It was more or less same for me. However, when the game comes out, you will have to finish the whole game, possibly 4 times for each ending, as this will most likely be only way to see the whole story. Or let some poor lets-player earn his bread and just watch a video. I showed my dissatisfaction this way because 70 % of dissatisfaction posts start like:“Hello guys, I love you blindly, this game is the best game ever, and I pray to the icon of JG every day, but this little thing could maybe fixed, no biggie if you don’t, it will probably be better the way you envision…” And that annoys me the most. You are veteran of this forum like me, you know how many ideas I tossed out. Several things I thought would go wrong, got wrong. Features are being cut left and right, game is padded with endless missions to artificially make it longer.
Actually, you know what, I’ll just compare this game with UFO: Afterlight. That game has:
- Multiple factions (Races) with diplomacy, with alliances determined by more than defending land (I don’t want to spoil too much). They could also trade resources and gear, and give you their tech, which you could also steal, but that required several live captures to be fully exploited. You could even get some of the aliens to work for you and reestablish communication with Earth. All the factions, regardless of race, had their own tech.
- Exploring and Terraforming the Mars. At first you only get a few plants, but later stages, even the seas will appear.
- You have very limited manpower, as most of the humans are in cryosleep, so you can’t just recruit more guys. But each of the soldiers was voiced and had his own lines, along with the scientist and technicians who held some special rank, like armorer, ambassador or librarian
- Class system separates people into Scientist, Technicians and Soldiers. There were people who had 2, especially Soldier hybrids were interesting, as they were only ones that could deploy in mission and do specialist work, from analyzing ruins and repairing your Aquaduct, to medical and repair assistance.
- Surroundigs were also hostile, since you were on, you know, Mars, and you needed space-suits until the end of the game.
- Each bullet was calculated separately, and you could pick which body part to target, albeit, only with a well trained sniper.
- You could skip almost all of the missions, except story important one and base defense. You know since you only had half a dozen soldiers, and those need some R&R, just like the player.
- Fully implemented drones, that were made, healed, progressed differently than humans, but gained experience. Not as versatile, but you can’t really argue with 4 Gatling guns or rocket launchers.
- Also had mixing and matching all the technology from the different factions. And tonnes of different weapons, from shuriken, to homing plasma balls and from chainsaw crossbows to acid grenades.
- Bunch of different perks for the soldiers and Technicians and Scientists, too. From dual wielding, heavy weapons training and stealth, to driving and alien anatomy>
- That’s right, stealth and detection. But not only eye sight and sound. Smell, psy activity, electromagnetic field, movement detecting doppler scaner, etc.
- You could protect yourself from smell detection with a suit mod. Yes, there are suit mods. Also gun mods. From laser cooler that allowed it to fire in bursts, to silencer and accelerators on ballistic weapons.
This is just from the top of my head, I played this game last time 5 years ago. The game itself is 12 years old. So, it precedes both the FiraXcom and Xenonauts. It was made by indie studio, without the epic or crowdfunding.
Edit: They also made their own engine, and did not have Unity.