Where did this come from and why does it look like a Saturday morning cartoon?

It seems to be a bit of ‘stealth’ release to disrupt Gears tactics.. is something a conspiracy nut might say. It ‘feels’ distinctively budget, but It’s got a $10 intro price, so probably worth a look if you’re into XCOM right?

The game is actually 20 dollars on Steam, its just on sale for 10 the first week. Big sale to start but yeah.

The basically Intiative system for turn order from Final Fantasy Tactics looks interesting. And set characters allow more storytelling and... well character.

I'm definitely interested. I seriously doubt they are worried about Gears tactics. Not to discredit that game, it actually looks cool, but its not a cutthroat market exactly.

But it definitely looks like it could have a line of action figures.

Interesting take on the previous games. At that price, it almost seems like a no brainer to give it a try. Curious about length of the game, and if the opportunity to tell a story will offset the character customizations.

This looks like a fun little spinoff, hope it doesn't disappoint in the way John Wick Hex did.

I don't' really know what this is. It looks like it's going to be fairly short or something? It's only 10-20 bux. At first I thought it was an expansion. I've seen the gameplay breakdown and still dont' really know what to make of this honestly.

But with that price point it seems like it may be a fun little offshoot series.

God this reminds me SO MUCH of a game I did a walkthrough for in 2000 or so; Shadow something? basically a small-squad kind of tactics game that had multiple characters with different abilities. Someone help me remember the game I'm talking about!

@rorie: I'm guessing you're thinking of Shadow Watch?

I have no particular loyalty to the XCOM series. I like the idea of it and have played a decent amount of the first game, but find the meta-narrative of the story to be frustratingly difficult. I like the idea of units with their own abilities. For that price, I figured I'd try this out. My brother just gifted me a copy.

@oursin_360: to me I would say it looks much more like a Into the Breach level experience over an XCOM 2, which you have to put 40 plus hours or something in to just finish the campaign.

I mentioned the actual $20 price in my post because that makes more sense to me. At just 10 I was really confused what to expect production value wise. Even building off XCOM 2 very clearly it is still a big looking 3D game.

Now, that said we will see why it's 10 at launch lol. Maybe it is just to move a ton of copies though?

After watching a gameplay video it appeals to me way more than Xcom 2 ever did. Unique character abilities and the breach setup, along with the timeline of moves you can manipulate, make it look like it has potential to provide some really cool and dynamic moments.

For £8.50 how can I not give it a shot? If I get 5 hours out of it I'll consider it a bargain.

More Xcom for 10 smackers? sold!

This kind of looks like an internal project that a small team made, people liked so they fleshed it out. Similar to Apex Legends and Far Cry Blood Dragon. One of those end of the big project, take a month to play around with prototypes things.

@stephen_von_cloud:

They could have discounted the price to give people more incentive to preorder, since its such an unknown project. Also I think $10 ($15 for Canadians/ other countries ) is a fair price given the tactical legacy pack is about that price. To be noted that was given out for free for a month if you owned War of the Chosen.

Anyways I'm down for more XCOM2, and with it coming soon/cheap I'm sold!

More XCOM for 10€? Sold.

Creating my own characters and seeing them grow or perish in the fires of combat is much of the appeal of XCOM for me, so I went on a journey of "Holy shit, there's a new XCOM game? And it's out this month!?!" to "Oh", in the space of about three minutes.

I just sunk 2 hours into it

Really enjoying it so far - they've done the pre-created characters well. The story dialogue is pretty good and, more than that, the pre written biographies add a lot to the world building.

Plays like XCOM (I don't put time into many games anymore, so for me doing 2 hours straight is huge). The changes to the start of a mission with the Breach concept is neat - though I already kind of wish that you didn't have to begin with a breach for every mission. Maybe you won't as is goes on but so far it has been at the start (and middle) of every mission. Makes sense though in that they are able to make this smaller scale and keep the encounters contained rather than having huge maps like in full XCOM games.

Definitely worth the price of admission so far.

The only games I instantly buy anymore are Dragon Age & XCom. That remains true - the game isn't perfect, but for $10 it's got me back in the XCom groove :)

I'd like it more if you only breached at the beginning of each "level" and if the abilities were a little stronger but had CD's.

I'm loving it so far but I am a bit of an XCOM mark. I like them trying out new mechanics in a smaller project like this and while the sale is on that is a mighty nice price. I like the "graphic novel" style too. So far so good.

Played the tutorial mission and It seems pretty cool so far. The tone is a bit off putting though, especially with their reaction to how that mission plays out. But it's actually cool to have a more lighthearted take on Xcom though.

I am having some issues with the interface on controller though, namely trying to figure out what action is what as I can't seem to find a good way to scroll through abilities to see what they are like the other games?

Also when I switch the mouse and keyboard the graphics seem to change for the worse. Also wish they would do resolution scaling like most modern games so I don't have to run it at 1440p on my 4k screen.

I'm a handful of hours in and I'm bummed how it doesn't feel like xcom of old. When you are rotating in new characters for the APC squad, you can never tell what you equipped them with. Where did I put the tranq shot? Who had the grenade?

I liked being able to have four squad teammates actions available for a turn. Then the enemy side. I could toggle to the other guy and see if I already used the special ability. I'm indifferent about the special abilities from prior xcom games being associated with epic weapons.

The character writing is not great. If you're going to try story go all in. Everyone is so cliche and lacking any depth. The voice acting could be better.

I miss the base building mechanic. But for $10.00, its a polished XCOM game. It may have some rough edges. The rough edges would be more glaring at $60 or $50.

But when it comes to XCOM, I'll take a new XCOM for $10 all day every day and most weekends and holidays. They want to do this every year for the next 20 years. I'm in at $20 or $30 for this level of game.

** I hope Vinny and Rorie talk about this game at some point. I'm curious what their thoughts are. **

I played the tutorial and the first mission after choosing a faction to investigate. The writing and characters are pretty cheesy, but I'm not mad at it. I feel like the things that I dislike about XCOM are gonna be the same things I dislike about this game, but so far I'm enjoying it. While hearing, "BREACH! BREACH! BREACH!" multiple times in a mission gets old, I like that mechanic and the way that breaching at different points can give characters different buffs and debuffs. Capturing enemies rather than killing them has a chance to grant additional intel, which adds an interesting mechanic, as well.

As I mentioned earlier, my brother gifted me a copy. If I had spent my own $10 on this, I would still dig it.

I've been enjoying this so far, the shorter mission length is refreshing and I like being able to add a strategy layer to the turn order. The story stuff and characters, not so much. Also the news reports coming in over the top when you're doing the base stuff annoys me quite a lot. So far the missions themselves have been fun which is the main thing.

I've never had much affinity for XCOM lore but I'm really enjoying the characters and background from their bios in this. The bits about what they did during the wars and immediately after is really fun after playing that XCOM 2 campaign so many times. The combat works for me for a game with this limited scope but it does feel like this started as a mobile game or some kind of Apple Arcade project with how it switches between these tiny encounters.

This isn't going to replace a numbered XCOM by any means but it's cool as a side project in that universe. I hope we get more of these where they can experiment and make dramatic changes with the gameplay and fill out some background and story and then get numbered games for the global conflicts that you can dump another 200 hours into. I'm assuming this will be on Switch sometime soon and I think I would much rather play this handheld than that full XCOM 2 release.