I was expecting a gem from the OG creator of the Xcom universe so I purchased the phoenix point year one edition. That was a mistake. My first frustration was not being able to deploy my soldiers at the start of a mission and having them just randomly plopped down. This seemingly innocent "feature" leads to some frustrating situations such as , putting your vehicle in a state where it cannot move or exit the room it's in, putting your troops all in a cluster next to a melee centric mind-controlling alien, putting your troops within melee range of a unit who can AOE chain stun. Combat mechanics that seem like the devs are incapable of basic addition. Viral damage that can panic loop your units for 2-3 times longer than an average mission lasts which is especially annoying when you have to "rescue someone" who is stuck in a panic loop. Assault rifles that "shred armor" except if you land every single shot it will take you 5 turns to strip their armor BEFORE you start doing any real damage with the AR. Meanwhile, other weapons have enough damage per shot to effectively ignore the 30 armor. Class abilities that seem magic instead of technological, a few examples are a unit that can haste by screaming, a unit that can AOE stun by stomping, a unit that can point at a target and have it take more damage. You can deploy up to 8 units on a map but only if you use the slowest aircraft, Your factions aircraft only gets 6 Vehicles that you can take on missions that have no upgrades, no tech associated with them, take up 3 unit slots, can only fire 4-5 times, cannot ram or run over units, die in 2 turns in midgame missions. The game is one of those "race vs the timer" types and yet the DLC's frontload more content onto the player obscuring the main story leaving you as a player wondering what is going on as you try to figure out which of the 3 story lines you are supposed to persue. An over-reliance on RNG in place of actual mechanics, RNG troop placement at the start of missions, RNG class perks, RNG soldiers, RNG mission locations <leading to insane difficulty spikes depending on the placement of mission objective missions> In closing, I regret spending $60 on this game and will probably never buy anything by this developer again if this is the level of their competence.

I'm a huge fan of turn-based strategy. I have been played for years, Civilization, Total War, Advanced Wars, XCom and some others I forgot. When I saw Phoenix Point at first, I just insta-bought it. Though, I would explain the grade I gave to this game before getting to the pros and the cons. You can skip and go there, but you might understand better what I'm talking about in this part: Short long story; I ran my first game on NORMAL level, and after a few hours of plays, I was crushed in any missions because I was behind the enemy with technologies. That sounded fair to me as I may not understood well the concept. Then I restarted another game, doing things differently and faster. Got crushed again. Restarted another one, same thing happened. So I was kind of disappointed to see that in term of strategy in the map itself I was doing pretty good, but overall, I was loosing passively without knowing it. I was kindish ok with that. I like games that resist me. We really feel that the difficulty is present, that the pandorians are not there to joke. But it is also one of the greatest weaknesses of the game, as the pandorians are just developping too much sort of their kind and you don't have time to look for any counter. So yeah, I loved the designed, the challenge, the ways you can improve your soldiers, kill your enemies (disabling members or destroying weapons) but whatever I was doing, I was falling behind and was kicked in mid game because I was "too slow". Even if Phoenix Point is a death race, saving havens don't really help that much (except for resources), in my opinion. To be more realistic, Phoenix Point added a kind of ballistic, which means you can select where you want to shoot at. I really like this mechanism, as you can adapt your strategy depending on which kind of enemy you are dealing with. So you can destroy their weapons, disabling their arms so they cannot do anything else, disabling legs to limit their mobility, etc... It gives so much more strategic potential! But this leads to two things I literally HATE in this game: Random shots and Random spots. - Random shots: To make it simple, you can miss your target that is 2 cells away from one of your units. Depending of your weapon, your units have a larger/smaller area where the shots can hit. Of course, you can reduce this area (or spread it) with better equipment and perks, but still... Some of my units just couldn't hit a worm 2-3 cells away from them (not the ones we all know, those in the game are way bigger). I spent the 4 action points of my soldier to miss a single worm that is 2 cells away from him. So yeah, it's frustrating to have stupid soldiers that can't hit a simple target right next to them. And trust me, this frustration is getting worse and worse over the game. - Random spots: Before moving your units, your cursor shows you if you can hit a target or not, and if you can hit it this turn or later on. It's cool yes, but it's not when you are moving to this position and you notice that you can just shoot a pixel of it. And sometimes, it's the opposite: you move to a position and you see that you can target an enemy that the cursor didn't show. Problem is, the enemy can hit you too and this wasn't part of the plan. Also, when your unit is covered by the environment and depending of your weapon, your soldiers will not move to the next cell to shoot the enemy (as they supposed to do). For example, I had a soldier with a heavy weapon handled with two hands, covered by a wall in a corner. With the heavy weapon, I was able to shoot an enemy that was literally in front of my soldier when he moves to the next cells to shoot. But guess what, the enemy was too small and not worth for a shot of my heavy weapon, so I switched to the gun (and because it's more accurate). Then, my soldier didn't want to take a step out to the shoot the enemy he could hit with the two handed weapon. Again, we have stupid soldiers (or inaccurate game code?) that can't repeat the same action with a different weapon. And there are even more to talk about those kind of problems, but this is what I'm mainly struggling with at the moment. Also, the IA (for survivors) is kind of boosted. I saw soldiers I had to save, just rushing into the enemy ranks and die the second turn. Not to mention the random initial spawn of pandorians just right next to them. I mean, I'm ok if they are in troubles and have been taken in an ambush, but the game just doesn't let you save at least ONE soldier of the three (or more). Even if I'm rushing to them, meanwhile taking some damage from the enemy, they just die or have a suicidal behavior. They are not hiding or trying to stay grouped. No, they just stay exposed to any shots and go for war even if they don't have a chance to stand one more turn. Not to mention the initial spawn around you. I understood throughout my several runs (never won one so far), that I HAVE to be EXTREMELY careful, that just one little mistake is unforgivable (such as a missing shot, oh wait it's completely random!). Even so, sometimes, I lost 3 out of 6 buddies, controlled/killed by sirens I'm trying to take down while some other pandorians are throwing me a rain of grenades out of nowehere. So yeah, a lot of salt for a game with so much potential. And even after one year of patches after patches, the bugs (random spots e.g.) still present, you have to pray on the bible of the *** of the randomness, hoping that your poor blind soldier can, at least, hit his target somewhere. I really want to say that this game is great, as the ideas implemented in it are interesting, and you can do build up your army in so many ways... I really want to say that the design can catch up all the problems I have encountered and also this mindrage aiming randomness, but no, I just can't. If you find it at 10$, I would say yes, buy it. But not at its current price. Sorry Phoenix Point, having cool ideas doesn't mean you are a good game. You are bugish as hell, and I just can't recommend you. Or at least, I'm not part of the people liking you. Pros: - The design of characters and landscapes. - The ideas that have been brought to improve your characters/army. - The way to improve your armory (being allied with factions, stealing them or even capturing creatures). - Destroyable environment that can modify your strategy. - The evolution of pandorian creatures. Cons: - A LOT of bugs, even after one year of fixes. - Random shots are too extreme imo. - Inconsistency in faction relation during some missions. - Random initial position spawn unfair (in some missions). - Lack of key information for the player concerning the pandorians capacities (like how many tiles is the range of mental control, does the enemy has to see the enemy?, etc.)