Remember the E3 2019 demo our beloved UV ran through? It seemed so dark and creepy. There’s a shadowy outline of a crab bouncing around. But now, there seems to be no dark or creepy. Was this removed for a reason? Or have just all my battles been in daylight?
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How about, at the very least, have Mist Sentinels actually ‘mist’ each turn, so we have to fight some portion of the battlefield IN the mist?
Pandorans have this Mist that is a great bonus to them but they rarely actually use it. Start a mission w half the battlefield already Mist.
Yup, we remember and we miss it. There’s no more creepines, no more fear of unknown. The lack of fog of war is really disappointing. Among the other things, it feels like game is in beta state, too.
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Have to agree with this. The “music”/sound in the tactical portion of the gameplay is appears to be designed to heighten the tension in an otherwise dark, dreary or fearful environment. … Yet we get fully lit maps day/night leaving nothing to the imagination, no unknown, no real fear… right from the get-go, you’re planning your movements around the field to maximize your effect against the enemies from their relative spawn locations. So the music is completely out of place with the gameplay. The gameplay isn’t bad, the music isn’t bad… they don’t go together and one needs to be switched around.
I vote gameplay to be darker, more unknown (in everything but Haven Defense missions, where instead of heavy FoW, it’s instead light FoW), but slightly easier enemies to offset that difficulty increase.
Edit: I just watched the E3 2019 demo for the first time and holy crap that game looks beautiful. Why don’t night missions at least look like that? I want that!!!
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it seems that overall the game took a huge turn when they partnered with the bigger company. made it more mass appealing. i didnt really know to what extent until i went back to look at old footage. its unbelievable how different the current game is from the first gameplay footage. it makes me feel like a lot was thrown out and our overall glitch ridden game is likely because it was slapped together at the last moment like recent bioware game. sad 
The shift happened long before that.
I wonder what footage you talk about. I have never seen dense Fog of War in Phoenix Point. There was one footage of really dark night mission released in June 2019, but it is not implemented in final version (yet?).
There are mist-producing enemies later in the game. They effectively use mist as smoke-screen and to lower WP of our soldiers.
I can confirm this. If there happen to be mist Tritons on a mission, in short time there is 33% of map covered in mist. 
But at least they don’t shoot when producing mist. 
The triton’s mist seems somewhat random. I’ve played through the game maybe 4 or 5 times so far and only this last time through now am I seeing the tritons use mist extensively. Maybe I killed them before they had a chance; possible. But most of my play time has seen them not use it.
They only tend to use it when injured as far as I’ve noticed.
The change in style happened some months before the EPIC announcement was public (Though how long the deal was in the works prior to it being public knowledge is anyone’s guess).
From playing the backer builds since the early builds, the most significant changes seemed to occur during the lull after one of the release date push backs later 2018 into early 2019. Was also around this time it seems Snapshot were shifting a few things internally as aspects like the public roadmap got no further support due to the staff that were managing it no longer ‘being involved’ and such.
Unless Snapshot ever do a very honest post-mortem analysis of development over the life of the project further down the line (Like the many that you’d used to see crop-up a lot from indie efforts on sites like Gamasutra), then we’ll never really know quite what happened internally in between the various pushed delays or how potential indications of staff changes may have impacted the shift in the games style over time.
Purely my own opinion based on little more than gut impression, but I have always put it down to something occurring like a internal refocus after some middle project management changes in the team handing the management reigns to those with a stronger emphasis toward keeping to what is known to work in the interest of pushing the project forward rather than spend more time potentially delaying further that may have very well happened if they continued on a trial and error iteration process to push for the original tone and qualities that had been sought after.
But honestly, that opinion is based less on any specific details shared by Snapshot themselves and more how that’s often a trend that seems to happen with more ambitious indie projects. They seem to find themselves stuck in a iterative development loop for a extended period of time whilst they try to find all the components that fit their goal… before eventually one or more people along the ladder get fed up of the iterative loop process and just want to see it done even if it means dropping the original prime focus points.
There is also a Scilla’s weapon capable of covering nearly a half of a map in mist through several turns… and it is MY half of a map! 