izigame.me

This game has some good moments and at times a decent gameplay loop, but I can't recommend it in its current state, especially as a full-priced title. While this is still a review, I have put a few 'wishlist' style changes I'd like to see throughout it; despite my (at times) harsh tones, I love this kind of game and wish this game and its developers a successful 1.0 release. Regardless, My main criticisms are as follows:
1. Compared with other games of this genre, the difficulties are far harder than they let on. I'm struggling through my second playthrough on veteran (second hardest difficulty) while I've managed to beat pheonix point and Xcom 2 on legendary EASILY by comparison. This isn't a detractor for diehard fans of the genre, but WILL alienate more casual players.
2. Overwatch in tactical missions. This is an issue in other games of the genre as well, but it's ESPECIALLY bad here. Aliens, even from undisovered pods, will almost always be on overwatch beyond the early game, even on turn one, facing directly toward your landing area. There's also NO indicator showing if any given alien (or human, for that matter) is on overwatch, and if that alien has only a single overwatch attack, or several. Additionally, your own men's overwatch (which you can't really turn off beyond wasting time units) cause friendly fire an uncomfortably large amount of the time. The rules explaining how and when units will use overwatch are unclear and inconsistent, and NOTHING you can field is beefy enough to just face-tank through the worst of it unless you're VERY ahead in tech at that given point. One (partial) solution is smoke grenades (flashbangs can't usually be thrown far enough accurately to turn it off consistently), but they're REALLY risky and unintuitive to use:
Use them on your own units -> you're forced to move unless you've outfitted your entire squad with gas masks (or have T3 armor already) because stun will keep building from smoke inhalation.
Use them on enemy units -> congrats, you're never going to hit them until they either leave or you get really up close, which defeats the point.
use them on the space in between -> They're sorta inconsistent, and aliens still move around them on their next turn anyway, and you also can't shoot through it either, and moving through it later will still give stun effect.
2B) Damage rolling. While not a big issue in the earlygame, with how armour works, combats feel increasingly luck-based and inconsistent as the game progresses- attacks do 50 to 200% of their base damage on every hit, before armour An attack having a base of 50 damage against a unit with 60 hp and 20 armour could do anywhere between 5 damage (basically nothing), or 80 (oneshotting almost most biological soldiers even through T3 armour). Weapons having different damage ranges/spreads or even reducing the overall spread would do a tonne to make combats more fair and straightforward. The wild damage ranges makes the overwatch issue mentioned above even worse as you can't calculate your way through traversing a volley to allow your squad to move again.
3. The atmosphere of the game and the strategy layer in particular is underwhelming. Almost no voice acting, no cutscenes even for big events, and a lack of varied sound effects or music as the game progressed. Our chief of operations, head scientist and head of engineering don't even have their own names or backstories (that I've managed to find, anyway), which is a huge shame for the scientist especially, as he clearly has a personality he establishes over the game. Additionally, the storytelling around 'an asymmetrical war against the aliens' is DEEPLY confusing. You simultaneously have hidden bases, yet the governments of the world are somehow still funding you anyway while all their intelligence agencies have been compromised by alien sympathisers (light spoilers, my bad) from the dead start of the game? Whose side are the governments of the world on? If the threats are so pervasive, how are you able to just build bases anywhere and they'll almost never be attacked until the second half of the game, and only by aliens. Where is the Xenonaut support base coming from?
4. The air combat is also very unpolished and they admit as such when you do it for the first time. with a second-generation fighter (which I won't name for spoilers) armed with third tier weapons and second tier armour can't kill anything bigger than certain 'small' sized aircraft. Additionally, the interface implies you can send multiple fighters (which would definitely be helpful in using lots of weaker craft) after a single threat, but there's no proper explanation anywhere ingame on how to do this? This one is probably the most forgivable of all my criticisms thus far- maybe I don't know what I'm doing. Additionally, I built a LOT of missile/laser/redacted Defense batteries in my campaigns, and later found out these ONLY shoot at alien aircraft attacking your bases? If these could attack other alien craft passing by, I think that'd be both thematically awesome and make the air combat a lot more bearable.
5. A lot of the tactical level item choices and combinations are honestly just sort of boring, and the number of viable comps in the second half of the game is very low. Grenadiers are really weak as the game progresses and their tech up for explosives comes WAY too late. Further exacerbating their mediocrity, normal soldiers of other classes can carry a LOT of grenades by then. Could grenade launchers be made into a secondary so I can still use a rifle, shotgun or machine gun? Shields are honestly too strong in the earlygame and midgame if you get their T2 project done soon enough, but fall off rapidly after that. The MARS units are definitely very cool, but why can't I turn my men into Telepaths, cyborgs or super-mutants using alien tech? The restrictions on what can be used as primary and secondary weapons are also too strict for my liking- it also takes (in my opinion) far too many time units to move stuff around in inventory, so trying to cram out on held items and switching as needed in combat isn't usually viable either.
6. More minor issues. they're not a serious issue in the scheme of things, and will likely be fixed soon, but definitely make play on some maps maps deeply uncomfortable. Issues such as
Cyberdrone explosion on death feels almost unavoidable in the REDACTED, as the short corridoors and small rooms mean one in the center of a room is almost unavoidable damage, especially if you use shorter- ranged compositions (you'd be an idiot to do a long-ranged one in there anyway)
Why do really thin boreal trees provide 100% (perfect) cover as good as brick or metal walls? Cover in general feels like it's too generously applied when shooting through various non-straight general angles.
Why can't I move units through each other, to the point it adds massive amounts of time units in moving a formation UNLESS you move them all in a very specific order? since you lose additional time units for making turns, a unit may need to turn THREE times to get around one guy, which often loses you 10+ time units for what should have been a 2-3 block, 5-7 time unit move. This isn't a huge issue by itself, but if someone gets suppressed, panics or otherwises loses their remaining turn unexpectedly, it can cause a doorway to be shut for an entire turn as the person you can't move through now can't move at all.
While I may have more to learn about this game, I can't recommend it right now. I WILL update this review as more content, bug fixes and rebalancing comes available. I have high hopes for the team working on it and this game by 1.0 Release, however far away that is. Thanks for reading my review!