An enjoyable, but flawed X-Com remake. Some improvements squandered with a poor presentation. Review is for Gold Edition
There is a little story, but you'll have to dig through the manual to find it. As Earth was being attacked a group of "pilgrims" set off to colonize a distant planet in another star system, believing it to be the next best hope for mankind. They lived peaceably for a few years before news of Earth's fall reached them. Even more alarming is the fact that a wormhole has opened in the same solar system as Esperanza. Fighters are dispatched to confirm their fears; the aliens have come. To combat this threat all the nations of Esperanza form the CAF (Counter Alien Force) to protect the planet.
Just as in X-Com, you'll eventually advance the plot in order to discover where the aliens are coming from, and stop them. While the actual endgame is pretty well done, the story in between is lacking. The story also showcase another problem; the setting. While X-Com took place on Earth, UFO:ET takes place on a fictional planet, which by itself is noticeably less relatable. Map design doesn't help much either, with the majority of combat locales including golf courses and caves. You do start to wonder why you're fighting for this planet anyway.
Story and setting aside, the game is divided between Strategic and Tactical modes. For those unfamiliar with X-Com's formula I'll briefly touch on it here. After building your first base, you'll primarily focus on intercepting UFO's and then searching their crash sites. There were other missions as well such as terror sites, where you had to defend civilians, and alien bases, where you had to weaken an alien's hold on an area. As you captured live aliens you would work your way towards the alien's final base, before the final mission.
It's practically the same, but there's some solid improvements. For one, you only have on primary base now. While you can still have multiple bases, and should, only one houses your scientists, and engineers. It's a good improvement, one which cut's down on micromanagement, as your other bases will be for interception purposes only. In addition storage space has been removed, so you now longer have to worry about running out of space, and can focus solely on mass producing stuff for your troops.
There are other improvements. The technology tree is much more expansive and balanced. There's a ton of more vehicles and different types of interceptors as well. And remember when aliens convinced a country to defect, causing you to lose their funding for the rest of the game? Well now you can liberate them by seeking out and destroying the alien base in their territory. Other various "problems" that existed in vanilla UFOET, such as no recruiting and invincible soldiers, are fixed in Gold Edition.
Unfortunately there's still problems. For one base defenses are nearly useless. Since they can only fire once in a combat round, and the UFO can fire as many times as it wishes, it's stupidly imbalanced. Since you can't defend your bases you'll have to fight inside them constantly which gives you more unnecessary missions.
This leads us to another problem. Towards the end of the game the formula gets repetitive and you just don't feel like playing. Some form of auto resolve, or more mission variety (like in Aftermath/Shock/Light) would've helped greatly. Speaking of which where did all the police and military go? In terror missions there's no sign of them, and even if they were fighting some "frontline" battle, give us news reports at least...
The tactical side is a mix from the original X-Com. On one hand it's the same and has some improvements. On the other there are problems. First, the interface is a lot better. Each soldier has his own tab, which makes switching between them and keeping track of your troops much easier. Now that controls are better, it's strange that no realtime mode was included when enemies aren't about (such as JA2 and Silent Storm). This is one of the aging issues I was talking about.
On another hand, the AI is suitably aggressive and has less frustrating quirks. Aliens have no qualms rushing you, and it's easy to be overwhelmed. The best single improvement is that the last alien runs straight at you. In the original X-Com the last alien would hide, an issue that really dragged out battles unnecessarily and got boring fast.
It's not all good though. Even on higher levels, Aliens seemed to stand in your toxin or stun smoke rather than running off to avoid choking to death. They commonly blow away buddies standing right in front of them, and blow each other up and themselves with poorly thrown grenades. These are rare occurrences though..
Overall though the combat's great. In a time when TBT games are dying, it's refreshing to see a true turn based system at work. Destructible environments are back and there's few things more epic than blasting through a wall to kill an alien. Since your soldiers are very fragile (An X-Com standby), careful planning is required or you'll be completely wiped out. Careful use of tactics is required. You'll have to cover your soldiers and advance slowly. The improved AI, and better graphics also make UFO:ET's battles easier to stomach than X-Com's (After all those years).
The gameplay aside, there's quite a few presentation problems. Translation issues abound. Some Ufopedia entries are laughable, and other downright difficult to read. The Case itself also exhibits these problems with the description not being very clear on what the GOLD Edition is, and implying an entire other game that doesn't even exist.
Then there's plenty of crashes, the most common of which I nailed down to building multiple base buildings in a row. Also selling a building and then attempting to build a new one threw the game to desktop. While it's not a huge deal, every so often I forget and accidentally crash my game over a rather stupid bug. Then there's other little bugs. One time, canceling a fighter being produced before it was finished, caused the hanger to be permanently filled with the "ghost" interceptor (an interceptor I couldn't use). Grrrh!
Now onto graphics. Graphics definitely aren't fantastic, but they get the job done. Stronger aspects of the engine include the sprites which are well done, and the environments which have sufficient detail. The engine has great weaknesses though in animation, lighting, and physics are non-existant. Effects could've been better as well. While it's disappointing that an X-Com remake couldn't have a nicer engine, it's understandable that a smaller company like Chaos Concept had to cut corners. (Unfortunately the upcoming Xenonauts, and UFOET2 aren't much of a step up either). The little bit of artwork in the loading screens is well done, and I wouldn't mind some larger versions for sake of desktop wallpaper.
The sound on the other hand is inexcusably weak in every way. While the music retains X-Com's, feel, there's no reason that it couldn't have been beefed up a bit or have some more original flair. Weapons sound pathetic with none of the ofmph you would expect from things like, say...EXPLOSIONS! Alien sounds are also pathetic, as are the human ones. And while done poorly it could've been a liability, I miss unit acknowledgments. The little voice-acting in the cut scenes is, as Gamespot puts it correctly, putrid. It feels as if no effort went into this aspect of the game, and the atmosphere suffers for it. When a free game (UFO: Alien Invasion) can do better it makes your company look sloppy.
There is one more thing I should cover and that's the amount of customization the game offers. Bman's Ease of use mod (integrated in the GOLD Edition) has a myriad of functions, allowing you to adjust the vitality of soldiers, AP usages, speed of advancement, or manufacturing. Other settings abound like sight ranges, AI Difficulty, UFO crew variety, commander variety, and much more. It's extremely easy to completely tweak the game to your preference. The mod also adds all new features like UFO Packs and Swarms, the ability to hire soldiers, and plenty of new maps. Unfortunately even with the Impoved Base Defenses mod, they're still frustratingly weak.
Now we come to the ugly side of this, buying the GOLD Edition feels like paying for a mod. To the best of my knowledge you could save your self the cash and get the basic game and download Bman's mod for free (Plus GOLD Edition's version is missing some things such as the expanded loading screen art). With that in mind, and the rarity of boxed Gold Edition copies, you may just want to grab the original and put some work into installing the mods yourself.
Since this is a game where views will vary wildly, I'll break down my score so you can understand where I'm coming from. Starts at 10 for X-Com formula. Lose 1 point for graphics&sound. Lose 1.5 points for crashes, translation issues, and bugs. Lose half point for poor story. Lose 1 point for lack of originality and aging issues. Lose half point for paying for a mod. Gains one point for reducing micromanagement and improving AI. Score tops at 6.5 (I wish I could be more precise than 0.5 increments, otherwise the score would be 6.75).