While the bones of a great tactical experience are still here, and the Breaching Phase is a very fun innovation for this game, this game falls short of its relatively modest goal of being a cute side game to the main series that gives individual soldiers more personality. While most of the worldbuilding in this game follows appropriately from the previous two entries, the tone of the dialogue and characters in general is completely off. Everyone speaks like a Joss Whedon-written teenager, which is especially jarring considering most of the cast are mutants and aliens who've only been part of earth society for a few years at most. While there's always a place for humor, even in a setting as potentially grim as X-com's, the flippancy and junevile quipping do nothing but take you out of the experience and make all these characters fairly unlikeable.

All of the character beats and running gags in the game would've worked much better if the dialogue was more appropriate to X-com, because then you'd have a contrast between these hardened professional soldiers and these silly conversations. But everyone's just a little too zany and sarcastic.

In addiition, while most of the game's abilities are quite fun and balanced well enough, the choice to make an enemy take a turn every single time one of your soldiers takes a turn is incredibly frustrating compared to the main series' much more sensible "each squad plays out a full turn, then the other side reacts" system. With the breach mechanic and the tactical options on offer, it's clear this game is setting the gold standard of play as taking out every enemy before they have a chance to react, but the way turn order works makes it nearly impossible to do so. Not that the game is particularly challenging otherwise, but this isn't so much an extra hurdle to clear as it is a rock in your shoe during the race.

You could do worse than buying this game on sale, but honestly you might as well just skip it and hope the next X-com game is better.

While the bones of a great tactical experience are still here, and the Breaching Phase is a very fun innovation for this game, this game falls short of its relatively modest goal of being a cute side game to the main series that gives individual soldiers more personality. While most of the worldbuilding in this game follows appropriately from the previous two entries, the tone of the dialogue and characters in general is completely off. Everyone speaks like a Joss Whedon-written teenager, which is especially jarring considering most of the cast are mutants and aliens who've only been part of earth society for a few years at most. While there's always a place for humor, even in a setting as potentially grim as X-com's, the flippancy and junevile quipping do nothing but take you out of the experience and make all these characters fairly unlikeable. All of the character beats and running gags in the game would've worked much better if the dialogue was more appropriate to X-com, because then you'd have a contrast between these hardened professional soldiers and these silly conversations. But everyone's just a little too zany and sarcastic. In addiition, while most of the game's abilities are quite fun and balanced well enough, the choice to make an enemy take a turn every single time one of your soldiers takes a turn is incredibly frustrating compared to the main series' much more sensible "each squad plays out a full turn, then the other side reacts" system. With the breach mechanic and the tactical options on offer, it's clear this game is setting the gold standard of play as taking out every enemy before they have a chance to react, but the way turn order works makes it nearly impossible to do so. Not that the game is particularly challenging otherwise, but this isn't so much an extra hurdle to clear as it is a rock in your shoe during the race. You could do worse than buying this game on sale, but honestly you might as well just skip it and hope the next X-com game is better.