Forgotten but Unbroken

This one is a bit of a mixed bag. The combat is pretty good, but everything else ranges from "meh" to "ugh". Starting with the positive, the tactical combat is pretty good, with action points and a half/full cover system. Enemies aren't brilliant but it does seem like they're trying to kill you. Each mission starts in stealth, allowing you the opportunity to sneak around and eliminate bad guys, but you can't move their bodies, so you have to be very careful about your targets. It makes for a fun little puzzle. Early on you have to move through a narrow cone behind the enemy to avoid detection, later on you can wear a disguise and walk right up to them. The tactical UI is basic but functional. Your units have a deep desire to jump through windows without opening them first while in stealth mode, and there is no warning that you're about to wake up the camp, which caused me to reload a few times. Some keyboard shortcuts don't make sense, e.g. 'R' reloads (yay), but at the loadout screen, Ctrl+F reloads while Ctrl+R starts the mission. My XCOM-trained fingers like to hit '1' for a standard ranged attack, but here '1' means "end this units turn" and they don't let you undo it. The game features a broad selection of weapons, few of which are different in any meaningful way except which type of bullets they shoot. ~20 AP to fire, 20-50 damage, range 18-22. Most of my units kept the Mauser K98 that they began the game with. (The FG42 is an upgrade, but I only found one.) The game reinforces this with a "familiarity" mechanic that penalizes you for switching weapons. Pistols exist but are pointless. Light machine guns have an aiming penalty vs. rifles even at full skill level, which makes them less useful. There is no armor, but you can equip clothing that provides you with 0, 1, or 2 "quick slots" and a hat that may provide a small bonus vs. explosions, but it's mainly an aesthetic choice until you get a disguise. Units have classes with a skill tree. Many of the skills are minor upgrades (e.g. bonus to max carry weight) or useless (get a free attack when a squadmate dies). The devs found a few useful things and then padded it out as best they could. Missions are usually assaults (kill everything), sabotage/recovery (set explosvies, steal documents), or defenses. For the latter, stealth is disabled, but you get some sort of heavy weapon (HMG, mortar). I had one weird difficulty spike mid-game: a defense mission with an "elite" enemy sniper and a mediocre single-use airstrike. This enemy and his squad of high-end baddies knocked 4 of my 6 units out of action, one KIA. This in a game on "normal" difficulty where I rarely had more than a couple of units with any wounds. The home base lets you build a few structures, limited by resource availability. There are some obvious choices (hospital, kitchen that reduces food consumption) and some buildings that I didn't get much use out of while playing on "normal" (the canteen allows food rationing, the radio tower does something you couldn't do without it but I'm not sure what). Many of the buildings and upgrades use the same "tools" resource that you need to repair weapons, which seemed like an odd choice. You'll spend a lot of time in the home base, sending units out to forage for food, and waiting. Lots and lots of waiting. And then more waiting. Did I mention the waiting? Sometimes the game inflicts you with cutscenes and pieces of a story that are poorly written, poorly presented, don't always make sense, and mostly leave you grateful that the developers understood what the ESC key is for. Go ahead and skip those. There are minor bugs and inconsistencies throughout, but nothing game-breaking. I had one turn that locked up while the AI was moving, but the UI was still active so I could just load the previous autosave and try again. I had fun playing it, despite the flaws, but if you prefer games with more polish I would suggest Mutant Year Zero or Cyber Knights: Flashpoint instead.