The world, mechanics and artstyle are all unique and creative, while inspired by gems like morrowind or baldurs gate 1. I've played it for over 20h now, restarting a few times to understand the choices I make in party creation. Some things that I had problems with and hints: - combat is very much not RTwP known from your standard old RPGs. It is more complex, but also just different, and takes a moment to learn what to do. I hope there will be more resources in future to help new players, right now just take a look at conversations on steam. I'm not saying it's bad, I would say it's very good (especially magic), but you need to learn a few things to enjoy it. - You can put your team in formation and then control one character to sneak and kite enemies. This is very good for training sneaking and making very difficult fights more manageable. It works very well with a sling, because additional ammo takes little space. Don't forget to use the power strike when available. - There is a lack of a healer class, but when it comes to the mob encounters, just treat getting knocked out and revived (after combat or in combat with a skill) as free healing. This will save you time and resources, even if it sounds weird. You will need to use healing potions in tougher battles anyway. - Music skills can be easily trained by use and worth adding after character creation. Especially shepherd's pipes are turbo useful, because they summon animals that fight on your side. - Your tank should start with the armour skill of your choice, because it trains sloowly. The shield can be skipped in character creation and just added when you start the game - it learns quickly in use. - pressing space pauses the game, but also puts you in combat mode! I have accidentally attacked civilians a few times, when I just wanted to talk to them, and had to reload. I hope this is changed to some contextual solution before full release. - There is no BG1-style fast travel, which is a bummer, because traversing already discovered maps is a bit of a slog. Respawning trash mobs don't make it better. - Currently you can't use water-borders to go to the next area, which makes no sense. - I'm not a huge fan of the player-driven map making for dungeons (at least some of them - some have crude maps)
[This is July 2023 early access review ; I'm a backer and have played the first xenonauts] Compared to the first xenonauts there is enough changes and improvements to make it worth playing for me. Apart from some quality of life improvements, there are changes to equipment, the number of soldiers that can be taken on missions, the role of the support vehicle (there is a less of a tradeoff between taking soldiers and the vehicle now, which is a plus for me). The gas rockets are gone, and overall using the rocket launcher is not as good choice as it used to be in the first installment. There is a bit more variety in missions now, including item retrieval, diffusing bombs, and sometimes added time-pressure. The crashed/landed UFO missions are still the majority. There are new enemies, including one that is hard to kill using firearms, unless its sensitivity to noise is exploited. The storyline was also changed, which is nice. This time we don't start fighting the invasion immediately, but after initial few missions aimed against their human helpers. The aircombat is announced to be changed in future updates, but at least for now I had more luck with the autoresolve than the manual combat. Some of the research descriptions (autopsies mostly?) are still missing at this point. I wish the global view was showing a globe instead of a flat map, given that the engine is now 3D.
