Xenonauts 2

Im playing this on Steam Deck and it runs like a dream. The game is a great homage to the XCOM series. I think the research and analyse portions are very well written and have a much more serious tone than XCOM to be sure. The story line is perfect, and that Enemy of The State feel while dealing with The Cleaners is realistic and fits seamlessly into the game.
I prefer the Time Unit system over the simplified XCOM Action Points system. It allows for a much higher degree of strategic planning and a boon to the Fun Factor.
This game can be aggravating at times, the Ai pulls no punches and can ambush your troops in CQB easily, while other times the RNG will make you want to rage quit because your troopers will sometimes have "oops" moments. These oopsies can be as simple as missing a target 5' away, or as frustrating as your grenade launcher misfiring and blowing up in your grenadiers face and killing/wounding half your squad. This randomness is exactly the kind of shenanigans that makes this game so much fun.
A great example of this was when i was doing a recovery mission, a few npcs were fighting the aliens and one alien went to shoot the npc in question when its shot missed and the projectile traveled through the building, through a window, and hit something i couldnt yet see. turns out that alien rolled a critical fail in my opinion because i found the dead body of another alien who had been on the other side of that window.
Now the game does need a little more work on the friendly npc's, because if they are unarmed they just run around and murder poor defenseless windows. I watched as a few npcs broke every window in the operation area, all the while my Zomboid PTSD cringed every time they jumped through a window without removing the glass first...

If you liked the first one, the second one is like that but less frustrating. If you found the first Xenonauts to be too frustrating, but otherwise enjoyable, you'll probably like this one.

Currently needs a bit more variation, the UFOs often show up with only a single enemy type across the entire map, which is unfortunate, but otherwise, in my mind, it's a complete experience at this point.

Love it is fun, Next a TFTD game, and the Humans Invade the Alien Planets :-) Hope you all have as much fun as I Do :-)

Good graphics and a fun game overall. Love the more action oriented and smaller maps. Very nice to have multiple mission types to. Well worth the money.

Fun, bit rough around the edges. Good for people who like turn based tactics games, better if you're a fan of old Xcom - when you extend or disable the turns limit on timed missions.

Looking forward to mods when this is finished and the mod tools are released.

Yeah i do Recommend this game. great game play. nice art work. good story so far. my score is 9.6 out of 10.

Tex with the black pants legion and mandaloregaming got me here. Having played a ton of the 1st one, this is very enjoyable.

Great game, still in development phase. Some things could improve but it provides a lot of fun if you liked x-com, phoenix point and similars.

In a world where communism still thrives thanks to Reploid intervention, you and your crack team of people who failed the air force's physical fitness test must save the world with the starting budget of less than an M1 Abrams tank. Watch as your crack team of conspiracy theorists are paid with exposure and slowly learn how to shoot more than 50 feet with a stocked AR-15. Build a number of bases funded by presumably robbing banks and committing international credit fraud. laugh as this description becomes more realistic than the story.

The game is still fun but the Story has gotten even goofier than before.

After 30 years - finally something that's a worthy successor to the original UFO enemy unknown. Its captures the core flavour but modernises the combat mechanics, with clear choices and mathematics to the action. Its still hard, with your troops battered and bloodied by the end of each mission, and new recruits will be needed. Its got enough flexibility in load-out whilst also having clear jobs. Unlike the Firaxis X-com which was too much of a console game. The plot is fun, music fits well, and UI excellent.

UFO Enemy Unknown - Classic
X-Com Terror from the Deep - Same game, different graphics
X-Com Apocalpyse - Great concept
Phenonix point - too weird
Xenonaughts 1 - too similar to original X-com, might as well play that.
X-Com Firaxis 1 - Too much of a console game
X-Com Firaxis 2 - Nice idea, again, not enough freedom.
Xenonaughts 2 - FInally, something that feels like an update of the original.

The game is niche, only to hardcore players. On normal, early in the game, you will be facing plasma weapon aliens that can 1 shot 2 of your soldiers per turn, can hit from very far, move far more than your soldiers, can do some absurd diagonal cover erasing math calculations and you will have 9 soldiers against 20+ aliens, the balance is very deficient. Unless youre a super hardcored X-Com professional, stay as far as you can from this. This is not a product to enjoy and have fun. Or wait for like 10 years for them to maybe fix these things.

This game is great. It very closely fuses the experiences of the games that inspired it, with writing and gameplay to make it distinct and stand on its own. The new engine is smooth and the models/textures give a player of the first game something very familiar to look at, except with the advantages of a 3d environment.

It's a challenging game, but if you want to abduct aliens and loot their pants for a change, give it a try. In my opinion, this is an even better homage to X-COM than the first game.

Do you enjoy games where the enemy just grinds you down? Where your technological gains are minute such that they're barely noticeable? Where your units are killed over and over and over? Everyone dies so often that you don't bother even looking at names because they'll be dead in 1-2 missions?

If so, this game is for you!

I absolutely love classic X-COM. This is a really good modern version of that same model that I love so much. Does Xenonauts 2 do something new? Not really, at least not yet. I'm still waiting for revamped interceptions, but even then that won't do too much and there aren't any other milestone goals that I know of that will step outside the tried and tested formula. But it doesn't have to for me to love the game to death. I would recommend this game to anyone who loves X-COM UFO DEFENSE or for anyone who wants to see a little bit of what playing the original game was like.

Some things I would like to see improved on:
- Faster load times
- More campaign customization. (Looking for a Long War type experience)
- Base planning or recommendations. Losing in the strategy layer always sucks and it's hard to see where you go wrong, especially for new players. Giving a little bit more information and planning tools could help players make better choices and see where they go wrong.

Xenonauts 2 is an exceptional game that has truly won me over. The developers have crafted a captivating strategy experience that feels both fresh and deeply engaging, retaining the essence of classic tactical gameplay while adding impressive modern enhancements. Every new milestone brings something exciting, and it’s more than enough to draw me back in repeatedly, eager to explore the latest updates and changes.
What I love most about Xenonauts 2 is its replayability. With each milestone, I find myself returning, and the game never feels stale. The tactical depth, the thoughtful tweaks, and the ever-evolving strategies required keep the gameplay engaging. Whether you're an old fan or new to the series, the game captures the thrill of strategic decision-making perfectly.

Xenonauts 2 is truly a gem for anyone who enjoys a well-made, challenging strategy game. It’s one of those rare games that only gets better with each update, and I can’t recommend it highly enough!

The game is another forced woke garbage, probably written by someone who's never seen combat. Wait for mods to come out, or all of your characters will be female. They will probably add troons and pedos later as well. Needs mods to be enjoyable just like bg3 or anything else coming from limp wrists.

Like Xcom enemy within? You will like this. It is not a shallow copy! Plenty of tactical differences to make it a distinguishable game. For instance: units have action points, so they can fire then move. Cover works differently: the only reliable cover are the ones that completly block line of sight. The aerial combat minigame presents an interesting concept, but still a work in progress.

This game is awesome. Keep developing and add more customization please.

Milestone 4 Review:

The original X-COM UFO was one of my favorite games in the 90s and in my opinion, the basic game idea/design is timeless and one of the better ones out there.

Xenonauts 2 remains very true to the original with a few teaks and improvements here and there. I liked especially the Cleaner-Storyline with its related special missions, and I felt a little disappointed that there are no further story-missions in die mid and endgame to add some additional flavor.

I had no technical issues whatsoever and had fun re-visiting one of my favorite games of my youth. The only thing I missed is more creativity when it comes to alien design. All types act and feel pretty much the same. We are talking aliens, so it would have been possible to create a lot of weird and fun stuff for the players! How about some flying specimens? Or swarm-like creatures which come in packs? Alien nests you need to take care of before they hatch reinforcements.

Despite that I’m looking forward to milestone 5.

It's classic XCOM. If you liked that you will like this.

This game hits that Xcom Apocalipse vibe so well, just a fantastic game and log over due.

Excellent game.
+ Nostalgic value (really like the old-school graphics)
+ Destructible environments
+ Not over-complicated, variable challenge options
+ Upgrades / Research

- + Perma-death percentage customization option still too high in my opinion.

Suggestion: Give option to remove perma-death or lower to 2%. Perhaps limited voice lines of characters when you click on them?

So cool! Yet insainly hard. In all seriousness I recommend this game.

I am not sure what to think, but I will recommend as it plays well for an EA game. They really need to overhaul the story driven campaign. They need to focus less on characters and more on making the story creepy. The original X-Com hit just the right note. Everything was super mysterious and had one foot in popular lore and the other in their own story. I was also less liking the story missions, though they had good variety. Keep up the variety, but less of a hand holding plot if you know what I mean.

A little side note from my personal preferences; I want to see a game like this with a more solid foot in realistic modern day military tech. Make the initial equipment upgradeable with cooler and more advanced gadgets. Then slowly work into laser guns and stuff like that. In the age of AI, there is no reason for the soldiers not to have super cool bios.

Great potential. I don't want to play it any further until the game is complete. Mostly so I can enjoy the full experience and not burn myself out before then.

Very fun tactical game. The system is fair and brutal. An improvement from the 1st game too. Varied biomes to play in. A lot of upgrade for you base, you soldier, your vehicules and your air ship.

Can you finish this game already?

I NEED to defeat the aliens!

I tend to play this every few major updates. I get to the part of the game where it tells me I've done everything they have to offer at the moment. It's a little frustrating to have those alien scum on their back on their heels(?) for the umteenth time and get told I cant finish the job.

I'm a X-COM: UFO Defense (1994) player (and on), and I really enjoy how this game reminds me of it. However, this game doesn't pretend to think that I'm an ironman player by making it difficult to reload a save. Yes, I like to go back to a save in tactical mode to try to change the next turn. I think of it as the "Edge of Tomorrow" ability to reset the day (turn). They've also added a lot more content from the other XCOM-type games: more research, aircraft, gear, weapons, etc.

Fun game; please finish.

Early Access review on October 16th. It's still a solid and fun game with quite a lot of more stuff and content than in Xenonauts (CE). Missing basically the last part of the game, "endgame content", which is due soon. Game engine seems to be better than in Xenonauts (CE). I prefer this game to Xenonauts (CE). I'd buy this at a discount. Whether you want to play it straight away, and it is very playable, or wait for the full release is up to you.

True successor of X-Com, much improved over Xenonauts 1.
Still in EA so you can play around 200 days before running out of new content.
Great tactic and strategic gameplay.

From PDF militia to Techno-Hyperwar death squad, the tactical escalation is palpable, and the satisfaction of being in an arms race with a dimension hopping empire and somehow -winning-, is a satisfaction that is hard to do justice. Saving humanity is a nice bonus too I suppose
10/10 vaping saves lives (but only if it comes from a bomb)

Still to much luck factor, and basically the same game as previous titles. EA so plenty of bugs.

Selling extraterrestrial cadavers for pocket money is my business, and business is good.

I can't recommend this game. Firstly, "normal" difficulty is absurdly punishing. I guess that's the shtick they're going for but for 98% of players this means they're spend more time reloading saves than playing. Combat is more like Russian roulette since all the enemies one-shot your units.

Because the enemies one-shot your units so you'll be reloading saves every time some unseen alien insta-kills your guys from off screen. Once in a while a mission will randomly generate in a way that makes it nearly impossible to win so you'll load a save from before the mission to get it to regenerate after spending a couple hours replaying the same doomed mission a dozen times.

It strikes me as a little absurd that your team starts the mission with no knowledge of the drop zone except what they can directly see. Notionally they land in a helicopter so you'd think they would know what the landing zone looks like but nope. If there's an alien standing right outside your helicopter you won't know until your guy steps one tile out of the helicopter and gets one-shot.

I really wanted to like this game but it's just not fun for me.

Its very much EA. The game is very much similar to xcom2, just with less mechanics. one of them is customize/character creation!!!, no skill tree, no weapon attachments, and more. It seems like its just a new game thats a downgrade of XCOM 2 that was released 2016.
Armors: they arent very well thought out for end game, nor early game.
"Gameplay & Weapons": they bad and useless most of them. have to play easy mode to if you want to play a balance game mode. at commander settings. only thing that works is shield and machine gun combo, why? First the cover doesnt work as they intended to. half cover, no cover. they dont matter much to the AI aliens. since they shoot through cellings, floors, walls, covers most of the times. when they intend to miss. they hits the cover and remove them. So its better use the UT shoot and run behind a wall. or sit behind a shield soldier, instead taking cover. movement, facing, shooting all cost a decent amount of UT, and the soldier doesnt have much of it. so mostly they spent 1 turn move, and next turn shoot and move. which make the gameplay slow, thats if you dont want to lose most of the soldiers. when it comes to weapons. Sniper, high cost of UT, cant never shoot more than once. mid dmg, cant never kill any armor target first shot, no armor targets 50/50.. its a sniper..and 1shot per turn. if you move you dont have enough ut to shoot. soo useless.I played on commander mode. took me 2x laser sniper shots and 5xlaser pistol to kill a armor alien. rifles are decent, they have decent range, and mid dmg, few fire modes. BUT playing at commander mode. useless. shotgun, high dmg close range. but high risk. mostly you facing more than 5 aliens(depends on difficulty) at the times, some of them get the chance to overwatch fire at your soldier before they get close. useless. explosive? only good to remove covers. like this game.. the soldiers will have 30%-50% hitting enemy behind cover. even tho the soldiers are Maxed out on +100 accuracy. and your weapons are likely shit not dealing enough dmg, unless you spray and pray with machine gun. The enemies on the have +80% hitting you no matter if you behind cover. if they are further away, no worries they take shots like sniper. just with a little less hitting chance. and they mostly 1-2shots. even you updated with the best armor at the times. I dont know what the devs are going with all this.... and wtf with no stealth mode or anything? we fighting with fog of war. but the AI, just sees everything.

I find myself repeatedly asking myself why I'm not just playing XCOM 2 over again. This game is a poor imitation of XCOM in almost every way, missing critical features that make that game exciting to come back to, and in place of those features they have added a single "UFO interception" feature where you "construct" three component fighter loadouts with few options to shoot down UFOs with an autoresolve button. That's it. There is no more strategic complexity here than XCOM 2 giving you a button prompt to evade a UFO. They took the least interesting part of XCOM 2, gave it one extra layer of complexity, and that's their only addition to the formula.

In exchange, soldiers do not get unique upgrade paths as they rank up. You do not hunt down miniboss enemies that get progressively more powerful. You do not encounter aliens that feel like unique threats requiring new approaches rather than new pixel art with a slightly more powerful laser. Alien autopsies do not unlock new gadgets that put a fun spin on how you approach fights. Nothing that makes XCOM 2 special is present here, and in its place is a hollow imitation that seems minimally concerned with innovating on anything new or executing on what worked to a sufficient standard. This game rings hollow, which sucks as XCOM 2 is now 8 years old and STILL nothing has gotten close to feeling similarly challenging and detailed.

I can't recommend this even on sale. It feels like a project with no aim, and all it's going to do is make you more upset that XCOM 2 still has no sequel nor counterpart in the genre. I have gotten half of the achievements and I feel like nothing about this game has changed since I started playing despite going through the same ballistic -> magnetic -> laser -> plasma weaponry tech upgrade you go through in XCOM Long War, which would typically feel like you and the aliens are swapping back and forth in who's on top multiple times by this point.

EDIT: I keep seeing even negative reviews talk about the "potential" this game has to be great and giving it credit for what it could be. Now that I understand that this is a kickstarter project, this makes much more sense. Avoid this shit like the plague. This game has a hype train of people around it too high on the marketing to realize this game is an inferior copy of XCOM 2 in every single aspect, all because they think it might be good one day. They took 6-8 years to get to a point where they're barely scratching 1/5th of what makes this genre entertaining to play. Do you really think one more patch is going to do it?

Really good tactical turn based game with fair amount of depth and plenty of challenge.

My main criticism is that the enemies can shoot from corners and most the time you can't without just shooting the wall in front of you. This really needs to be addressed as it greatly effects game play, but there is definitely a solid foundation here and I look forward to see how the game comes together in the end. Some minor things that could be addressed include being able to reserve time units on your move so you can ensure you can have enough for overwatch. Also, the fact that you land in pitch black is kinda silly, you should be able to see your surroundings outside for a ways at least. Obviously still have the fog of war, but you should know where buildings are (the insides can be blacked out until you see them). I would think an elite fighting team would have a map or an idea of where things are lol. The weapons feel really well balanced which is nice. Snipers are devastating but take a lot of TU so you can't run and gun with them, it makes you set them up strategically to cover lanes while you send assault/riflemen up. Riflemen are perfect mid range and scouts, and assault just chews things up when you get close so deploying stuns and smokes to get your assault team close is a must. I can't imagine playing this game without good use of smoke/stun as they are incredibly effective.

Highly recommend, especially on sale. It's not a complete package yet, but I have not reached the current end of developed content yet and I'm like 17 hrs in so it def has some fun game time behind it. What I have played so far feels like a full launch product. No bugs glitches or crashes to report.

Played and loved the first game but was a bit concerned this was just a remake of the first. I was both right and wrong in a good way. They have kept all the aspects I loved and enjoyed but wait... there's more! New maps, new missions, new equipment, new enemies, and many new ways to die. Love this type of game and this game is done super well. Keep up the great work team, definatly got my moneys worth!

I'm super mixed on this game. There certainly are aspects that I think are better than Xcom. I want to reiterate that this is early access, I hope it gets a lot better, but I enjoy this game (sometimes). I just can't recommend it in this state. I can't even go into all the aspects that fall short. Please keep this game followed and on your wishlist for the future.

Pro: I like harder games.
Con: I don't like when games are hard due to bad balance and half-baked mechanics.
Ex: Cover means nothing to the aliens and everything to you. a single half obstacle (mean only offering you partial cover) can reduce your hut chance by 40% even though it is a tile or two in front of you. However that same obstacle right in front of you only reduces the enemy's hit chance MAYBE 5% (no idea how much, it's not like it tells you). This is true for every mission, despite how low level the enemy aliens are, or how well trained or equipped your troops are.

Pro: Offers a nice array of weapons and equipment for you to set up various troop types.
Con: Many items fall into one of two categories, necessary or useless.
Ex: With the exception of units carrying a shotgun or a shield, there is an item that increases your accuracy on your troop by 5 pts. Not 5%, 5pts. Which when a great rookie stat for accuracy is 60 and the game doesn't really let you increase stats yourself and mostly relies on them getting medals. I had to look up what ranking them does, which is nothing. They gain skills in combat and training, I think... (not that it ever tells you). I'll explain more of the useless items next...

Absolute Con: Grenades with the exception of smoke and demo charges are basically useless.
Ex: Grenades cannot bounce, explode on impact, are effected by cover that they are thrown over for some reason, and most of their effects don't matter. Smoke makes it hard(er) for the aliens to hit you, but like I said, they rarely miss anyways, so smoke can allow you to move up without triggering all of their overwatches. Demo charges get rid of their cover, GREAT! The rest... don't do anything. C4 is never used since it needs to be physically planted, but all the doors just open so.... Maybe I can use it on walls to make bigger openings, but VERY limited usage (mostly due to the poor cover system). Standard Grenades basically do the same thing as demo charges but more actual damage to the enemy (not a high chance to kill in my experience) and often just ruin your chance of recovering goods to sell later. Then there is "stun"...

Pure Con: Stun and Suppressing really only affect you... Flash bangs ("Stun greandes") do not blind the enemy or reduce their accuracy. It only reduces their movement. It can prevent overwatch BUT, since it cannot be thrown against a wall, you would already need to be in their line of sight (most of the time, it has a 3 tile splash, so if you just out of LOS you could get away with it). Most suppression comes from all the times your troops miss, ESPECIALLY the heavy machine guns. Only problem, they are better at suppressing your own troops than they are the enemy. Any ally within 3 tiles of you using the 10 round burst WILL be suppressed.

Pro: While it currently is very early on, the fighter engagements in manual flight can be neat. Needs hotkeys to be able to quickly switch between the aircraft to prevent the need to pause when you have more than one fighter. Also, I would like a more in depth system when it

comes to arming your aircraft. Even the first module you make is a major sacrifice, choose 3:
Missiles, guns, armor, drop tanks (for range, which you WILL NEED)
I don't have much of a con for this, it's an early system which I hope gets more care in the future!

Pro: This game feels more like Xcom Long War mod, where death is LIKELY. You are facing a superior foe, soldiers will be lost.
Con: More often than not, you WILL save scum because your soldiers will die for dumb reasons.
Ex: The aliens will spot you beyond your view range. why? I don't know, the maps aren't that big. You start almost every mission with no knowledge of what is around you or where in reference to the map you are. That's fine, the kicker is, 80% of the time, you are already surrounded. I have spawned where there are enemies right next to the helicopter than I didn't see because your own helicopter WITH WINDOWS blocks all view around you. So upon leaving the helicopter I had 2 troops get 1 shot when the enemy was already behind me when the mission started. Or when the enemy blows up a car in 1 shot that 2 troops were using as limited cover, and they shot the door... For a game that feels like it wants to be a more realistic Xcom, [/i] it still makes the same mistakes.

Going back to the expendable troops. I wish I liked this more, but due to the bad ranking system, lack of control over training, cost of new troops with a limited economy, and the fact that your best troops will STILL GET ONE SHOT. Most missions are just reloading the same checkpoint time and time again because you lose for not making a mistake, and your punishment is so brutal that it isn't even fun to continue.

A good sequel to the first Xenonauts with an updated 3D engine and bits of quality of life improvements here and there. My overall experience on the campaign so far is just a repeating cycle of "It's so joever" to "We're so fucking back", and I still can't get enough of it.

As of writing this review, the campaign does not currently have an "ending" and some of the promised content are still on the works which is acceptable to me since this is still in EA but it might affect your experience on it. Overall, a solid tactics game for me that brings back memories of my days in the OG XCOM UFO Defense and I wish the devs are able to polish this gem in the near future.

Best X-Com since the first 3 original X-Coms from the 90s

Ignore the negative reviews, this game is amazing.

At this point of Early Access, this is in good shape, and it achieves the core goal: to revive the feeling of old-school XCOM while bringing it into the modern era. A lot of tedious micromanagement has been replaced with good quality of life. Mission variety is really well done (although there's late-game stuff that is needed, and has been announced for the next update). Some missions have unlimited time: others have soft time limits, where you get told how many turns until enemy reinforcements arrive, or until the abduction tubes take the civilians away. You get to choose whether you care more about the lives of your soldiers, or the strategic benefits of a more risky approach.

I like that these soldiers have less personality than the mercenaries of Jagged Alliance, etc. It makes it easier to accept my loss rate, which averages one soldier per mission. (It's also nice that upgraded armour comes back, even if the soldier doesn't, especially given how expensive the armour is.)

So far, I haven't stopped feeling like an underdog every time I go out, but I'm also not so overwhelmed that I need to savescum all the time. That said, the savescum support is excellent and the ability to load a combat save from several turns ago (thoughtfully recorded at the beginning of every player turn) turned a disastrous massacre into a brave success (if a 60% casualty rate can be considered success, but it was the Cleaner HQ, and if I'd attempted to avoid casualties altogether, I'd have been there all day).

I'm looking forward to the extended endgame content, because the beginning and middle are doing well.

rough audio and controls, helps you realize how good all the xcom games are and go back to them, this one almost has the feel of a mobile game, something you'd play on your phone while your at work, it might be better in the future with more development, but at the moment, not so much, its almost like it needs to be sexier? since the usual flashiness of xcom graphics isn't there? its hard to place my thoughts on it

ill give it a better chance/more detailed look in the near future

Good strategy game. Fair rendition of a tactical genre. Similar titles have also remade classics into something good and I support that.

Have played this series since the initial x-com came out in the 90's. Really like what they've been working on in this latest edition taking some of the greatest parts of the series and limiting the monotony and the cumbersome logistics of the previous versions. Love the new twists on the story line to make the game new and exciting for some of us long time gamers. Appreciate the updates and feedback they've been taking to make this a great game.

I like xcom games, and xenonauts one was good.

I have no idea why (I do it's cause of early access, trying to buy less of them) I hesitated to buy this one so long. It's good.

Cover system isn't like other Xcom games, you can't take cover behind corners. Seems odd and it make things more difficult than they have to be. And enemies can move and shoot before overwatch triggers? That's just meh. In most other games overwatch always goes first. It's not a bad game and is a faithful recreation of the Xcom feel, just not liking these mechanics changes.

If you remember playing the FIRST xcom game and loved it then you'll love X2. I takes those ideas, adds to them and improves.

Came here to love the game as a long-term X-Com player, ended up leaving displeased.

Line of sight is terrible, meaning that enemy units can often shoot your troops without being eligible targets in return. Especially bad with corner peeking, which is actually super effective in real life but a death sentence in this game.

Starting human troops are terrible shots at best and teamkillers at worst. It takes a genuinely bad tactical model to have a sniper accidentally blow the head off a teammate standing next to him. Having almost any obstacle between a soldier and their target is guaranteed to have the shots hit the knee-high obstacle not the seven foot tall reptilian. A three foot high obstacle, small shrub or inconvenient bulletproof cactus will stop most of your shots en route to the enemy.

Even good snipers only get one shot a turn, two if you're lucky, unless they go berserk in which case they can fire off five shots without issues (just don't have friendlies in the line of fire, because you can only dream of your snipers being as dangerous to the enemy as they are to your own troops).

The difficulty is set so that there are only one or two viable metas (shield and rifleman teams is the one I was leaning on). Add a plethora of timed missions to force players to rush and you get a hard choice- rush, die and lose, or advance tactically, survive and lose.

You go into every mission completely blind despite deploying from a helicopter, when in reality you'd be able to see the layout of the tactical area and placement of enemy units on the way in. Although to be fair this is a form of absolute immersion-breaking stupidity inherited from previous iterations of the IP.

Grenades are almost useless outside open spaces because you need to walk into a breach to use them for dynamic entry, at which point you get shot on overwatch. Apparently underhand tosses don't exist in this game. All grenades are thrown in a high arc and detonate at the point of impact, which often makes it impossible to throw them into enemy ships. Real grenades don't explode on impact and so can be thrown much flatter than the grenades in this game, including caroming them off walls and obstacles.

Enemy units almost universally one-shot you, unless you're wearing heavy armour that slows you down and reduces your accuracy, in which case they still one-shot you 90% of the time anyway. Your MARS units (drone microtanks) can maybe survive two hits but are expensive and slow to repair. You can literally build a fighter jet for just over the time and money costs of repairing your MARS units three times.

There's no time unit reserving system for actions, meaning you often accidentally fall a couple of time units short of the aimed shot that might kill an enemy and save half your team from being wiped out.

Long story short? Game as it stands is badly balanced with awful line of sight mechanics and is in no way an improvement, or even an equal to, XCOM or even Xenonauts 1. Maybe with more work it'd be good but as of this review I can't recommend it due to shallow gameplay, awful tactical engine, and irrationally difficult missions. Save your money and wait. Or just play Jagged Alliance 3 which is overall a far better example of the modern turn-based tactical genre.

Xenonauts 2, is a great game. I have purchased it in early access and I am well pleased with the product I got. Xenonauts 2 is an amazing concept, with a lot of core features already being substantially polished and there being enough side content for hours and hours of play it truly is a good game. There are, like all good games, some issues I have have with it, with the most remarkable being it's price. I bought it here in Australia for 38$ for sale. That is a massive deal breaker for me, but I was looking for another game at the time which was far more expensive, so that's why I decided to buy it, re-adjust your foreign prices to a more affordable level, especially for early access. Another problem I have with the game is less of a big problem that will for sure be fixed over the course of early access but there are tactical missions in the game which in my opinion are by far the most polished aspect, which makes it so that you get a lot of tactical missions, and they take a while, especially on the harder difficulty's, so I'm just asking please tone down the rate of tactical missions and put more of a focus on polishing other content and putting it on more of a mainstream part of the game.

I really like the concept of this game with the turn based combat, as well as the base building. However, in its current state as of 9/28/2024 the game is unplayable for me. I have a Ryzen 9 5950x, RTX 3080, Aorus Master x570, 32gb 3600Mhz ram, and a 2TB SSD, yet the game crashed every single time I played the tutorial despite verifying files and reinstalling in between. Will try again in the future.