I’m huge fun of XCOM-like games and I definitely like Phoenix Point in general. However, there are some points that are strange or annoying and should be revised.
Annoying part of music:
After about 40 hours of playing I noticed significant issue with music. The background music is definitely not a key point in the game and normally I do not pay attention to it much, but I experienced some moments in the various missions, where the music become so bad and annoying that I needed to turn the background music OFF to keep playing.
It happened several times, when I was in dangerous situation surrounded by Pandorans and I needed to resolve it. The music become to be very strange, like a very annoying sound of some electronic industrial machine producing nearly stale tones of artificial/machine like sounds, which is quite unpleasant to listen, especially longer time. It lasted all my turn and it was much more horrible than the bunch of attacking Pandorans. I remember I feel unbelievable relief, when I killed some enemies and the music changed. It didn’t feel like a bug, but like an intentional part of “thrilling music???”. At last I had to completely turn OFF the background music and keep only the environment sounds and Pandorans and Soldiers talking. Now it is fine again and I can keep playing, but without music. Good luck, that there is the option to silence only some parts of voices/music. I would definitely appreciate these “artificial machine like passages” are removed. The other parts of music was fine/normal, at least not disturbing, not focusing my attention more than a bunch of attacking enemies.
Covers:
Next strange thing is with covers. There are many objects around like big trees with strong trunk and other big thigs placed everywhere around, but they cannot be used as a cover. It is very strange and feel weird during the playing, especially in the environments, where there is so small number of covers, but so many things blocking your dashing and shooting. Also, I’m missing the “hunker down” action like in the XCOM.
Armor:
Armor is obviously strong feature in Phoenix point. It feels strangely overpowered, if the armor stays fully working/untouched after some body part is disabled. You need a special soldier ability explicitly to remove armor from disabled body part. It is definitely strange, especially if I consider that in PP you have quite weak weapons in general (at least, where I’m right now after 60 hr of campaign) and the Pandorans are getting stronger quickly with heavy armor.
General difficulty disbalance:
I read several comments and reviews about the general difficulty peaks and disbalance of the overall campaign and I have to agree. It is very obvious even in the early stages of the game. You have a Training center on one side to train rookies to rank 7 veterans even without going out of the base and in the other hand there are so powerful enemies that your low rank soldiers are completely helpless and useless against them. These are 2 extremes on both sides and I do not like either one of these extremes.