XCOM®: Chimera Squad

While this is not XCOM 3 it is fun, scaled down to policing a city after XCOM 2 your agents have unique abilities that make for some fun combinations the encounters keep the combat very fast paced and make the game have some re-playability. it is impossible to get all trophies on one play through as you will get random characters and some missions are different depending on the order you conduct them. I can see why some people were slighty disappointed but this was a fun story with some interesting mechanics i just wish there was more.

TLDR: I got this game for nearly free and I still feel like I got ripped off. -Is this a great struggle about 'your men' that you get invested in and strive to keep alive? No. You're babysitting the cringe, unserious, endlessly quippy, insufferable, 'quirky' OCs of the inept developers and they cannot die. -Is this the highly anticipated, baited sequel that we've been waiting for since XCOM 2? No. Let's play cop in a single city instead. -Tell an engaging story with cinematics multiple years after such technology was proven possible? No. Cheap out with infantile, comic-style still images.

game has a bug that bricks your save on the final boss fight for the major enemies. has been happening since launch and the only fix is: dont play ironman. wow, easily makes this the worst xcom game which is sad because there's a good game buried here past the jank and bugs.

In less than 5 hours of gameplay I've seen a character glitch out and teleport across the map then suddenly the camera jerks away and when you scroll back they're back in the place they're supposed to be at least 50 times, without the slightest exaggeration. AT LEAST 50. It happens like every 3rd time you move a character. No way the devs haven't encountered this bug but based off the fact that it's still in the game after years I have to assume they just don't care. And who was the genius that decided that EVERY SINGLE MISSION would end with an evac now? What ever happened to clearing all the enemies and winning? Now every mission ends with endless reinforcements every single round until you walk your squad to the evac point and leave. And they didn't even think about the reinforcement spawn locations for a single second. One time I got a map where there was a wall with a window, a 10 foot gap then a door, then another 10 foot gap to a second window. Both windows were reinforcement spawns, and the door was the evac. Just completely nonsensical, both mechanically and realistically. Seriously, what's going on outside that wall? Just two lines of 50 enemies queued up on either side giving a polite nod to my squad as they walk out? I also hate that squad death was just straight up removed from the game. Losing all your HP just means you need a little pat on the back, and if you don't get it then it's literally game over. Mechanically and tonally dumb as hell.

Predatory EULA changes to gather all sorts of information and store, sell and do whatever they want with them. No choice but to accept or lose the game that you bought. I didn't accept that when I spent my money, I will not accept now. Important Info in ToS: • Mods are a bannable offense • Display of Cheats/Exploits is bannable • Forced arbitration so long as it is permitted in your region • You can be banned for the using a VPN while connecting to online servers • Cannot access game content on a Virtual PC • Best last they reserve the right to modify this Agreement, in whole or in part, at any time Collected Data Types: • Identifiers / Contact Information: Name, user name, gamertag, postal and email address, phone number, unique IDs, mobile device ID, platform ID, gaming service ID, advertising ID (IDFA, Android ID) and IP address • Protected Characteristics: Age and gender • Commercial Information: Purchase and usage history and preferences, including gameplay information • Billing Information: Payment information (credit / debit card information) and shipping address • Internet / Electronic Activity: Web / app browsing and gameplay information related to the Services; information about your online interaction(s) with the Services or our advertising; and details about the games and platforms you use and other information related to installed applications • Device and Usage Data: Device type, software and hardware details, language settings, browser type and version, operating system, and information about how users use and interact with the Services (e.g., content viewed, pages visited, clicks, scrolls) • Profile Inferences: Inferences made from your information and web activity to help create a personalized profile so we can identify goods and services that may be of interest • Audio / Visual Information: Account photos, images, and avatars, audio information via chat features and functionality, and gameplay recordings and video footage (such as when you participate in playtesting) • Sensitive Information: Precise location information (if you allow the Services to collect your location), account credentials (user name and password), and contents of communications via chat features and functionality. besides that, i find it awful to play...

Why Do Turn-Based Strategy Games Still Struggle With Replayability? I’ve been playing turn-based strategy games for most of my life. It all started with Laser Squad on the ZX Spectrum, then X-COM on early PCs, and later XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which still stands as my personal gold standard. But despite all the years and technical improvements, I keep running into the same issue: Most turn-based games just don’t have enough replayability or mission variety. Some games (Warhammer 40K: Mechanicus comes to mind) have a great setting, but character development feels flat. Others offer deep progression systems—but every mission ends up feeling the same. And some tell a great story, but only allow one way to play it. No real freedom. One recent letdown for me was XCOM: Chimera Squad. Amazing concept: post-invasion Earth, aliens and humans living together, political tensions, secret ops... It could’ve been brilliant. But it forced a set cast of characters on me. I couldn’t build my own team, define my own squad dynamics, or create my own strategies. That sense of ownership just wasn’t there. But Maybe That’s the Nature of the Genre? It’s a tough balance. Do we want a handcrafted story? Or freedom to shape our own? Games like Company of Heroes (real-time, not turn-based, but still relevant) show how powerful narrative campaigns can be. Each mission feels like a movie. But once you finish the campaign, there’s not much reason to go back. Strategy games often force a choice between story and freedom. You rarely get both. Here’s What I Think Could Be Better I don’t think it has to be either/or. What I’d love to see is a game that gives us a few predefined characters—with strong personalities and backstories—but lets us choose their skills, evolve their traits, and shape their relationships. Let us build part of the team ourselves too. Give us that mix of crafted and emergent storytelling. And here’s where it gets interesting: What if the game tracked our key decisions and generated a summary at the end? Not just a stats screen, but a short movie, a written story, or even an AI-narrated recap of what happened. Who lived. Who died. What decisions were made. That would make each playthrough truly feel like an adventure. With modern AI and deep language models, this kind of personalized storytelling isn’t science fiction anymore—it’s actually possible. It just needs the right team to build it.

Questo capitolo della saga XCOM non ha l'ambizione di arrivare al livello tecnico e di raggiungere lo spessore dei suoi predecessori ma, come accade di sovente nel mondo delle serie TV, Firaxis, volutamente, ha tirato fuori dal suo cilindro uno spin off. Si nota subito che è un prodotto low-budget: graficamente non eccelso ma comunque ben ottimizzato questo episodio vuole sondare se le novità proposte sul campo di battaglia sono gradite al pubblico. Personalmente ho gradito le novità proposte: la modalità "irruzione", più scenografica che tecnica, che aggiunge quel tocco di pepe che non guasta mai e la modalità "botta e risposta", ovvero non si deve necessariamente terminare il turno per assaggiare la risposta del nemico alla nostra mossa, che rende i combattimenti meno statici e lineari trasformandoli, senza dubbio, in battaglie più avvincenti e complesse da gestire. Questa trovata aggiunge il componente mancante affinchè si possa ottenere il seguente risultato: un gioco strategico a turni in modalità real time battle. La storia di XCOM Chimera Squad trova la sua collocazione temporale 5 anni dopo i fatti avvenuti in XCOM2, qui la caratteristica innovativa viene riscontrata nel fatto che i nostri team possono essere integrati con PG di ogni specie: Umani, Advent, Sectoidi e chi più ne ha più ne metta. Ho gradito anche questo mix che per molti è sembrato un pochino azzardato. Promuovo questo piccolo e gustoso antipasto prima di deliziare il mio palato con il terzo capitolo ufficiale dello strategico a turni per eccellenza.

This game SUCKS. It's bad enough that it's a terrible game on its own, but the fact that it killed XCOM 3 is the nail in the coffin. Don't waste your time on slop like this.