This game single-handedly brought this genre back to life. And man... it's not hard to see why. The atmosphere and tone of the game - I wish I could experience it for the first time again. There's nothing like wondering what unseen terrors await you in the fog as you listen to the horrifying atmosphere. For a first playthrough, XCOM EW really captures that classic terrifying XCOM vibe in a way that none of these other games do. Sure, XCOM 2 made refinements and added more mission variety, snakemen were back, and it provided better character customization and different game modes. However, XCOM EW is still the best game we've had in this genre since the old games. It's just master-class at nearly everything it does.
★★★☆☆ (3/5) (★) One of the things that I personally think makes your average XCOM EW / XCOM 2 fight predictable and stale is alpha-striking. I saw another review that said this is best described as a puzzle game, but alpha-striking is more like a puzzle in my opinion. With alpha-striking, you take a look at the enemy pod and try to determine how you can chain together multiple skills to kill them all before they do anything. Personally, I think the unit-based turn placement works better and provides more strategy. How do I organize my team's turns? Do I target a more dangerous enemy later down the turn order or do I prioritize an enemy with an earlier turn order? One of the enemies took their turn and did something that has changed my initial strategy, how do I adjust? --- (★) Encounters are also fun. You complete a handful of encounters where you are outnumbered (like you triggered two pods at once) and have to make the most out of it. Do you use an ability now because you need it, or do you think it'd be better to save it for a later encounter? --- (★) Graphics are great for the genre, I like the setting and how it impacts the gameplay loop, there's a lot of cool details in the world design, I love the voice acting (especially compared to something like Phoenix Point), I thought there was solid writing for the most part (I found Gray Phoenix especially interesting as a faction), and the music is like XCOM 2's soundtrack but with a cool FBI/police twist. Unlike another review I read, I did not think the dialogue was cringe. Personally, I really liked Axiom's and Torque's dialogue, as they have a lot of charm and give insight into their species through natural dialogue that you only got in the past from autopsies. The dialogue, in my honest opinion, feels a lot like classic Star Trek. If you like Star Trek: The Original Series or Star Trek: The Next Generation, you're probably not going to have an issue with the dialogue here. --- (☆) I like having a mix of aliens, humans, and hybrids in my squad. I think the game's primary weakness is the fact that the game severely limits you on the squad-mates you're able to utilize in a single play-through. You start with 4 cadets and it's not long before you can choose a 5th cadet out of 3 randomly selected troops. You slowly gain more throughout the game, but by the end of the game, you're still missing 3 characters. To me, this really hampers experimentation. Why not give me every cadet at the start and let me mix and match like Darkest Dungeon as I find what works best for which encounters? - This makes the early game for Impossible Hardcore Ironman a bit frustrating as I had to restart the early-game a few times trying to find what works. - I think this made some of the early missions with endless reinforcements (like extracting the VIP) especially frustrating. In the early game, while I was able to get the VIP to safety and keep the enemy numbers down on those missions, my squad was just not built to be very mobile and a few times I had troops fall behind and get scars. Perhaps if I had access to the full roster, I might've been able to build a squad that's more mobile/well-suited for those early-VIP missions. For instance, maybe I would've chosen Zephyr over Blueblood (who's primary early-game gimmick is he can spend two turns in the same position firing his pistol). - I understand why your roster is limited, it's clear the idea is that the game was meant to be replayed multiple times. However, this game is just a remix of XCOM 2 that takes 20 hours for a single playthrough, with a lot of repetitive encounters. I'm sorry, I just don't think there's enough here to justify a 2nd play-through. - After finishing the game, I would've preferred to be able to keep playing the game with the stakes removed, like Darkest Dungeon. It'd be nice to open up the game every month or so, experiment with some squad builds, and then put the game back down. There is zero chance I'm doing a full second play-through though. --- (☆) Finally, I will say that the game has its fair share of bugs that just made the game experience confusing for me. - Sometimes my master-crafted weapons shredded armor, sometimes they didn't. - Sometimes my stock worked, sometimes it didn't. - If you don't go into the SpecOps menu in the right way, you can accidentally retask the other person assigned to the SpecOps menu. - The RNG felt a bit off, like I missed two out of three shots with Blueblood against a 97% chance to hit (but maybe I'm just unlucky... that's XCOM baby!) - There's also encounters where your troops will start huddled around explosive cover. I had one mission where Terminal ran for cover behind an explosive in the breach, I had one of my unit's turns and then Terminal was bleeding out before the second. It doesn't matter because it just gave Terminal a scar and I used an android for the rest of the match. - It's hard to tell what is explosive and what isn't in this game. My first Impossible Hardcore Ironman playthrough of the game, I actually had to put the game down for a bit because I had placed a squad member next to an explosive in a difficult fight without realizing it. This spiraled out into a series of consequences, and it caused me to lose THE ENTIRE RUN!!! Either explosives should be clearly identifiable from a visual standpoint or there needs to be some UI element to differentiate them. - It feels like the game was just far too forgiving to make up for its technical shortcomings. I would've been fine with perma-death if the game had less bugs and no roster restrictions. I think that perma-death adds a lot to the XCOM experience. --- NOTE: The game lacks a sense of mystery and horror that previous XCOM games had. The series has progressively gotten less horror-oriented and more action-oriented. I personally prefer the horror-focus... and the mystery of what new aliens might be waiting in the fog of war. The tone of XCOM Enemy Within is still unmatched by any other game in this genre.
Very nostalgic while also keeping you at the edge of your seat, like when you first played the original and didn't know what to expect. Just like most horror games, loses a lot of value after your first playthrough, but overall a quality experience. Play on Hard.
