doesn't feed you a regular supply of Blade Launchers, you're probably just going to fail. Say, more than two dozen times, as I did in securing this footage of a successful run.

While the hovercraft level immediately before it is still The Worst Mission Of The Game on the default difficulty, I'm pre-emptively declaring this to be The Worst Mission Of Xtra Spicy. It was dumb on the default difficulty, but not particularly challenging, just obnoxious with the 'if you know what's coming it's no big deal but if you don't you'll probably need to restart' aspect, but this mission takes all the Xtra Spicy issues with going 'uphill' against the flow of enemies using your laser and uneven weapon quality mattering a lot more and enemies killing you fairly quickly even if they're weak enemies and so on and pushes them front-and-center into a do-or-die sequence of awful that I don't see any later missions being able to replicate... if only because the one other defense mission has a defensible chokepoint.

On the plus side, I discovered this go-around that this mission actually contains two Research Items. I'd always thought it was one per mission, aside a few missions with none at all. Has me wondering if there's any other missions with multiple Research Items I never found.

See you next mission.