![]() We've seen our enemies do some dodgy things, running headfirst into trouble and leaving themselves wide open for a quick and easy counter. Most missions are fairly straightforward and end as soon as the objective has been satisfied, however, some questionable AI decisions can undermine the authenticity of combat. The maps have procedural elements and while that means more variety, they do sometimes lack that hand-crafted feeling. Then it's a case of taking your troops into battles that take place on grid-based maps full of cover to hide behind and buildings to explore. Each of your soldiers advances up a limited class-based skill tree, although the ability to learn a second class once they've levelled up a little means that you'll have a versatile fighting force before too long. You can even build out your tactical options and create new weapons/equipment by reverse engineering what you need. Your progress is measured not only by major missions but also by the state of your operation, with base improvements and research at the top of the agenda. That said, things aren't always explained brilliantly and there's an awful lot of lore to sift through in the in-game wiki if you want to make sense of everything. We did enjoy meeting new characters during our exploration of the world, and the introduction of new elements is handled well, with a gradual onboarding of the game's core mechanics. The three faction system is certainly interesting, although we didn't want to make enemies of our fellow man and generally avoiding confrontation with all of them felt like the wrong way to play. This is how you move around the world, enlist new soldiers from the communities you meet, and fight anyone or anything that stands in your way. Once you've explored a region, taken part in a couple of battles (which we'll come back to in a minute), and resolved a couple of minor story beats, you must then scan around the extremity of the area and reveal new objectives that you can search later. You start things off with a base and an aircraft and then fly to marked locations on the world map - or 'geoscape' - exploring as you go and talking with the locals as and when you meet them. The tactical side of things is where you'll spend the majority of your time due to the pace of the combat, however, we thought that the strategy layer was the more engaging of the two, and it was there that our interest would pique most often. You divide your time between tactical battles with the soldiers that you've enlisted, trained, and equipped, and then tinkering with your plans on a more strategical level. You interact with them in your capacity as the head of the Phoenix Project, a shadowy organisation that you're tasked with rebuilding in the face of the mutant threat. Instead, you're dealing with a trio of factions, one that likes its humans pure, another than embraces technology, and a third that's more comfortable with the encroaching mutant threat. The melting ice has also irrevocably changed the landscape, with large tracts of land swallowed whole by the expanding oceans, and your sense of place is disrupted further by the fact that humanity is no longer arranged into nation-states. Gone are alien invaders from outer space and in their place is a virus that emerges when the ice sheets melt - pesky global warming strikes again! This so-called Pandoravirus mutates people, turning them into hideous beasts with crab-like shells and other macabre powers, and we pick up the action some years later with the world on its knees and humanity in retreat. ![]() ![]() For starters, there's a rich and interesting Lovecraft-inspired story that separates it from its peers. Phoenix Point, while flawed in some respects, has a lot going for it. We're starting to see increasing numbers of Xcom-inspired tactics games, however, none of them come quite so well-credentialled as Phoenix Point, and having spent time with the game during its development, it's now time to consider the final product and decide whether it's got the chops to compete with its direct rival, the excellent Xcom 2. In fact, if you were to take a quick scan of the screenshots herein you'd be forgiven for thinking that we were writing about Xcom 3, given how many similarities there are between the series. Strategy fans will likely be well aware of Phoenix Point, a new tactics game by Snapshot Games that shares a lot in common with both the original XCOM and the Firaxis-made reboot.
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