My personal rather very elaborate review of Xenonanuts( yes, quite long:))

(Some of my favourite games from old to new, to show what kind of games i like : Master Of Orion, Privateer, UFO:Enemy Unkown, Xcom:Apocalypse,Privateer 2: The Darkening,Galactic Civilization 2, Sword of the Stars1, Sword of the Stars2, StarDrive, Eve Online,Empire total war, Shogun 2 Total War , XCom : Enemy Unkown, Sang Froid, ,Stardrive)

I am atm after ~100 hours on veteran difficulty in 2 games: with 1 abandoned game in middle stage, and my current near finish (marauders, praetor captured, situation stable)

So here is my personal review/opinion in points :

1-A funny thing, altough i appreciate in theory the unconventional setting of Xenonauts in Cold War era, me personally i was a bit put off by it. All the washed out colours, never smiling soldiers, grey cities, it all evoked a kind of sad emotions in me. I really appreciated the joke about the never smilign soldiers in one of the research reports:). So i liked the realism overall but the "sadness" not so much.

2-First impression : alot of similarities with UFO Enemy Unkown.

3- Upon first waiting for action, the ufo events start popping on the map. I was realliy impressed, instantly it drawed me into the game 2 times more, great stuff.

4- I was a bit scared that the ground combat will be same old from Ufo Enemy Unkown but upon playing abit i breathed easier, the changes made it much better:

The limited range of guns : small , basic thing but in the orginal game i used to sit with soldiers far far away safely with 1-2 tank scouting, and the soldiers sniped everythign , even from opposite side of maps. It made for a bit cheesy experience.The surpression mechanic : great. I like this much better then surpression in Firaxis Xcom. It makes it much more natural. Altough initially i kept on supressing my whole squad with lmg:).Various weapons types and their differences: great.

5-Cover system: initally i had to get used to it after Firaxis Xcom , but the fact that you dont have to stand next to cover to get cover from enemy fire makes much more sense. One thing imho Firaxis made better was the fact that soldiers on edge of full cover had full los, it was assumed they could peak from the edge. It seemed much more natural to me, i still miss it in Xenonauts. One big negative for ground combat in Xenoanuts , often mentioned, the unability to rotate the map. The mechanic of the transparent objects when you near them saves it , but its still quite inconvenient at times.

6-One thign that drove me mad in UI departement is the fact you cant assign soldiers to dropship on the same screen that you equip them, it really annoys me everytime i play.

7-Airstrike mechanic: great idea, reduces the grind factor.

8-Air combat : funny thing, one thing that draw me to buy it was seeing videos of air combat, and during my ~100 hours of gameplay i still ahvent really learned it. I nearly alwys auto it, fought manually maybe 3 times. I still thing its a much improved part of the game, that i might look into eventually.

9- Geoascape strategic game: very good overall. I like the fact that there is so many ufos, the above mentioned ufo events, the casualty numbers in each country.The base placing/radar ranges/ fight for funding was a challenge for me and forced me to think. Also i like the Condor/Foxtrot long time situation , where there is no one clear "better" interceptor: condor with laser gun has very good firepower and is cheap , while foxtrot faster but has very limited ammo.

Its a bit unforgiving in the fact that if you get to much behind in air superiority you might have to restart, liek i did after my first game. I got my corsairs to late, and couldnt build new corsairs without money which i couldnt get without shooting ufos for which i needed new corsairs:). On other hand i had quite a satisfaction for playing it right the second time.I guess its part of the charm of these kind of games, learning mechanics and restarting.

10- The inital ground combats werent bad but werent that interesting, the aliens seemed static.It changed for a much better experience with Terror site and bigger ufos. Maybe the AI needs more aliens for some more coordinated attacks.

11 -Aliens attack my base : great experience, great idea that they are trashing the place, so you got to hurry to defend. Overall it was quite a fun unique experience , as it was the only place of the game where i had 20-30 aliens charging from one direction , focused, not spread out.

12- The ufopeadia/research: great stuff.I really liek the writing and the narrative style by the egocentric head scientist. It saves it from being dry, adds personality. Also in some way the whole story/research impressed me as "reasonable" (as much as it sound funny in a game about alien invasion) which added immensely to the feeling.Somehow i had much more fun from reading the entries and the pics then much higher budget animated / voiced of Firaxis.

13- The mind control : its one mechanic that for me is really imbalanced.The early psionic attacks are quite ok in my book, they give you time to react and arent overpowered: my soldiers one turn got moarale hit, and usually the next panicked/berserked.The late mind control attacks tough are just a "i kill you" dice roll. On my second playtrough i had handpciked soldiers with high bravery , didnt seem to matter much, 1-2 times during a mission usually they got mced.

What i think is fundamentally wrong abotu such a mechanic , that for me enjoayment in such a game comes from the fact of learning the mechanics , devising tactics and counters, building up of your forces. And upon all this comes a mechanic wich just laughs at all your strategizing and preperations and just roll dices on the life of your 30 missions developed soldiers.It just feels wrong and infuriating.Me personally , im dealign with it atm by:

a- Not assualting if possible any mind controlling caesian big ufos.

b- If i must,by dropping weapons by all soldiers at the end of turn, and picking up on the begining of next. Silly and micromanagment hell, but i refuse to loose my top soliders in a second due to unlcuky dice roll which i cant do nothign about.

And imho, from this and steam forums, many feel just like me. I wanted to finish for once the game as it was designed, but i will prolly try to edit mc off if i play again.

14-The weapons damage spread seems excessive to me: 50%-150% is a huge spread, making it more random then I like.

15- Not enough maps. That was a bit of a dissopintement for me. After the limited Firaxis map numbers , i was sure Xenonauts got enough with its partly generation. Somehow they begin to repeat very fast.

16- Grapaphics/art: Overall nice enough for me. Sure it isnt an AAA game, but overall they are aesthicly pleasing, specially the ufopedia entries

17- Music , quite nice, suitably eerie in tactical combat. One thign i missed from Firaxis game and that i woudl add here is prolly "action" music when you encounter aliens, it was imho a great little touch by Firaxis , you can instantly feel your blood flowing faster:). Another thing, maybe some soldier talking or at least texts in a small window , to add drama and action : " I got him !!!"," Im hit", "Incomign fire" etc.

18- Civilians on normal ufo crash missions, local defence forces. As i write it , it seems such a small thing, but in game it really adds a lot to the mood of the missions, makes it more real and alive.

Overall imho its a great evolved UFO game, I had lots of fun with it, even with my reluctance to the cold war setting:).I would give it 7-8/10.(Well you probably guessed it after i wrote i played ~100 hours ).Thanks for the game.

14-The weapons damage spread seems excessive to me: 50%-150% is a huge spread, making it more random then I like.

You must really hate the OG's damage spread then. It went from 0% to 200%

Yup, you can hit a sectoid with a heavy plasma and do nothing to him. (I hated it when that happened)

You must really hate the OG's damage spread then. It went from 0% to 200%

Yup, you can hit a sectoid with a heavy plasma and do nothing to him. (I hated it when that happened)

I did. On other end , i remember not rarely ultra veterans in flyign suits were one shotted by aleins in late game.

6-One thign that drove me mad in UI departement is the fact you cant assign soldiers to dropship on the same screen that you equip them, it really annoys me everytime i play.

Unless I'm misunderstanding the problem, you can totally do this. In the equip screen, there's a little tab on the left which indicates what dropship they're assigned to (if any). If you click on it, you can assign/unassign them.

Unless I'm misunderstanding the problem, you can totally do this. In the equip screen, there's a little tab on the left which indicates what dropship they're assigned to (if any). If you click on it, you can assign/unassign them.

Will check when i get back from work , you might have gained a deeply grateful soul:)