Ok so I spent about 30 minutes on this. A bit too early to tell if it'll be good. Feels like a middle ground between X-COM and nuXCOM.
Good:
+ I like the free aim system a lot. Really makes a huge difference to finding the monster's weak spot. I suppose this is the best way for "optimization" of shots when using 3D models with different body parts instead of sprites with regularly-sized hitboxes. I can imagine it being used most of the time in-game, especially with so many environmental objects.
+ Reaction fire, baby. Feels good but honestly I don't know how it's calculated. Seems like everyone is reaction firing someone else even when APs are spent.
+ Bleeding, inventory management, etc, these are all in. One of my guys ran out of ammo, so I picked up an alien's machine gun, only to have it break after firing 2 rounds. The guy was stuck in a spasming animation after that
+ The boss fight is really cool. Comparatively, the other aliens don't seem to pose much of a threat. Crab men are a joke. You just have to side step them and pew pew their heads.
Bad:
- Lack of manual crouch is annoying AF, not only because it affects your hitbox, but also because you're going to friendly fire your pal if you're "auto crouched' next to cover but he isn't (and the enemy should theoretically be in your LOS, unobstructed). Manual crouch has to be in for this free aiming thing to work properly.
- UI is overly convoluted (I prefer X-COM's number-bars), but as
UnstableVoltage said, the team's going to fix it. On a positive note, it hasn't given me that "for consoles" feel (but then I only spent 30 minutes on it).
- Hard to tell at times where there's slight elevation, and where dropped items are.
- The cinematic camera is quite bad. I hope you can disable it in future.
- No fog of war
- 360 vision
Feels like X-COM because of:
+ simulationist mechanics + emergent gameplay (see 'running out of ammo' example)
+ feeling of impossible odds
+ TUs
Feels like nuXCOM because of:
- some hand-holding elements (e.g. cover system)
- cinematic camera
On a side note, I'd like to see bigger maps with less convoluted terrain. Would be interesting to see how that compares to X-COM since that had a lot of wide open spaces too.