Done with this after about 16 hours, having taken a big break in the middle of that to play Elden Ring. I enjoyed it, because I enjoy XCOM combat, and I like the idea of the more Hero Shooter esque thing that's happening here, but there's not enough synergy between them to really make that worthwhile. Also the timeline turn system is kinda clunky when one is used to normal XCOM turns. Not for nothing, my laptop could barely run this, so it never looked great either, and that may have colored my impression.

I mean it's XCOM gameplay, so it's fun, but it's WAY too easy in my opinion. All of your heroes and their special abilities are OP (like -- they're all immune to poison? Am I missing something? I never once got poisoned).

It didn't give me that signature XCOM headrush of barely scraping my way to a completion after losing 3/4 of my squad, and its base-building is too shallow to be truly satisfying. Fun writing and character design, and fun gameplay, just didn't quite scratch the itch I wanted it to.

It was about halfway through the game that I thought it should end and the last quarter of it was just going through missions with characters far to powerful to ever come close to losing (it was an easy enough game even before that on the hard difficulty).

The characters have some good ability synergy, they have improved the rag doll style deaths from the previous games, and the breaching mechanics are in theory a good idea, hurt by the nonsensical auto cover taking done by your characters which wouldn't be a problem if not for the new turn style of the game where each character and each enemy take turns instead of switching side to side. So, it's great when they run in completely surrounded and leave themselves flanked by multiple enemies who will move before them.

The overworld gameplay of paying intel to create field teams that do nothing narratively but get you resources and managing city panic is basically pointless and offers nothing interesting (at least it isn't actively bad like the original XCOM's randomness). The close quarter style of maps means that you will fight in very similar locations (sometimes literally the exact same map, once even twice in a row). Some elements of the game feel unfinished, you can capture enemies with nonlethal melee or tranq rounds but they do nothing but give you extra intel, even capturing faction leaders does nothing. Equipment seems extremely limited, androids that can fill spots in your team if someone is downed are basically useless and unless you are playing on a difficulty higher than what you should be should never be used.

Mostly dull equipment and poor and extremely limited mission objectives, most that don't even work due to the small size of the maps. Disarm the bomb isn't very difficult when anyone can spend one turn walking to it to instantly disarm it. No idea why so many missions have enemy reinforcements, ever seen a robbery where after the SWAT team goes in reinforcement robbers start breaching through the walls and crashing through windows?

They likely launched the game early to beat Gears Tactics because in addition to usual XCOM visual issues and feeling unfinished in some areas there are a very large number of bugs, AI, and UI issues. I've had loaded games cancel enemy reinforcements or saves change into other past saves until the game was reset. It removed people from training when I put other people in the second. APC slots vanish, menus would open the wrong menus. Overwatch has shot downed enemies that would have moved if they were alive. Enemies that run into corners and do nothing. Enemies that flank with one action then do nothing with the other. Enemies that use attacks that can't effect (or that might even heal certain characters) only to spend the next two turns doing the same thing again. Terrible ability descriptions on top of abilities and achievements sometimes just not working correctly.

The lack of variety is not helped by each playthrough only allowing you to recruit four additional characters on top of the four that you start with preventing you from having the full roster of 11 character. Losing the ability variety and one of the only amusing things about the game which is the personalities of the characters. It even does that member selection incompetently by giving you three to pick from each time, so if you might not be able to choose who you want when you want them and because there will be four left on the last pick it might not even give you the option of the one that you wanted.