I don’t feel any tensity from haven defense missions like XCOM terror missions. In XCOM there’s the sound of burning and people screaming from time to time, and then intense combat music when you engage the enemy. There’s none of that in this game and it’s disappointing, ESPECIALLY the lack of combat music (Or any other music in general besides the ambient one). If every faction had their own theme when I’m doing one of their story missions, or when I’m raiding one of their facilities, that would help a lot. They already have beautiful maps done for them already. I don’t need super intense battle music or loadout music like XCOM does (And I do love XCOM’s music) but listening to the ambient soundtrack of this game 24/7 is putting me to sleep.
Artwork and Flavor for the Phoenixpedia. In this game not only is the artwork just weird see through 3d models (Some people might enjoy it, I definitely do not). There’s a ton to read in the LORE page, but without any meaningful introduction I could care less about reading all that.
The Geoscape could some more flavor too. Mechanics wise it’s fantastic, I love being able to handle mutiple bases with multiple teams like in Xenonauts. However it does feel a bit dry at times. In XCOM you had Bradford, Shen, Tygan, etc. making comments every now and then on what was going on in the world. In Xenonauts there was a constant stream of news reports, things like “UFOs spotted flying over X country” or “Fishermen abducted in mysterious accident,” they made the world feel more alive. Here they could add things like “Haven X reportedly destroyed in X country” or “Population of Pandorans have dramatically increased in X country” to hint that there might be a possible nest or lair there. This is my smallest complaint though.
I actually don’t care about learning about this game’s aliens. Like at all. There’s no dramatic voice over introduction when you encounter a new type, there’s no roaring Mutons, hissing Vipers, or angelic sounding Archons, the aliens barely make any intimidating noises. In Xenonauts whenever I encountered a new alien I played super cautious because I actually felt like they were a threat. There’s nothing to really get me excited at fighting new aliens in this game. There’s not even a description on the autopsy/vivisection research option for what the possible rewards are! Just “You get X amount of resources” or “It requires X laboratory spaces in the containment facility.”
Now to be fair, I haven’t made it very far in the game yet. I’ve restarted a couple campaigns since I’ve found the game challenging, but once I learned you can spam Dash I’ve been able to hold my most recent one so far. About to research Pandoravirus and then start capturing aliens. I’ll edit this post if anything happens to change my mind about these things, but right now I find the game severely lacking in the flavor department.