From my Steam group, some impressions & thoughts on XCOM: CS, so far:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/TGAEC/discussions/0/2259062250945929349/ORIGINAL POST - 04/28/2020:
I'm around 12 hours into XCOM: Chimera Squad. And it's really good, so far.
The game's story and plot is as follows: you're trying to go about finding out, in any way you can, which faction killed the Mayor of City 31 and why. City 31 is a city, which is the first for a new alliance and integration of humans & aliens both into one city on Earth. There's a human-only faction; alien-only faction; and a faction that contains both humans and aliens - and you're to go about finding out which faction is involved with the murder of your Mayor, as someone is not happy with the Mayor pushing for this integration of humans & aliens on Earth.
Breach Mode is cool. So, since this game is basically the XCOM: Cop Squad, more or less, with humans, aliens, and even robots on your team - you will breach into rooms & buildings to get bonuses (or sometimes even debuffs), all depending on what items you have in your crew, who holds the items, where you're breaching (there are often different ways to go into a room). Often, each mission and encounter (and yes, you can have multiple encounters and breaches within one big mission), this is how you will start out each mission with combat. Basically, Breaching feels like a surprise attack when you go in, every time. And it feels like VATS from Fallout 3, with how cinematic the camera is, withe the way things look and act. It's just awesome.
Once you Breach, you go into combat. And combat here is a blast to watch and play. You have to play smart, strategic & whatnot. Of course, it's XCOM, so it's all turn-based. You can save at pretty much anytime that it's one of your squad's turn. Attacks look like VATS, when you execute them, as they go all cinematic on you and whatnot. Lethal combat here is just an awesome blast.
Besides killing enemies, you can even arrest enemies now. Instead of them dying, you hit them with a melee attack and knock them unconscious. Once the mission's over, you might get some kind of reward from arresting enemies. Rewards could be benefits, special items, information, and/or who knows what from arresting enemies. So, if possible and necessary, this is just another option and tool for the player to use, when in combat.
Your squad are all named & pre-planned characters. There's a little over 10 of these guys, that you can recruit. All of them are voice-acted and will do banter, especially back at your HQ. The banter is often funny, sarcastic, hilarious, and/or entertaining. You don't create your own crew here and name them from scratch here, but you can select with each mission who goes (usually up to 4 guys on a mission).
Also, they (your squad members) all have skills, stats, and whatnot you can upgrade - and they also have their own special skills too. There's no permadeath here. But if a member goes down in combat, they can get scars...which give them debuffs until you train the scars out of them when they are not in the (main) field, when you train them back at your main HQ. If you hire robots into your squad, when a member goes down, a robot can come in to help & then replace the downed member.
Your main HQ is where you decide how to outfit your crew; level-up and upgrade your crew; buy weapons/items/supplies/etc; train members to improve them (and also remove scars, if any of your crew members earned them while in battle); etc etc. You also decide what missions to take on here too, in the main room.
Also, at the main table with the view of the map of the entire city of City 31, you have to keep an eye on how run down the City is going here with problems, in each district & with the overall City 31. You can send your crew on missions that aren't the main ones for a day or few; do missions to keep each district's an overall City 31 level of heat in check (to make sure it doesn't get overrun); etc etc.
1080p60fps+ easy on my SC15 laptop (i7 7700HQ; 16 GB RAM; 6GB GTX 1060; W10 x64) at High settings. Often, it's in the 70-90fps range. Looks good, runs great. On my old desktop at 1080p at High (i7 950; 16 GB RAM; GTX 970) W10 x64) - framerates bounces here and there b/t 30-60fps. So, to keep it safe, kept it where it drops often w/ MSI Afterburner with a framerate lock of 40fps.
So far, so good. Real good. Need to play more. This game rules.
