So my understanding of the timeline is that Microprose went to the X-COM developers (Mythos Games) and said “we want a sequel, but we want it in six months”. The developers said “no, but we can give you a bigger proper sequel in a few years”. So Microprose’s own internal developers said, “fine, we’ll reskin X-COM 1 then”.

So yeah, they made a palette-swapped X-COM 1, where instead of being based on land and fighting UFOs in the air, you’re now building bases underwater and fighting alien submarines. Except they also couldn’t be bothered to have the subs avoid land, so they’re flying submarines. Except you can’t fight while flying, because then they would need to deal with crashed subs on land, and the entire “X-COM but underwater” thing would fall apart.

All the techs and weapons are just X-COM 1 techs and weapons, renamed and reskinned. Human laser weaponry is now gauss weaponry (and requires ammo, sadly). Alien plasma weaponry is now sonic weaponry. Alien Alloys are now Aqua Plastics. Elerium-117 is now Zrbite. Psionics is now Molecular Control (M.C.). There’s still three new ship classes you can research, except instead of Firestorm/Lightning/Avenger, you have Manta/Hammerhead/Leviathan.

Annoyingly, a lot of techs are now hidden behind capturing and interrogating certain enemies or collecting their corpses. (Yes, these are two different things, since apparently your scientists operate No-Kill Alien Shelters and refuse to kill and autopsy the aliens you capture once they’re done with them.) Want to research Aqua Plastics? Too bad, you have to go find a Deep One corpse. Want to continue down the M.C. tech line? Go find a Tasoth corpse. Want to build your own subs? Gotta research Magnetic Navigation, which requires that you capture a live Lobsterman Navigator, a species that doesn’t even show up until many months into the campaign.

Finishing the game requires capturing three Lobsterman Commanders. But if you interrogate them all at once, you’ve wasted them — you gotta interrogate one, then research the tech that comes from that, then another, then the tech that comes from that, etc.

Adding to this tech tree “fun” is that not every kill or capture always counts. The final mission of X-COM 1 was a two-part mission, where you first approached the alien base, then having found the entrance, you took your squad inside and fought in there. The TFTD devs said “hey, that was fun, let’s do that for every alien base!”

The first time I did an alien base, I found several new species outside it, so I made sure to kill some (for corpses) and capture others (for prisoners) to make sure I had all the related techs unlocked. Except having completed it, I discovered that none of my loot from part 1 had been collected. I guess if I’d wanted to research those enemies, I would’ve had to put their bodies in my soldiers’ backpacks and carried them into part 2, whereupon I could’ve put them down on the ground so they’d count for mission loot purposes.

Another combat gripe — like X-COM 1, you generally need to kill every enemy on the map to complete a mission. Unlike X-COM 1, the maps are waaay more complicated and cluttered (meaning more places for aliens to hide), and the aliens don’t seem to want to come out of hiding on their own (so you have to stumble upon their tiny 1x1 hiding spots, and the Motion Sensor sorry, Particle Disturbance Sensor doesn’t help in finding them).

So yeah, I can’t really recommend TFTD. It was a rush job by the B-team, and it really shows. Everything feels like lower production standards. The opening cutscene is the traditional “horribly compressed CGI rendered video” rather than 1’s “moving comic book” style. The globe looks way lower quality, with the coasts all being flat angular lines that you can barely recognise as continents. Everything in the UI feels lower res, with some important fields being removed entirely due to lack of space (probably in part because of all the ridiculously long tech names). There’s several bugs that permanently block progression on the various research trees, some of which are necessary to win the game, meaning you can brick your entire savegame if you do things out of order. Etc etc.

If you’ve played X-COM 1 (UFO Defense) and you really want more of the same but a bit different, then I guess you could play this. Otherwise, just go play X-COM 1.

So my understanding of the timeline is that Microprose went to the X-COM developers (Mythos Games) and said “we want a sequel, but we want it in six months”. The developers said “no, but we can give you a bigger proper sequel in a few years”. So Microprose’s own internal developers said, “fine, we’ll reskin X-COM 1 then”. So yeah, they made a palette-swapped X-COM 1, where instead of being based on land and fighting UFOs in the air, you’re now building bases underwater and fighting alien submarines. Except they also couldn’t be bothered to have the subs avoid land, so they’re [i]flying[/i] submarines. Except you can’t fight while flying, because then they would need to deal with crashed subs on land, and the entire “X-COM but underwater” thing would fall apart. All the techs and weapons are just X-COM 1 techs and weapons, renamed and reskinned. Human laser weaponry is now gauss weaponry (and requires ammo, sadly). Alien plasma weaponry is now sonic weaponry. Alien Alloys are now Aqua Plastics. Elerium-117 is now Zrbite. Psionics is now Molecular Control (M.C.). There’s still three new ship classes you can research, except instead of Firestorm/Lightning/Avenger, you have Manta/Hammerhead/Leviathan. Annoyingly, a lot of techs are now hidden behind capturing and interrogating certain enemies or collecting their corpses. (Yes, these are two different things, since apparently your scientists operate No-Kill Alien Shelters and refuse to kill and autopsy the aliens you capture once they’re done with them.) Want to research Aqua Plastics? Too bad, you have to go find a Deep One corpse. Want to continue down the M.C. tech line? Go find a Tasoth corpse. Want to build your own subs? Gotta research Magnetic Navigation, which requires that you capture a live Lobsterman Navigator, a species that doesn’t even show up until many months into the campaign. Finishing the game requires capturing [i]three[/i] Lobsterman Commanders. But if you interrogate them all at once, you’ve wasted them — you gotta interrogate one, then research the tech that comes from that, then another, then the tech that comes from that, etc. Adding to this tech tree “fun” is that not every kill or capture always counts. The final mission of X-COM 1 was a two-part mission, where you first approached the alien base, then having found the entrance, you took your squad inside and fought in there. The TFTD devs said “hey, that was fun, let’s do that for [b]every[/b] alien base!” The first time I did an alien base, I found several new species outside it, so I made sure to kill some (for corpses) and capture others (for prisoners) to make sure I had all the related techs unlocked. Except having completed it, I discovered that [i]none of my loot from part 1 had been collected[/i]. I guess if I’d wanted to research those enemies, I would’ve had to put their bodies in my soldiers’ backpacks and carried them into part 2, whereupon I could’ve put them down on the ground so they’d count for mission loot purposes. Another combat gripe — like X-COM 1, you generally need to kill every enemy on the map to complete a mission. Unlike X-COM 1, the maps are waaay more complicated and cluttered (meaning more places for aliens to hide), and the aliens don’t seem to want to come out of hiding on their own (so you have to stumble upon their tiny 1x1 hiding spots, and the [strike]Motion Sensor[/strike] sorry, Particle Disturbance Sensor doesn’t help in finding them). So yeah, I can’t really recommend TFTD. It was a rush job by the B-team, and it really shows. Everything feels like lower production standards. The opening cutscene is the traditional “horribly compressed CGI rendered video” rather than 1’s “moving comic book” style. The globe looks way lower quality, with the coasts all being flat angular lines that you can barely recognise as continents. Everything in the UI feels lower res, with some important fields being removed entirely due to lack of space (probably in part because of all the ridiculously long tech names). There’s several bugs that permanently block progression on the various research trees, some of which are necessary to win the game, meaning you can brick your entire savegame if you do things out of order. Etc etc. If you’ve played X-COM 1 (UFO Defense) and you really want more of the same but a bit different, then I guess you could play this. Otherwise, just go play X-COM 1.