The game is a nice round based XCOM like experience. I do like the morale-damage and flanking system very much. Also the fatigue of the soldiers force you to vary your team.

I did a second playthru, because i barely succeded in the first one. The strategic-map view is a bit un-intuitive, so it is easy to miss important things.

The game lacks some polish, has some annoying bugs, but overall it is a good game. I like it.

A refreshing slant on turn based game

OK, overall I really like the game by I give it a B-/C+ ..... there are some very weak choices in development particularly at the strategic level. Winning ever mission with 4-5 stars, and managing to sustain 1 single sector loss that was rebuild, in addition to all the prefferd/boosted region yield a minor victory - makes little sense? There are ""forced"" mission paths you can't predict as to which will lead to a strategic victory or game as described ... this aspect of the game need a through re-think imho.

On the tactical level,
a) why they don't allow character placement is beyond me?
b) heavy/machine guns make little to any sense, nor to shotguns. Standing next to an enemy and hitting them with either should virtually always kill, but more often than not to not ... the balance between moral and physical damage in total out of walk - playable, but needs a major adjustment ihmo.

Those are just my first suggestions, but this game could easily frustrated many people fear.

- Can we have X-com?
- We have X-com at home

X-com at home - this

As a devoted x-com fan I went into this with low expectations in that endless search to find a game that can scratch that, nearly unattainable, x-com itch. To my surprise, this game drew me in with solid game-play that did not reinvent the wheel but went with tried and true factors to make this a game I actually found myself wanting to come back to more and more. Definitely recommend for a solid turn-based squad tactical game within a realistic setting.

A weak X com clone. It's a shame really given the potential of this game but for every beat it hits, it misses another.

KILLIN NAWTZIS

An excellent tactical combat game. Feels more like xcom than other similar games but differs in interesting ways. This is a no-brainer yes, even at full price.

There are a couple combat mechanics that I thought were done really well. The first is that there are two types of damage: Physical (HP) and Morale. Weapons deal both types of damage and only the physical damage can be avoided if the shot misses. Morale damage occurs regardless. Weapons differ in relative physical vs morale damage, making for some interesting choices. Even a low percent chance to hit can be useful against an enemy behind cover since the morale damage will still occur. If morale goes below half the character is "suppressed" and loses half their action points, but morale recovers a bit each round and there are leader abilities that can help recover more.

The other interesting combat mechanic is spray fire. Every gun has a "spray zone" that extends in a cone around the selected target. Each weapon has a "spray accuracy" in addition to the normal, primary target accuracy and can deal full damage to targets in the spray zone if hit. Like morale damage, spray zone size and accuracy are different for different weapon types and loadouts.

There are mechanics that I know some people hate, like mission timers, but please know that the timers that do exist are very lenient. Not all missions have them (less than half I'd say) and they give you PLENTY of time. They are very reasonable, and you can retry missions easily from the menu (plus there's a quicksave) if you struggle with it at all. Not all the timers result in full mission failures either, some just prevent completion of side objectives.

I did encounter a few mostly visual bugs, but these were cleaned up either by rotating the selected character or reloading a save game. Nothing that impacted my ability to play the game or my enjoyment of it. As someone who is generally picky about bug severity/quantity in games, I was happy with the state of this one.

I love this type of game. Macro strategy with tactical turn-based mission game play. XCOM2/WOTC and Battletech are two of my favorite games. As a history buff I was naturally interested in this game. I played the demo and watched some footage via The Mighty Jingles and was very happy to pick up the full game. I'm currently 25 hours in and still loving it.

The macro side of game play is satisfying. You have to balance influence, enemy forces, and decide what regions (i.e. upgrades) you're going to pursue and protect. All the while with the ticking clock of D-Day. Once thing that I find challenging is that you can only have so many agents so you have to decide what types you are going to double up on and which ones you can make do with only one of. I'm also running into challenges with balancing my supplies as you really have to use them wisely or you'll run out quickly.

On the tactical side, I love how missed shots still have an effect. You really have to plan out your routes and tactics or you can find yourself in hot water really fast. I'll confess that I hate to lose so I really appreciate that the game has 3 autosaves that it rotates through plus a quick save feature. I love working out the best way to approach the missions and get as many of the secondary objects as possible.

Long story short, I have gotten fully sucked into this game and already thinking about how I'm going to try to handle things in a second playthrough.

On a important note - I have been playing on my LCD Deck. It plays well, looks great (both native screen and docked), and I've got the controls set up in a way that I like them. You can find my control setup as DC's Classified '44 Custom Layout

Very cool