The game opens with an atmospheric tutorial, unfortunately the same feel isn't kept once the game really starts but it still makes for a good opening. Four classes of soldiers are featured each with two abilities to choose from every time they get a promotion, giving you some options on what kind of character you want to create. Permanent death makes you really think about your actions so you don't lose your favorite characters, although if you want to make things a little easier them game does allow you to reload saves if you want to. A variety of upgrades are able to be researched giving you access to better weapons, armor, items, some with fun abilities to use on the field such as a cloak, jet pack, or a grapple hook. Grenades and rockets can be used to destroy walls and cover or to cause objects in the environment like cars to explode and damage nearby enemies. The game has large amount of poor design choices, You will run into frequent bugs relating to shooting through walls or grenades going through walls. Line of sight problems can prevent you from seeing things right next to you, and likely due to the way the game handles elevation it doesn't understand how ramps or stairs work since they don't just jump to the next preset levels often causing problems with line of sight when there is only slight elevation difference and without taking height into consideration. The game lacks useful information you would expect to have in a turn based game likely due to the console versions, things like how far your character can see, range indicators, if moving to a different location would allow you to shoot at a known threat. The game is short and you end up upgrading equipment very quickly to the point where you will only be using regular guns for a short time, or you might just end up skipping laser weapons, and moving straight to the final plasma weapons. You start to get some cool armor as the game goes on but might not have as long to play around with it as you would like. There is low map variety, horrible in UFO crash missions that have you frequently placed in the same forest area. Poor character customization options, but color choices improve with DLC. You have no choice when it comes to what class soldiers get once they get their first promotion, it can be very annoying to see a character with a high aim stat become a class where you would want them using a shotgun or heavy weapon or when you keep getting the same class when you want another one. Terrible country panic system where you might need to rely more on luck to keep countries safe because aliens somehow hit three different places at the same exact time all the time, and you are prevented from sending out multiple teams. Terror missions are badly done, both because of the poor civilian and Alien AI when civilians are involved and because of the random placement of civilians can make things extremely easy or nearly impossible, it also makes very little sense that you are capable of completely negating panic from spreading if you do well enough as an entire town was likely destroyed and civilians would still have been killed. Soldiers are limited to taking only one item with them forcing you to make strange trade offs where you are deciding between taking things like a scope, armor, grenades, or a medkit. The game also has an uninteresting story with characters that end up being kind of annoying. A lot of improvements were made and some of the problems were fixed in the Enemy Within expansion. Enemy Within and the DLC add new missions to complete, new mission types, new cosmetics, new character upgrade options, and new mech classes to make use of, Enemy Within also improve the way that you equip your soldiers. If you want to play the original XCOM Enemy Within is the best way to experience it.

This game is one of my all time favourite games. I'm not normally one for TBT games but a friend recommended me this during the steam sale so I saw no harm in giving it a try, and my god I am thankful for that recommendation! Levelling up your soldiers as they fight off the aliens is very rewarding to watch, and as you gain more and more troops to fight for you it may become more difficult to choose who to have in your squad! Great storyline and gameplay, some really good dialogue between the characters. I've played this for so many hours and I'm still not tired of it yet. I have tried the previous X-Com games and I'd have to say this is the best of the lot, not only because it's newer, but they've seen what needed to be included and improved and have done so perfectly. Online you can have aliens and soldiers in your squad which can be quite a good combo, and is very good tactically to have. Again, I can't recommend this enough! If you're unsure then check out some videos for it on YouTube or wait until the next Steam sale and pick it up then, always goes down to a really cheap price if you don't fancy paying full price!