Instead of managing an entire army of fully customizable soldiers from different countries, your squad consists of a growing handful of premade, fully-voiced characters. The XCOM: Chimera Squad's reduced scope is most apparent in two places: your squad and the maps where they fight. (Opens in a new window) Read Our Ori and the Will of the Wisps (for PC) Review You aren’t trying to piece together every advantage you can get from downed and captured aliens and their weapons rather you’re gathering intelligence and balancing resources while incrementally improved equipment is introduced through a far less sprawling development curve. The stakes aren’t nearly as high, and neither are the scales of the fights or the resource and technology requirements of your campaign. You aren’t fighting alien invaders across the planet, you’re fighting criminal factions through a city. The scope is smaller than either previous XCOM game, which is why this game isn’t called XCOM 3. When that harmony is disrupted by a terrorist attack, XCOM’s Chimera Squad is sent in to assist the city’s police as a strike force designed to deal with violent threats. City 31 is one such mixed-species community, a metropolis of humans, hybrids, and aliens living together in relative harmony.
The alien invaders were driven away, and humanity is now free to live alongside the aliens and hybrids who remained after the war. While Gears Tactics translates the third-person shooter franchise into a strategy game to solid genre-shifting success, Chimera Squad shaves away some of the XCOM series' denser aspects, keeping the genre but making it a bit more accessible.Ĭhimera Squad takes place several years after XCOM 2 and its expansions. This is the second notable turn-based tactics game to come out recently, along with Gears Tactics.
XCOM: Chimera Squad lacks the general brutality of the mainline PC games, but it still scratches that strategy itch. This $19.99 spin-off for PC keeps the setting and general feel of the XCOM series, but reduces the stakes by offering a single city to protect, a modest squad of diverse (and pre-created) units, and a more forgiving combat. XCOM: Chimera Squad, on the other hand, is a friendlier, more accessible XCOM game. Unfortunately, casual strategy fans find the experience daunting. The brutal, turn-based strategy relies heavily on random chance, permanent unit death, and an overarching campaign that takes many hours of careful resource management. The XCOM games aren’t for the impatient or faint of heart.