Great tribute to the classic, tactical gameplay is great. Gorgeous. Weak on the geoscape strategy level.
As with the original game (which IMO is still the best game ever developed) is divided in to pieces. The strategy game (or geoscape) and the tactical game where the soldiers kill stuff.
In the tactical level is better than the original since there was a lot of room for improvement. Turn based game may seem old school but when your veteran soldiers are in the verge of being decimated believe me that turn will loooong while you pray for the aliens to miss (which will be unlikely).
The game has a wide range of difficulty levels to engage different players and can get extremely difficult without going to the easy mechanism like just ramping aliens HP.
The art of the game is great, very very nice models, and the scenes blend nicely with the models of the same game. I liked the music of the original game better.
It does have some problems, one is that the maps are fixed (not randomized) so when you played enough missions, you will know every map very well. I suspect that also the aliens appear in the same locations (some will move from their locations). Also the alien's behavior is a little too much predictable.
Your soldiers class skills can be customized and it feels just fine, short enough although some are repeated and some seem easy to skip.
In my opinion this game is dumbed down in the strategy level. It's strange that Firaxis (Civ) developed this game, I expected great things done with the strategy but no, it sucks plain simple. The base does look good but the original 1994 game is undoubtly better (18 years older).
The reasons are:
- Only one base.
- Only one active squad of 6 active soldiers / tanks. You can hire more but only 6 per mission, and eventually you will have very few since they ramp up in levels and the rookies fall behind.
- Resource administration is weak.
- No radars, fixed satellite locations.
- No decisions about skipping an UFO, you have to pick everything or it goes straight to hell. That also means that UFO's are rare. In the original game I remember having 98 UFO spots, many of those scaped.
- Finding UFOs is automatic, which is disappointing. I remember using interceptors to try to catch that sneaky UFO that went out of the radar range.
- No ammo manufacturing, and classic weaponry cannot be purchased (is automatic and free). Elerium should be a problem since plasma guns should use that as resource and their ammo should need more of it.
- I can go on and on, but the point is that it has a weak strategy level.
Nontheless this game is a great break from the stupid hand grabbing games of these days. The tactical game alone is worth the price.
I hope for sequels and more missions and maps and mods.