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Took the time to start a new playthrough with 3.40 just to feel how the difficulty and balance feels after latest changes. Here's my random thoughts. I played with veteran difficulty with increased starting funds. Start of the game and plot might not make much sense for the players that have disabled or skipped the tutorial. Maybe add a text box or dialog scene at the beginning of the game that summarises events that are otherwise told in the tutorial. Most game tutorials don't have any story content, so people might really miss out here. I had a Cleaner VIP mission very early in the game (first or second cleaner mission, right after the first abduction) and it felt really difficult. I tried to push forward as fast as I could while looting one side building for extra intel and I had no business trying to capture the VIP. There's just too many cleaners and the time limit is too tight. It's way more difficult than any other cleaner missions while they should be about the same IMO. Reduce enemies and add one or two more turns. Also, might be a good idea to force the mission to spawn later and/or be one time persistent mission. It has no business being that tough so early in the game. New jungle (escort) maps are way too clutterd and dense. Makes them difficult and annoying to play. Soldier progression feels spot on now. Cleaner mission repetition annoys me still. Had a second (too tough) VIP mission before even one intel gather. I'd gladly have it the other way around: 2 intel gathers and then a VIP mission. Would make more sense difficulty curve, progression and story wise too. Resources were quite well balanced but even with the increased starting funds I had, I felt the money was a bit tight. Alenium/alloy seemed fine. I hate to build basic air weapons. Why is the logic different than with troop weapons? Air game felt too punishing after day 100. I only had three angels with laser lancers and needed to transfer them around the globe to try to keep panic down. It didn't end well. I would have needed at least 2 more airplanes at that time but had no means funding them and their weapons. Also, as I need to complete a destroyer crash site before I can research Ufo Hull plating and only then I can research Phantom and after that, I still need to build and arm them. This all takes like a month or more and by that time, destroyer waves have raised the panic to 90-100 at least in some regions. AI still leaves a lot to be desired: They waste a lot of TU's moving back and forth for no reason, don't stay put when in optimal positions, don't take multiple shots when close to a clear target, but move into shroud instead and take a quick snapshot from there etc. AI doesn't seem to be aware of where each side's frontlines are, so they often move into unoptimal locations behind my lines. My third abduction at day 87 was brutal. Wraiths and servitors in dock biome and I just had to save scum my way through it. Waaaay too difficult. Huge difficulty spike. After the Cleaner HQ is destroyed, the game starts to repeat itself and becomes somewhat boring. The plot to reveal Cleaner HQ has so cool progression that when it's finally resolved, I feel the game starts to become stale. It might be a good idea to introduce some similar large scale objective for the player to strive towards a month or so after the Cleaner HQ so advancing the plot wouldn't feel so linear and predictable where you just shoot bigger and bigger ufos down. Mid/late game needs cleaner style mission variety too. Make alien base similar mission objective as cleaner HQ with multi-tiered proggression maybe? Civilian turns take too long. Do they all need to move so much and every turn? Do we need to have a civilian turn at the end of the mission when all the enemies are dead and we could just call it a day? End of mission screen should also show changes in panic and the amount of broken/lost gear Shotgun civilians are still super aggressive and raid ufos completely fearlessly. Abduction missions start to annoy me - too much repetition. Maybe after completing a few, unlock an abductor alien base mission where you need to rescue already abducted people or something instead. Other that that, the game felt good. Somewhat buggy, but still great fun.

I’m an XCom / Xeno 1 vet. I’ve read through the roadmap and intentional changes from X1 to X2. I got to the “end of content” on my latest run (day 260). I plan on adding more as it comes to me in replies. I condensed my ranting from earlier into this main post. Here are my thoughts & observations: Things I love: Tutorial is pretty solid. It does a good job of getting through the basics and is value added all around. Air combat tutorial might be good when it’s all ready. The shift view to see remaining TU and hit probability is great. I use it a lot. I also like that the hit % seems to generally match what happens, including having 100% probability shots. The 98% prob hit misses don’t happen. The Cleaner story line is good. It’s nice to have something else to fight and is a source of regular ground combat, especially early. Built in mechanics to keep unfun alien hunts minimal (win a crash with 3 turns on the ship if there’s a straggler, show aliens in base raid when you control the command center). Data Raids, VIP Raid missions I love the 1x1 vehicles (MARS). Crashing through things has been its biggest ability for me. Scouting is cool, but making permanent lines of sight or removing doors is amazing. I haven’t really used the other vehicles. I also love that all of your expendable are available to use rather than having to have a grenade on a belt slot if you want to use it. Having to “reload” grenades on your belt is not fun, so I like how you’ve done this. Things I don’t love: There’s a weird tension between the incentives to finish the cleaners quickly (monthly fund increase), being able to successfully clear that base (soldier level / skills and equipment), and falling behind in the air campaign. I wasn’t sure how much I should “farm” the cleaners because it’s a decent revenue source, and early game there’s a lot of demands for cash to get your bases up and going. I progressed quickly on the timeline but was nowhere ready for the base by 100%. I was able to get a 2nd base early and make a new interceptor or two, but if I hadn’t I think I would have fallen way behind in the mid game. I like tension like this in the game (decisions on how to spend resources / split efforts), but where it is now feels like I will bork my run if I don’t get add’l bases up with Angels even if I don’t need it right now. As it currently is, it seems like you have to know you need to do something the game isn’t pushing you towards, and it pushes hard to ground combat. It seems like mid game the regional threat increases way more from aerial attacks (little white events) than anything ground based (landings, crashes, terror events) that are uncleared (except alien bases - that thing will drive it up steadily). You have to have a lot of air power to deal with that, but cleaners really focus you on the ground. Maybe those white events are skewing the threat more than they should? Cleaner Ambush is too easy. I regularly finished those maps on my first combat turn. A well placed heavy kills 2, shotguns and snipers are about guaranteed 1 each, riflemen get the trickier ones remaining. It was a free $200k but really fiddly. Its a great way for early XP and cash, so if that’s why it’s like that, then I love it! Mission Impressions: Data Raids: Very cool missions. It’s a real balance between how many you send deep and how many pull security / are covering for extract. I don’t know if you get more cleaner progress for more data or not, or if its just a money thing. VIP raids: Same as data only I don’t remember if there’s a bond for extracting him alive vs dead. The lore is about kill or capture, but seems like capture is harder and should be more rewarding. Regardless, it’s fun with lots of choices. VIP extract: these felt like I was on the receiving end of an ambush and were pretty difficult to get through without heavy (not worth it) losses. I could see these with fewer prepositioned enemies but have cleaners reinforce behind you on T2 or 3, so it feels like a chase rather than an ambush. Comments on User Interface / Buttonology: Multiple load out saves, but not unlimited. I found myself spending a lot of time in the armory with A team and B team loadouts. Tie load out to what armor is worn. B team riflemen in lvl 1 armor have different presets (accelerated weapons) vs lvl 2 armor (lasers). I spent a lot of time making sure everyone had the right basics and I think that’s the intent of those load out saves. On that theme, sometimes the ammo automatically changes when equipping a weapon vs not. Going from accelerated to laser or vice versa should update the ammo in your bag as you equip the gun. Related - QoL drag and drop or drop over swap. If I have a 1x1 mag and 1x1 grenade I my backpack, I should be able to place the ammo onto the grenade slot and it put the grenade on my cursor instead of the “red” cell with the “oops” buzzer. Quick swap like sized items. In mission gear changes - can you make it so when I drag my medkit onto my secondary it put what was in the secondary onto my cursor? It’s kind of clunky to drop my pistol, put medkit in slot, then pick up my pistol. Comments / Questions (I don't need/want answers) on current content: Mission rewards vs damage: I don’t know if you get more alloys / crystals for damaging crashes less or destroying less of the alien base stuff inside. I don’t know if I like that idea or not. I’d be happier if I knew what things to avoid destroying or not if tied to rewards. Capturing the general vs killing him in the first mission: is there emphasis or reward for doing one vs another? I have done it both ways and I don’t think it changed anything. The dialogue is different for sure. In general I like games that have more information inside the game via help / xenopedia type things vs having to have a browser up on another screen. This game does a pretty good job of keeping information inside the UI. My main question I looked up (unsuccessfully) was what types of things escalate alien technology or attacks. I don’t know if there’s plans to have your ops officer kind of prod you a bit (“whew boss, seems like the bombers are picking it up, might want to focus on downing them”) rather than having it in the xenopedia entry (you should prioritize bombers). If clearing the cleaner base escalates aliens, maybe an intercepted message saying aliens are increasing aerial attacks / abductions / retaliation strikes or whatever would be nice to know. Kind of a “hey you just crossed a line” message. Unsolicited new content ideas: Base defense: Have a security kiosk in the lift area that when staffed reveals alien locations. It’s your base so you probably have cameras in it and would know where aliens are and have infiltrated. Have the kiosk require 200 TU to operate or something. It gives the broken / low equipment soldiers something to do other than guard the back doors while the able bodied defend. It also gives you more choices on how to do your defense. Kiosks make soldiers face the wall so they lose their FoV and don’t have TU to react. Medevac: increase the odds of “surviving” when incapacitated by carrying the injured back to the drop ship. 50% increase to survivability that drops 10% per turn they’re not on the ship , and penalties to surviving after that. It makes for more decisions on how to carry on in your mission and would create opportunity for aliens to maneuver onto you for mass. I did this on a data steal mission in hopes it’d help me save a downed soldier instead of him being MIA. Research: maybe make it so labs at other bases can research a different topic at a penalty to your overall efficiency? It would give some other incentive to make more labs at other locations and decide how you want to manage that. I was sending all corpses to one base with a small group of engineers to handle those engineer tasks while the main base pumped out gear, so it’d be along that line of thinking.

I had a very similar feelings when I played version 3.2.0 recently (got no time yet to try 3.3.0 and 3.4.0) - last time I played the whole 200 days was 2.0.9. Played at veteran. I agree with all of what Skitso wrote. A few remarks below: Cleaners - at the start it is very interesting to have a "human" opponent with some alien missions, but I would like to see the Cleaners interfering with the alien missions, like "cleaning" parties, say after turn 10, cleaner reinforcements would show up and try to destroy the human player to "protect the secret and clean the area" and the destrction of cleaners could be postponed to later in the game. The combined threat of cleaners and aliens at once would be intimidating. The air combat feels different - more demanding now with the homing drones and defensive turrets on some of the UFO´s. Angels are almost no use after day 90 or so, Phantoms are a must, but very expensive. Also to be able to comfortably win every air combat, at least 3 fighters were necessary, in later stages even 3 phantoms with fusion weaponry (2 with missiles and lances, third with torpedoes and missile) What I disliked about the air combat is the new interceptor model - Genesis. The model looks ridiculous (resembling a dragon drawn by a kid... sorry if I am being too honest here, but the model from X1 was really cool with the forward swept wings - now the game uses the same icon during combat, but the model (picture and model in hangar) just looks terrible and small. Pleeeeease, change it.... The previous model resembling su47 was much better. If you added some alien features to the same model it would look just fine... Same goes to the advanced transport Pegasus - a flying box - the model seems too small to the carrying capacity, i kind of feel they should be bigger to fill the space in the hangar a bit more to feel more robust.. It would be perhaps cool if the Pegasus had an upper level - soldiers in the upper level with the tanks on the bottom level. Soldiers with jetpacks could exit the ship from the upper level or there would be the big door on the lower level. Or perhaps a ramp that would descent downwards (similar to skyranger in UFO: EU) Just a thougt.. Economy is also tighter than before - most of the times I had to think what to build and what to skip as the money were very tight - building a solid airforce and good equipped ground force was challenging. 6 bases were a dream never coming true. 2 bases with troops with another one with planes was all I could manage to build until end of the scenario (last UFO appeared around day 380 or so) In general, the game feels solid, there was a lag in the jungle missions, some minor bugs here and there (may be my old PC having hard time only), but the overal feeling was good. The loading times improved a bit as well I believe. The repetition of the missions is a bit annoying. The maps need more levels (high buildings, undeground levels etc). There couls be more mission variety - search and rescue of downed planes (in case UFO downs a military plane or defense of a military base/installation would be nice for example) Well done devs, Looking forward to the next build! P.S. pleeeeease again, better genesis model...