Recent reviews by GAmbrose

XCOM: Chimera Squad then.

I've played the game to death and have all the achievements, so I think I've got most of the mechanics of how the game works.

I really enjoyed my first two playthroughs, though the third was a bit of a chore. It's a similar experience to XCOM 2 with the same janky graphics engine (XCOM 3 really needs to use Unreal Engine 4) but is different enough to not feel like a re-skin of that game. I still experienced some crashes, and the game has some bugs that really need patching out, such as equipment going missing and armour not being equipable on recruits later in the campaign (there are workshop fixes available)

Most of Chimera Squads soldier abilities are fairly different to the last game and there is no sniper this time around. The shotgun seems to be the best weapons so my personal recommendations if playing on impossible mode would be to take Godmother, Claymore and Axiom as good starting choices. They all use shotguns you can concentrate on master crafting shotguns first.

Although squad members don't die between missions, they can be knocked down during a mission and you then have to stabilise them. It differs to previous games as your soldiers don't have any recovery time between missions, even if they are "gravely wounded", but they do end up with 'scars' which give them some serious debuffs. Having a Chimera Squad member you rely on to hit multiple enemies who has a -30 aim penalty can be a huge disadvantage for instance

You now put them in to tactical training to either enhance abilities, or lose the scar debuffs. This leaves them unavailable for 2-3 'days' which could mean 2-3 missions, so the game is encouraging you to not rely heavily one one particular squad and to vary your play style.

Unfortunately it can feel that there is very little importance placed on movement/positioning now. Most missions are inside buildings, and very few have anything in the way of high vantage points to take advantage of. Most missions consist of 'Breach', clear a room as quickly as possible and then breach again and in the late game you can find yourself just blasting away from your starting position barely having to move.

Sometimes you have to extract at the end with a VIP, sometimes you have open a chest but most of the time it's just 'kill everything'

In my experience, 'Expert' difficulty feels a bit too easy, and 'impossible' mode felt more like XCOM/XCOM 2.