god the wait is killing me...
fuck why are publishers so god damn mean? I don't care about retailers I wouldn't have brought a retail copy anyway, so why should I wait...
If the game wasn't so damn big I would have just pirated the damn thing
#nooceans

Welp after almost 10 hours straight I can safely say that it has managed to capture some of the magic of the original, in a way I hadn't dared to hope for.

There are some desing decisions I don't like, such as removing facing, letting Aliens get an extra move when you first see them, some of the simplified base management stuff etc. And there are a few minor bugs and wonkyness at times with the camera and UI with a mouse and keyboard. But overall the game is just amazing, it's been years since a game has captured an held my interest like this, ONE MORE MISSION!

I think this bugs me the most.  I don't get a free move when aliens move into view, so why should they.  There's no element of surprise involved.  Base management doesnt' really bother me.  But the free move that aliens get makes the game very difficult on classic mode.

I did something stupid. After a certain story mission I needed to build a new facility, but I already filled all spaces so I thought "why not remove the Officer Training School" since I already bought all upgrades for it.
After I removed that facility I saved and then when the next mission was up i could only select 4 soldiers... >.>

Thankfully I save in a lot of different slots, so I have to partially do that story mission again.

There is one way to mitegate that part though, to some extent atelast. Have a sniper throw a 'scan grenade thing' and if the enemy moves into your field of vision during their turn, they do get to move, but the movement points that took them into your soldiers real view are spent.

but yeah, don't get why they get free turns, but i would think it is a side effect of cover beeing so important, even to the enemys. They are extreamly easy to kill when not in cover (try blasting cover with explosives, easily +50% aim from just cover->no cover)

But, its a damn good game :)

I am a little disappointed with this game. At first I really liked it but there some glaring flaws that really piss me off.
The already mentioned additional move the Aliens get is one of them. Walk into the their field of vision with your last soldier on that turn and the enemy basically can move, move again and then still shoot without giving you any option of retaliation.. I have lost multiple high level soldiers due to this shit.

Another thing that pisses me off is the wonky field of vision which results in the enemy killing my soldiers from impossible angles.

Also there is the inherent flaw of random numbers telling you if you hit or miss. Just 20 minutes ago I had 3 of my troops literally run into the last enemy on the map and miss him from point blank range, all with at least 85% hit chance. That enemy naturally turned around and 1 hit killed my highest soldier with a crit.

Additionally, the difficulty is really really uneven. I was more or less cruising for 20 missions straight and suddenly I get put into an environment where I just get rushed by dozens enemies. I barely managed to survive but lost 2 men. The next 5 missions were laughably easy again.

I would put thie game at 7.5/10 which is far from bad, but no way this is a 90. Maybe for absolute enthusiasts.

Exactly the same here. The game is getting worse by the day I play it. Btw. I save often, so I haven't lost one soldier yet (except for the first tutorial mission)

Day 1:

I selected normal difficulty and started the game.
Played a few missions, killed all enemies with ease even though the Alien Abduction difficulty says "very difficult".


Day 2:(very very small spoiler in there, though there really isn't much to spoil in this game.)

I played some more and come to this main mission where you need to enter the Alien Base. Tried it, the first 3 enemies were already giving me a hard time. I had 5 soldier slots at this time, 2 of them were already wounded and I didn't take any health packs with me because the previous battle were so easy. The map in that mission is huge, so I knew I wouldn't make it to the end alive.
Reloading older save file, I began to grind. except for the first vests my soldiers haven't been upgraded at all. I did many more abductions, VIP escorts etc. which didn't get a lot harder.
Due to more weapon fragments, alloys, elerium and more importantly money I equipped my soldiers with laser weapons and some medium armor. Unfortunately the aliens were getting stronger at about the same speed, so I never felt much superior to them.
I grinded some more and could equip some of my soldiers with Titan armor and plasma weapons. My whole team also reached the Colonel rank by now.

Day 3:

I felt ready to try the base assault again. It was a tough fight but I managed to kill all 22 aliens without losing a single one of my soldiers. However some of the enemies, especially the huge robotic ones (not the flying discs) were totally unfair. Two of them were attacking me at the same time with some Mutons and drones. They can attack two times per turn (okay some of my soldiers can do this as well) but are incredibly heavy armored at the same time. They can even shoot mortars which can deal immense damage.
After that fight I was happy to do some side missions. A UFO landing. Nothing special I guessed. Wrong.
They came from all sides and even worse from above. Heavy Floaters and armored Mutons, at least 8 of'em. Nowhere was a full cover position and the few half cover positions, where I put my men, were destroyed by grenades in one turn, making my men (and 2 women) stand there without any protection. In the same round they killed 3 of my soldiers.


Day 4:

I tried the UFO landing again with a previous save and changed the difficulty to easy.
I knew where the enemies were so I could position my crew slightly better this time. I put 2 at an above entrance and the other 6 at the front gate.
My sniper on the higher elevated ground shoots down at a Muton that was in full cover. Hit chance 60%, missed. Due to the Double Tap ability I could make another shot. 45% hit chance, missed again. Being already pissed off due to the lack of accuracy I get my heavy to do the dirty work and fired at the target with a 55% hit chance.... of course I missed. He also has an ability which makes him able to do another shot. Same 55%, same result.
At that point I was raging and got my assault lady, ran with her directly under a flying heavy Floater and squeezed the trigger of her shotgun. 95% hit chance... missed.

At that point I said fuck it and turned the game off. That was a few hours ago.

________________________________________________________________________

At first I was under the impression that this game is better than Valkyria Chronicles, thus making it the best strategy game on consoles. After the second day I would've put it slightly behind it, because it got pretty repetitive. Now I'd give it a score in the lower 80s.

I'm not even close to where you are and are already pissed off.I started the game today and on my first play I completely forgot to save because the game felt so easy. Until 15 missions in, where I suddenly got raped. So I started from scratch but I still sometimes forget to save. I also don't really want to cheese through the game via quicksave/quickload but the game makes it really hard to play fair because I get repeatedly owned by random bullshit or hilarious shooting angles. Let me give you 2 examples only of my very last mission:

1. At the beginning of the mission I had like 3 aliens cornered by my guys and I just couldn't hit the one in front. It looked like this:

Basically this Alien (Sectoid, the very first low alien) took cover behind a tree and my light green guy was perfectly flanking him. He was like 25 feet away had a hit chance of about 30%. It took literally 3 rounds to take this one alien out with all 4 of my guys shooting at him. 

2. At the very end of the mission, the last Alien (the energy version) inside the UFO was cornered inside the command room. I healed everyone up and positioned my squad. Then the fucker pulled this off:

My very best soldier, all healed up, was standing at the green spot and the alien moved to the red spot and one shot him. First of all, this alien shouldn't even know that my soldier was standing there, I didn't cross any line of sight to get there. And second, how is he supposed to hit me like this? This is bullshit!

yeah the accuracy of your guys at the beginning is horrible. It gets a lot better later on, but then you have these floaters which reduce your hit chance, because well they're floating in the air. Okay makes even some kind of sense.

Then even later you fight these big Mutons. When they're in cover I only have like 35% hit chance even though I have a much higher hit chance for other alien creatures at the same distance. Why can't I reduce the hit chance for the enemy ?

It just feels like the CPU always finds more tricks to easily keep up with you, no matter how strong you've become.

Now don't get me wrong. Until the middle of day 3 I really really liked the game and I think it was worth the purchase, because I already spent 15 hours or so with the game. But I'm not sure if I will ever finish it now.

That is not a flaw, that is XCOM. The inherent randomness of the game is part of the charm, and will inherently lead to dificulty spikes. 

Normal is piss easy anyway in non ironman mode, even losing a couple squads won't be a game breaker, just make sure you get as many satellites up as you can. Sure you can get a run of bad luck, but you also get good luck,  for example  I have had missions hit with every shot and aliens have missed every shot. I have also missed with a 99% chance to hit. That is what makes the game exiting there is always the chance that everything can go horribly wrong.

The game certainly has a lot of problems, stupid linear map design, non randomly gerated maps, Terror missions are too damn small, the final mission is a total joke, lots of bugs, but the game is still prety damn great