While i am recommending this, i do so with a warning.
First it needs to be made clear that this is NOT XCOM, it may be set in the same universe (although certain story decisions do make me feel like this is more of an AU of XCOM rather than something that would fit in the general mainline story), its nothing like the top down strategy game you might be used to or know about. Secondly, its very much a cover-based shooter, atlhough the controls for it are clunky as hell and it honestly becomes much more a slog to play the further through the game you get as you encounter bigger and stronger enemies, and while it tries to allow for some ambush set-ups or a more tactical offering like traditional XCOM, its overall much better to treat this as a shooter with tactical elements than an XCOM shooter.
The overall idea of the story is interesting, offering an alien invasion during the 60s that sets up the roots of XCOM as we come to know it as, an alien defense organisation, from what was originally an american federal organisation meant to counter a Soviet Invasion. However there are aspects of the story that i feel fell flat, especially near the end, with them feeling much more like they were trying to tie everything up as well as they could before they had to ship the game.
For gameplay mechanics, its a typical cover shooter, you find some cover, either half or full like you'd expect with regular XCOM, and you peek out and kill enemies as they pop up or run to different cover. There is a tactical menu which attempts to be its own XCOM tactical menu, although it activates bullet time, so you have to have some idea of what you're going to use when you bring it up, otherwise while you sit there thinking, the enemy is still moving and attacking in the background. You and 2 other team mates have abilities, your abilities are support, with no real damage dealing abilities, which is where you team mates come in. There are 4 classes, Commando, Engineer, Support and Recon. Commando generally hits hard or can disrupt enemies, Engineer can toss down mines and either a rocket or laser minigun turret, Support can help give stims to the team, plop down a shield, or disrupt enemy armor or shields, and recon is the VIP shooter that you use to take down or disrupt important enemies that can affect the battlefield. Now because you only have 2 slots, you have to choose what sorts of skillsets you want, which is difficult in the early game as you lack abilities and perks and you only get more and more abilities and perks as you level up to rank 10 or level your squadmates to rank 5.
The game tries to emulate the Geoscape to an extent, however it only covers America, and there aren't any consequences or real rewards for doing any missions outside of the Main Missions. you have the ability to send extra squad recruits to go on missions which can allow you to level them up without having to constantly swap between them for missions with you, however beyond occasionally rewarding some extra squadmates, any other rewards are effectively useless as you can find those rewards anyways in Main Missions or on Side Missions. These rewards are backpacks, which give you special advantages depending on what it is, such as giving increased damage against Armored enemies, or shielded enemies, giving you increased ability range and ammo, and also giving you some reduced damage from enemies, or giving you a greater reduction in damage from enemies as the only effect etc. You find alien weapons in the field, but you don't have any other actual tangible rewards that make doing these agent missions or the side missions worthwhile, you only do the side missions if you want to play the game a little bit more in between Main Missions and/or get some more lore on what the aliens are doing and how XCOM is dealing with everything.
Characters can be interesting at times, but other times they fall completely flat and essentially just fit into archetypes, particularly near the end of the game, they effectively just become puppets for the story (most of them at least), letting the story carry them into the roles they have to play to advance it to the end without any real pushback or commentary. the ending, of which there are 3 based on a singular choice with no previous choices or interactions mattering, effectively handwaves the consequences of the story you were just shown so it doesn't truly affect the start of XCOM: Enemy Unknown and why you still have to scavenge alien tech during the game to get better weapons.
So again, while i am recommending it, its basically toeing the line, and its with the recommendation to treat it as an independent game thats not attached to XCOM at all, which is honestly pretty easy as outside of only a couple enemies and some name drops, its easy to see this as just being some random Sci-fi cover-based shooter rather than a weird step-cousin to the XCOM franchise.
