Sorry for rabbiting on about this, I'm in that enthusiastic phase 
Just bumped diff up to Cruel with Challenge Mode on, did a few "Extremely Difficult" missions. Nicely meaty and satisfying. Positioning is king in higher difficulty, and if you position well and follow the golden rule of XCOM (don't reveal any more fog of war after your first char's move) Cruel+Challenge+Extremely Difficult is quite doable, though of course slower because of all the deep thinking you have to do. You get into a nice flow state with it. Also, that golden rule, while still mandatory, doesn't necessarily allow you to relax too much because there are sometimes patrols that can bump into you - more frequently in the harder missions.
Altogether the combat is more dynamic and sprawling than XCOM's, even modded XCOMS, because the shape of the battlefield can turn on a dime when the enemy can call in reinforcements - and frequently does. So you need good positions, because you might be fighting from them for a while. On the other hand, the incentive to move is to grab the loot boxes scattered around, and "dancing" around so that you manage to get the nearby loot while you're in combat is a good feeling (and that's doable since opened loot boxes provide half cover). Flanking is risky because of the risk of adding even more mobs to an already difficult fight (as per the golden rule), but if you flank in such a way as to not reveal any more fog of war, you're fine. Your melee heroes are quite tough, and can stand being exposed for a short time after attacking in a way that exposes them (because you just HAVE to get rid of that mob ), because they block and dodge a fair amount of attacks (you can get block/dodge to healthy 40% or so without too much sacrifice of other things). But you can't leave your melee units exposed for very long with difficulty maxed (not like you can at the lower difficulties - at lower difficulties they can mostly just dodge and block if they're exposed, but on hardest difficulty that can be very costly). Generally melee is riskier to use, but still tremendously effective when used. A nice balance. Ranged varies from the plinking of your occasional support cops to the humungous bolts from your "mage" type or the great cones of damage from your gunner.
The feel of the impact of what you and the mobs do is just about right too - lower level enemies chip away at you for an amount that feels right, and while not immediately dangerous, makes you want to avoid it; higher and higher level enemies can take bigger and bigger chunks out of you. Meanwhile your abilities feel impactful. Missing and being blocked happens enough to be stop things from being a cakewalk, but you never feel greatly frustrated by it. Block greatly minimizes damage but doesn't exclude it entirely, so Blocked attacks can even sometime make a small dent in you that can kill you if you just have a sliver of health left. It's all very satisfyingly pitched, and realized quite well with graphics and fx.
The Mastery system is a bit hard to get into at first because initially the UI is rather overwhelming and a tad opaque, but I think I'm in the saddle now and the more I play with the Mastery system, the more I love it. It's funny that Warframe is the only other game I know of that has something like this "card" type of system - is it something from JRPGs (which I've never played)? It's a total alternative to many of the more standard forms of progression. Loved it in Warframe, love it in this. So much flexibility and flavour, and most of it pretty much does what it says on the tin (and with most Masteries you can feel some difference).
Starting to get into crafting too now, but that looks to be a humungous grind. There are some fun crafting missions with mat rewards. Fun the first couple of times
Just bumped diff up to Cruel with Challenge Mode on, did a few "Extremely Difficult" missions. Nicely meaty and satisfying. Positioning is king in higher difficulty, and if you position well and follow the golden rule of XCOM (don't reveal any more fog of war after your first char's move) Cruel+Challenge+Extremely Difficult is quite doable, though of course slower because of all the deep thinking you have to do. You get into a nice flow state with it. Also, that golden rule, while still mandatory, doesn't necessarily allow you to relax too much because there are sometimes patrols that can bump into you - more frequently in the harder missions.
Altogether the combat is more dynamic and sprawling than XCOM's, even modded XCOMS, because the shape of the battlefield can turn on a dime when the enemy can call in reinforcements - and frequently does. So you need good positions, because you might be fighting from them for a while. On the other hand, the incentive to move is to grab the loot boxes scattered around, and "dancing" around so that you manage to get the nearby loot while you're in combat is a good feeling (and that's doable since opened loot boxes provide half cover). Flanking is risky because of the risk of adding even more mobs to an already difficult fight (as per the golden rule), but if you flank in such a way as to not reveal any more fog of war, you're fine. Your melee heroes are quite tough, and can stand being exposed for a short time after attacking in a way that exposes them (because you just HAVE to get rid of that mob
), because they block and dodge a fair amount of attacks (you can get block/dodge to healthy 40% or so without too much sacrifice of other things). But you can't leave your melee units exposed for very long with difficulty maxed (not like you can at the lower difficulties - at lower difficulties they can mostly just dodge and block if they're exposed, but on hardest difficulty that can be very costly). Generally melee is riskier to use, but still tremendously effective when used. A nice balance. Ranged varies from the plinking of your occasional support cops to the humungous bolts from your "mage" type or the great cones of damage from your gunner.The feel of the impact of what you and the mobs do is just about right too - lower level enemies chip away at you for an amount that feels right, and while not immediately dangerous, makes you want to avoid it; higher and higher level enemies can take bigger and bigger chunks out of you. Meanwhile your abilities feel impactful. Missing and being blocked happens enough to be stop things from being a cakewalk, but you never feel greatly frustrated by it. Block greatly minimizes damage but doesn't exclude it entirely, so Blocked attacks can even sometime make a small dent in you that can kill you if you just have a sliver of health left. It's all very satisfyingly pitched, and realized quite well with graphics and fx.
The Mastery system is a bit hard to get into at first because initially the UI is rather overwhelming and a tad opaque, but I think I'm in the saddle now and the more I play with the Mastery system, the more I love it. It's funny that Warframe is the only other game I know of that has something like this "card" type of system - is it something from JRPGs (which I've never played)? It's a total alternative to many of the more standard forms of progression. Loved it in Warframe, love it in this. So much flexibility and flavour, and most of it pretty much does what it says on the tin (and with most Masteries you can feel some difference).
Starting to get into crafting too now, but that looks to be a humungous grind. There are some fun crafting missions with mat rewards. Fun the first couple of times
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