It succeeds where its predecessor failed! But fails where Aftermath succeeded!
When compared to UFO: Aftermath, the followup does improve on some of the aspects but immediatly fails on that what made the original enjoyable.
The story: The story playes out better than in the original. The clips which inform you of the history and the reticulan threat are a nice touch but even that failed to inspire me for long.
Tactical game: This is truly the biggest letdown. The maps are small and the layout repeats alot, i mean every third or fourth mission you see the same map. On easy settings the missions are just runthroughs. If you crank up the difficulty, the enemies are still pure idiots, just harder to kill. The stances and stuff are there but really they are of no use, they make a minimal impact on the outcome of a firefight. And the maps are so small, enterable interiors are nice but theres something missing.
Geosphere: Laputa idea is nice but at the same time its not. Its good that you have a central base to coordinate attacks from but the lack of actual fighter crafts and transporter crafts make entering and exiting missions as boring as it can ever be. (two thumbs down for the execution of the laputa idea). Discovering new technologies is as unemotional as it can get, s short video clip of the technology couldve changed that but all i feel when discovering new techs is "oo wow, whatever who cares!"
The game is soo boring after coupla hours playing it. How could they turn it into such cr*p is beyond me. I really hope there will be more games in this genre but with better execution.