XCOM®: Chimera Squad

Not a fan. I love X-Com 2 and War of the Chosen, but can't stand this one. It's not remotely similar, My guys can't hit anything and can't be missed. Instead of moving as one well-trained unit, the turns are mixed in with the bad guys so there's no coordination. The game saves after every move, so you can't go back to the previous turn, and it's just not fun

It's almost an XCOM game but there's no real engagement or thought during the encounters. Half of the game is breaching which is just a left click simulator. Characters sound and feel like they are from a Disney Channel 2000's sitcom and you can't customize them at all. The premise behind the game sounds cool and then you realize its really just a concept that went too far, but at the same time not far enough. No depth to what you can do to prep for encounters in between missions, and no real need to. Almost feels like a mobile game with better graphics.

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I played almost all of UFO/xcom games (since XCOM 1) and this version is really friendly for people, who dont have enough time to play often, remember all plans/development and just want sometimes to play mission. Also nice idea that every character is different "class", nice possibility of combinations

It has most of the familiar mechanics, if you've played any of the previous X-COM games, but offers new ideas and mechanics, with protecting the city, using the abilities you fought against in other games, and an intresting take on the future of the world after X-COM 2 (spoilers!)

Here's what I think has happened. So, the main difficulty in X-COM has always been the fog of war. You don't know what you are going to reveal by moving forward and if you move too much or are just unlucky, you can risk triggering too many enemy pods at once and become overwhelmed. The veterans will all tell you that the best way to consistently win is to overwatch creep and play in a way that guarantees you don't bite off more than you can chew in one turn. I don't think the devs liked that. They wanted the game to be more tactical and positioning based, with bold strategies and more aggressive tactics, but understood that this playstyle was simply not being rewarded. X-COM 2 tried to remedy this with the concealment mechanic, where you would start the game hidden and could reliably see enemies before they saw you, allowing you to pick your engagements. It kind of worked, but the moment it was broken, we were back to overwatch creeping through the remaining fog of war. They also leaned heavily on timers, which was a very unpopular decision. Chimera Squad seems, to me, to be the ultimate final evolution of the devs attempt to push the type of gameplay they think X-COM should be. There is no fog of war. There are no concealed enemies. You breach into an area with enemies in it, you can see the enemies, you can see the landscape, do your best. It removes some of the tension and a loooot of the difficulty inherent to X-COM, this is by far the easiest iteration of X-COM I have ever played. The difficulty is also a lot more consistent, unlike in EU/WotC if you actually lose a mission it's because you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up (this only happened once to me.) Whereas in previous games, sometimes you just got unlucky and everything went from fine to a bloodbath in the space of a single turn through no real fault of your own. The other real major change is the loss of permadeath. Your soldiers are now written characters with their own voicelines and personalities, rather than randomly generated templates you can dress up like dolls and then weep over when they get oneshot through full cover. It's a departure from the classic X-COM style of 'live with your failures as well as your victories' because now a soldier death is a mission fail, start again situation. At this price, the dev team has purchased the ability to make actual characters who are more than just faces on a screen. To its testament, the writing and characters in this game are the best in the franchise so far, I believe. That's not an indictment on the previous games, but we can only get to know Dr Vhalen, Officer Bradford, both Shens, Dr Tygan, Volk, Geist and Betos so much when they only appear as window dressing to the core of the game. There's a reason why the chosen were so popular; despite the fact that we don't even see them that often, they are there, in game with us. Part of the experience instead of spherical to it. That's what Chimera squad gives us. So I do recommend this game. It's not the same as what we X-COM players are used to, but that's OK, it's not priced like a full X-COM game either.

Good game, I liked the new tactical combat mechanics, it was nice to have well-designed characters with their own backgrounds (which suited this type of game), and I also liked the setting in which the game takes place. The main story wasn't particularly breathtaking, but it served the game well. During gameplay, you'll encounter a lot of graphical bugs, but they don't really break the game. Once, my save file got corrupted, so playing on Ironman mode can be potentially risky. It's a shame that you can't play with all the agents during a single campaign (there are 11 agents, and you can have 8), but I understand the developers' decision to do so. Towards the end of the game, I had nothing left to do with the rest of the agents (they were all trained, and I had completed all the research) and the game is more replayable when you try a different squad composition in a new campaign.

As someone with a deep appreciation and love for the XCOM games specifically, as well as the turn-based strategy genre as a whole, this game rather disappointed me. I do enjoy the story aspect and some of the new mechanics introduced in this game, but overall it does not feel like an XCOM game to me.