A surprisingly good real-time with pause tactical combat game. The overall campaign is reminiscent of xcom, but it plays more like somebody threw in a dash of darkest dungeon after switching from turn based to real time. The levels are large and interesting, the classes work well together, and the game rises in difficulty well. I think the opening level when you have a real squad of marines was the strongest part of the game but the length was just about perfect, it ended right as I was ready to be done with the more stressful and more precision requiring late missions.

The game finally gets stealth right by making stealth not a thing you need to do to live but one you want to do because fighting aliens wastes resources, generates stress, and advances an internal clock that makes successive encounters rougher. It also accepts stealth through superior firepower, if you can kill something instantly even if you do it loud it doesn't trigger a hunt until an actual live alien spots your actual team, which leads to some interesting strategies.

The story is perfectly servicable. It exists, it's aliens, it won't really make you mad. The voice actors and everything are good, but the game isn't trying for any fancy twists or big new lore in the setting, it's just executing a standard tale quite well.

A surprisingly good real-time with pause tactical combat game. The overall campaign is reminiscent of xcom, but it plays more like somebody threw in a dash of darkest dungeon after switching from turn based to real time. The levels are large and interesting, the classes work well together, and the game rises in difficulty well. I think the opening level when you have a real squad of marines was the strongest part of the game but the length was just about perfect, it ended right as I was ready to be done with the more stressful and more precision requiring late missions. The game finally gets stealth right by making stealth not a thing you need to do to live but one you want to do because fighting aliens wastes resources, generates stress, and advances an internal clock that makes successive encounters rougher. It also accepts stealth through superior firepower, if you can kill something instantly even if you do it loud it doesn't trigger a hunt until an actual live alien spots your actual team, which leads to some interesting strategies. The story is perfectly servicable. It exists, it's aliens, it won't really make you mad. The voice actors and everything are good, but the game isn't trying for any fancy twists or big new lore in the setting, it's just executing a standard tale quite well.