New Purchase, Not impressed

Hey Dev’s,

Bought this hoping for a better Xcom experience and so far I am not impressed. The game feels bland and grindy. I don’t feel any sort of accomplishment either as the game progresses. Missions become tougher and it feels like the characters do not scale appropriately in power / skill / research to keep up.

One of my main concerns is that you don’t have a tech tree per se in the Phoenix Project. One of the best / most fun components of the X-Com franchise is mastering new tech and feeling like you finally level the playing field with the aliens. I never feel like that in this game.

The faction System - I hate it. I dont like them, any of them. and I dont want to suck up to them in order to get the moderate tech improvements they do have. Why does the Phoenix project not have a tech line they can use?

Scarab - Why can we not reload the scarab? If you are going to make it take up massive space, it should be good for more than a few shots per mission.

Lack of clarity about so many concepts in the game such as:

  1. If I don[t expand fast and discover bases, do they automatically get destroyed before I even have the opportunity to find them?
  2. why do some alien Lairs in the mist load without an objective to destroy even though it says there should be one?

These are just a few of the major glaring issues I am finding with the game. So far This feels like a lifeless version of Xcom and frankly I was hoping for a lot more than what has been offered so far.

Because the project was shut down decades ago it’d be between 20 and 40 years behind everyone else. That’s why if they want laser or gauss weapons they have to get it from reverse engineering faction tech. They do have a tech tree but it’s based on combining and adapting faction tech. Synedrion has lasers for example, New Jericho has mounted launchers, but only the Phoenix Project has a mounted laser weapon.

Mercy SJ-3 shotgun
Goliath GL-2 grenade launcher
Jormungandr acid cannon
Neurazer melee paralyzer
Phoenix Shock Lance
Gorgon Eye-A PDW
Gungnir SR-2 sniper rifle
Destiny III mounted laser weapon
Ragnarok mounted rocket/missile launcher
Plus a turret or two and an advanced medpack that’s the entirety of their tech line.

The real problem with all the tech trees is that they’re too shallow.