Latest iteration of Gollop's Rebelstar Raiders (man has another game that he keeps making again and again,but that's not important here.)
Galaxy says that I've played 9 hours, but good portion of that has been me staring at limited menu and soldier visuals customisation options.
Tactical gameplay is reasonably good; there's bullet trajectory simulation, environments get wrecked (, but debris and bloodstains seems to fade away in a way that I don't remember in early backer test versions), reasonably good variety of enemies (with this I don't mean just Pandorans) and AI is ok at using cover. Speaking about AI allied troops know how to use healing items, but I haven't seen enemies using any.
Also that system of overwatch with adjustable firing ones is nice and feels natural to use.
Gamey willpower system in place of morale might be biggest weakness of combat. That said I haven't yet encountered telepathy using enemies.
Someone said that shied using enemies are easy to deal with, but I had a encounter with enemy faction that had shields, some serious firepower and enough armour to shrug off assault rifle fire.
Easily the most fun encounter that I've had in game so far and if using local civilians for spotting and distraction purposes is wrong, then I don't want to be right.
Geospace portion of the game seems simplistic when compared to original UFO (or god forbid things that modders do in OpenXCOM) or Xenonauts and I don't see how some interception mechanic could fit into it without major overhaul.
At least there's lots of stuff going on with factions or Pandorans attacking havens, plot related locations/quests & missions that pop-up when investigating locations.
Pace might actually be too quick in there with new enemy types and events popping up all the time. The way that game level scales might be the issue, I'm playing 2nd highest difficulty with 0 casualties so far.
I don't actually mind that need to buy plane refueling stations is gone; player still have to keep track of logistics with the need to bring soldiers back to base to rest or going for a shopping trip into some haven or being close enough to react to raid against faction you're trying to get friendly with.
I don't have much to say about diplomacy, you defend places against raids, do one of those "choose who piss off"-events that pop-up, trade or recruit; seems functional enough. I haven't done any raiding against factions yet.
TLDR:
It's ok.