I don't think seen a single encounter so far (and levels are made of multiple encounters) that hasn't involved having to play around abilities or items not acting as they should. This ranges from cease-fire grenades just not frocing enemies to reload as they will still move and shoot despite being at the center of the blast all the way to if two of my teammates are next to each other in the turn order(there is an ability to do specifically this) then I'll be unable to select a target to shoot at as it'll instead only show me the following team mates greyed out abilites.
plenty of other bugs are ported over from Xcom 2 but it's really exciting to see the new ones they added exclusively for chimera squad.
Got this on sale and am really pleased with it. Yes, like the other reviews mention, this is not a mainline XCOM game, but it takes a neat spin on the series and executes it well. The format of the turn system I think is an improvement on the original design. It's definitely more railroady, but for the game it makes sense. Good voice acting, passable story, solid gameplay. If you enjoyed The Bureau, you'll probably like this Xcom spinoff too.
XCOM Chimera Squad is a very solid, skirmish scale wargame set after the events of XCOM 1 and 2. It bosts many advantages over the other games, although it has simplified base building, which may be a turn off to the derranged masochists who liked X1's pain in the ass base tetris. The narritive is significantly more in keeping with the actual scale of events in gameplay, no more taking on an entire planetary invasion fleet with 4 guys in a trenchcoat pretending to be an army. This time you're fighting various baddies in one single city, baddies powerful enough for the local cops to be unable to match them, but weak enough for it to actually make sense that a team of 4 can beat them. The characters have a lot more personality then in previous games where they were just cardboard cutouts with randomly generated stats. Now each character has unique customization, and all sorts of cool combat options. All in all, a very solid sequil to XCOM's greatest hits!
i have it on steam
when it comes to XCOM, all of the strategy games are good, X-COM: UFO Defense, X-COM Terror from the Deep, X-COM: Apocalypse, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2 and of course XCOM: Chimera Squad
of these XCOM: CS is the leats good, but its still a great game, introducing turn based mechanics very different from the rest of the game, as well as a very different setting, more cyberpunky, taking place AFTER the alien war in XCOM 2, in City 31, the one city that was spared the bulk of the destruction from the war on account of the fact that its inhabitants willingly surrendered to XCOM forces, aliens, hybrids and humans live in an uneasy peace, as mistrust is felt everywhere as the city lies on the brink of collapse from forces within
you control Chimera Squad, an experimental peacekeeping unit XCOM has setup, employing alien, hybrid and human soldiers working together to save City 31
the game has a good premise, and the bits of lore dropped between missions is great, dialogue and ingame quips... could be better, the game is also buggy and there are some questionable design choices that rob the game of the high stakes the previous games had, still, well worth playing for any fan of strategy games
★★★☆☆ (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?
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(★) 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?
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(★) 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.
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(☆) 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.
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(☆) 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.
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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.
