I played about 5 missions or so last night, and already had one character hitting level 5. This leaves me wondering how far into the game I’m going to be before I have a squad of maxed out soldiers, the fun of a leveling system is the journey, not the destination imho.
(One thing I didn’t try was to make a dual-class solider, I had good perks showing at levels 6 and 7 for the guy that got to 5, and I didn’t know whether switching class would change them, or if my level would drop back to 1 for the new class).
There is only soldier level. Class skills have access based on soldier level. So when you take second class you already have access to skill up to level 4.
After the first mission I had an assault that was already level 3. However the rest leveled more slowly. First few levels are quite quick but to reach level 7 takes a bit more time. Also, I usually try to better dispatch damage dealt to have soldiers level up uniformly.
I guess that the goal is to have better soldiers more quickly because you tend to lose some of them. However, until now I haven’t seen the game really go in the direction of “lots of soldiers” (too expensive - like if it cost 200 in FiraXCOM).
I agree with the OP. It doesn’t take long at all to get your soldiers to level 7. You can even push one or two soldiers up extremely fast, the way experience is earned in combat.
Im not entirely certain, but it seemed like easy was harder then normal mode.
I started an easy game a while back and it gave me sirens with mind control and such that I hadnt seen in normal mode.
So I think theres difference between the settlngs but they are not sorted yet. Probably.