I was a little freaked out, at first, by all of the changes to the typical X-COM formula made in this game (e.g. individual unit turn order, no permadeath, no randomized troops, etc.), and put the game aside for a few years before coming back to it. I think if you've just finished playing a game like X-COM 2 or Enemy Unknown/Within, etc., you may also have that experience and be initially repulsed from Chimera Squad. That said, the time away allowed me to come back to it with fresh eyes. And I think many of the changes are, overall, not bad. The game does play a little differently from the previous games, but I do think that the changes do sometimes create interesting gameplay scenarios and problems that can be solved in similarly interesting ways.
However, I also have quite a few critiques.
To start, the mission difficulty ratings are very poorly handled and virtually meaningless after a certain (early point) in the game. I started getting supposedly "Very Difficult" missions within the first couple of hours, and then after a couple more hours they were all listed that way, regardless of actual difficulty. That actually adds some challenge in that you don't know what missions will actually be difficult versus which ones are just listed that way for ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles. Truthfully, the majority of the game is very easy; I never even had a team downed nor required the use of androids once in my playthrough. However, there are these faction missions at the end of each investigation you do that are genuinely tricky in places, and for which objectives need to be prioritized very carefully. There's usually a trick that once figured out fixes everything (e.g. be aggressive vs defensive), but sometimes it took a bit to figure out. There were maybe one or two knock-down drag out fights in this game, both of which I genuinely enjoyed, and would have liked to see more of.
Story is really weak. I don't like that this is basically like a cop dispatcher; feels gross. I liked previous X-COM stories because it felt like you were this small, scrappy international team that simply refused to die, fighting against a nigh unstoppable force. That upped the stakes and made every success and every failure mean more. Narrative in general felt like it left a lot on the table, which was unfortunate. Luckily, in a strategy game, it doesn't matter THAT much because the focus is on the encounter-by-encounter action.
In previous games, I also really loved watching these little randomized recruits turn into absolute murder machines; slowly watching them emerge from obscurity and become MVPs. I would develop my own little backstories for them as we went along, and I always, ALWAYS kept on their native languages, so I'd learn a fun bit of Portuguese or Japanese or whatever just by having them on the squad. I just don't feel like we gained enough story or personality from these new named characters to justify losing that. Character writing felt kind of 'Dragon Age: Veilguard', if you've played that game. Bland, safe, jokey, and ultimately pretty boring. Of the post-Marvel era, for sure. I do also think the voiced characters might have stood out more if maybe they had their own unique optional/priority missions or something that tied into their backstory or something (maybe that could have been how you get their badass top-tier weapon).
The loss of the armor shredding grenade launcher class was felt most deeply. Chimera Squad has shotgunners and thrown grenades that could do the same thing, but didn't feel as satisfying. I also missed the sniper class a lot at the beginning, but the maps aren't really large enough to justify it, and Blueblood is badass enough by the end of his leveling that giving him a sniper rifle would basically make him a god. So, I get that it wasn't included for balance reasons.
But overall, I had a fun time playing it. I enjoyed strategizing around and mastering the new mechanics. Focused on some of the changes things I didn't like here because if you've played the previous games it might be good to know those ahead of time so you can be ready for them. Not bad, but also not the best of the recent releases by a long shot.
