When this game first came out I several years ago, I was hesitant to buy it because of all the differences from UFO Defense (no action points, no backpack, medkits are single use, etc). But when it came up for sale on GOG I finally broke down and bought it.

After sloshing through the little-too-long tutorial, I have to say I am enjoying the game quite a bit. I like the troop classes (although I wish they weren't a mystery at first), and the action can get pretty intense for a turn-based game. Maps aren't too big (yet anyway) and the missions go much quicker than the old x-com game, which was probably by design.

Of course, just like UFO defense, my first loss of a soldier is to a Chryssalid. Some things never change :)

I like it too.

The only part I'm really struggling with is the free move once you spot aliens.
It break the turn flow and is completely unbalanced: I.e. you can litterally stumble in a large group of aliens that just wipe your squad out in a turn (as the whole squad give them their backs...)

Yeah. Save early, save often. Unless you play Ironman, but then you should know what you signed up for.

I just had that lovely little mission in Newfoundland that loves to surprise you with Chryssalid pods and Zombies at point blank. If you trigger one of those accidentally as your last action in a turn, you can watch half your squad get a face full of alien wing-wong. Not fun.

Its by its nature a more cinematic and less gritty game than the original; that doesn't make it a _worse_ game, since it also avoids some of the tedium you could get with the original. In many respects it still carries over some of the same general sensation of uncertainty, especially at the higher difficulty levels. You just have to take it for what it is and not compare it _too_ much to the original.

(But like someone says, the first time you get rushed by a chryssilid, it can feel _very_ familiar...)

It's definitely a different game story-wise, in that it is very linear. But I like that you don't have to take the next step of the story until you want to. The only thing I wish were different is that there were more UFOs to shoot down instead of the random missions. I have 8 interceptors and I've only used like 3 of them so far in the entire game. And I retrofitted new weapons on them that they haven't even used yet :)

Oh, yeah, and I gave up on that Newfoundland mission! I had my squad wiped like five times and only got close to finishing the mission once - I had my Support guy bee-line to the exit only to have a Chryssalid blocking the path right before the Skyranger. Talk about a rage-quit! I was done playing for the day after that one :)

Plus - what is it about the game cheating in Enemy Within...I once missed an enemy point-blank with a 98% chance to hit! I usually try not to re-load a save, but when the game cheats like that, how else can you make it more fair other than to have a do-over? I think I like Enemy Unknown a little better in that respect - Enemy Within has some nice additions but it skews the game against your team a little too much. I agree this can screw up any strategy a player was trying to set up. Plus, the game states to try to flank your enemies for better shots - but you can't because 9 times out of 10 when you try to flank them you just stumble upon a new group of enemies :) So it would be NICE to flank them, but in practice, it is not really practical.

The game cheats in both directions, actually. Also, unless you turn the "save scum" second wave option on, reloading will still have the same RNG numbers, i.e. unless you do something different, the results will be the same.

http://www.ufopaedia.org ("Chance to Hit" is the proper entry, but the forum software mangles the URL somewhat afwul when I try to link the page directly)

UFO takedowns are indeed a bit sparse. You might want to try Xenonauts (which was handed out as a freebie a couple of weeks ago) which is a lot closer to the original X-COM/UFO:Enemy Unknown, but at the same time feels a bit...well, "bland" probably sums it up best.
I've grown to like all the snazzy special abilities the soldiers get as they level up. The customization options, while not as deep (or as weird) as in XCOM 2 are a nice touch as well, and sorely missed in Xenonauts.

I hope they bring that one (XCOM 2) over here as well, preferrably NOT 6 years after release like the last one. While it's got it's own share of warts (too many timed missions, and the boss aliens from the DLC make the recon mission in Newfoundland look like a walk in the park), it had some fun additions to the basic formula.

Yes, as soon as I saw the "save scum" feature I definitely turned it on :)

That is the same as the original game, though. I remember all too often in UFO Defense, I would be point blank to an enemy and choose Burst Fire only to have all three shots hit the ground all around the enemy. It's almost like they coded this new X-Com to have that exact same issue (for nostalgia purposes, maybe?).

Yep, I already own and play Xenonaughts. That one is definitely more like the original X-Com except without the Psi-soldiers. I see Xeno as X-Com 2.0 while the Enemy Unknown series is more like X-Com Re-imagined ;)

The long war mod give more of a original X-com flow to the game. More ufo missions etc.

While there are some thumb-on-the-scale elements built into the game, a 98% chance of a hit is still a 2% chance to miss, you know. :)