1. Elite Dangerous - PC2. Soldier of Fortune - PC3. Star Wars: TIE Fighter: Defender of the Empire - PC4. Star Wars: TIE Fighter: Enemies of the Empire - PC5. Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter: Balance of Power - PC6. Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance - PC7. Phoenix Point - PCPhoenix Point is a new X-Com-esque game from Julian Gollop, one of the original creators of X-Com. While XCOM was X-Com if we made it now, and Xenonauts was X-Com with slightly better graphics, Phoenix Point takes several cues from X-Com Apocalypse and continues the idea of iterating on the base idea with its own twists. It ends up having some good ideas and some well intentioned ideas (even if the execution falls short). It's biggest sin is that the optimal play patterns can run counter to what players are used to, and the game expects you to utilize all the most broken shit you can.
The premise is that a new virus, called the Pandoravirus, has started appearing in the oceans and mutating life on Earth. Many people are also receiving compulsions to walk into the sea, and they come back as horrific mutated shock troopers. It's clear this infestation is spreading, and something needs to be done or humanity will be consumed. Enter Phoenix Point, the shadowy organization that has existed for decades studying the early hints of this virus, before it became a full outbreak. But you aren't the only ones who hope to help humanity; out of the chaos of societal breakdown three factions have arisen. New Jericho is your standard "keep humanity pure" sci fi conservative, the Disciples of Anu are your standard "embrace the winds of change" sci fi cult, and Synedrion is the "can't we all get along?" middle group, who sees each side as going too far with their plan to save humanity and strike to find a middle path. You will need to interact with these factions as you proceed, as they are the only source of new recruits and are a source of much of your technology upgrades. But the factions don't like each other, so at some point you'll have to choose one over the others. Or you can say screw it, they all suck, and once you've bled them for tech forge your own path.
The strategic lair ends up being a mix between X-Com and XCOM 2. You start with one base that you can build facilities in like X-Com, but the only way to get more is to discover mothballed old bases. This is where the more XCOM 2 aspects come in; you spend a lot of time having your dropship fly from node to node on the map, scanning them to uncover their secrets. Much of the time they are towns for the other factions, and there you can transact business like hiring new soldiers (including their unique classes), trading resources, or engaging in sabotage and stealing missions. You only need to head back to base when you want to rest your troops; they lose energy when they go on successive combat missions, and if they take damage they need to go back to base to heal. Managing exploring the world is a major part of the strategic lair. Sometimes you will be ambushed by the creatures, which are a timed defense followed by running to the extraction point, while other times you will have the option to drop down and secure resources the creatures are trying to destroy. Towns can come under attack (including your bases), and while sometimes they will fight off the attackers you usually have to step in and help. This is the best way to build up your reputation with the factions (though when it's faction on faction violence you'll take a corresponding hit with the invading faction). And when you uncover Pandoran strongholds assaulting them will help take the pressure off the attacks and push back the doom timer. Oh yeah, like XCOM 2 there is a doom timer, though this one is extremely generous, and not really worth worrying about.
The tactical lair is mostly XCOM, but with one major twist; instead of you having 2 AP which can be used to fire a regular weapon, move a distance, use an item, and so on, instead you have 4 AP, but your standard damage dealing actions take 2AP. This gives the game more flexibility with the action economy; heavy weapons are now 3 AP, giving you 1 AP to reposition as needed, while things like reloading only take 1 AP. Another quality of life improvement is that when you move you use portions of an AP, so you can much more easily inch your way around cover, rather than committing. And the game even stops your move when you have an enemy come into view. No more "oops, I ran into a nest of baddies because of the fog of war".
Two other things of note are specifically in the combat. The first is that the game puts a lot more focus on the non-shooting abilities of your soldiers. As your soldiers level you gain a lot of activatable abilities that are governed by spending a shared resource; each ability costs some amount of will points, which are also gained or lost when enemy units or friendly units die. Your will points also govern your panic; if you lose will while at 0 will points you panic. So abilities are both more spammable than their equivalents in XCOM (which are cooldown based) and more risk/reward, as burning through can leave you vulnerable to a bad panic session. The other thing to note is that instead of the raw calculation for to-hit numbers that XCOM uses, Phoenix Point brings back the firing cone ballistics of X-Com. So when you take a firing stance you get a Valkyria Chronicles-style aiming reticle, with a large circle for "all the shots will fall in this circle", and you get to decide how to take your shot. Now, the game will default to center of mass (or visible mass), but you can go for fine aiming when you want to take down specific body parts, which is a pretty major component of the game. Taking out a creature's head can shut off special abilities, its arm can shut off the ability to use its weapon, and its leg will reduce its movement ability. You are also vulnerable to these effects. These changes mean that cover is not nearly as advantageous as it is in XCOM; now the protection cover provides is literally whatever piece blocks a shot before it hits you if that's the trajectory the projectile takes, and cover is pretty easily destroyed (again, hearkening back to X-Com).
Now, to go into the parts where the game falls short. One feature of the game is an adaptive difficulty; the enemy troops get stronger the more you fight them. This is presented as the enemy evolving in response to you shooting them, but it pretty much only manifests in increasing health and armor. The thing is, unlike X-Com and XCOM there isn't nearly the sense of tech progression in your weapons and armor. The faction weapons, while all upgrades to your basic gear, are only minor upgrades, and the end game only provides an enhanced sniper rifle that, while the best sniper rifle, is only another 10-15% damage increase over what you were using. The bulk of your increased lethality is as your soldiers level and gain abilities that can effectively multiply their damage output in the right circumstances. So the problem is that the optimal play pattern is to avoid a lot of combat. Town defenses do not trigger the enemy powering up, so you still want to do those (as well as story missions), but all the "hey, let's go get resources" are traps; they only make things harder for you. The story missions have enemy levels either fixed or at a min level, so you can have a situation where the enemies have 300 HP in a story mission, then in the subsequent random base defense they have 120 HP.
I ended up keeping my main troops at home to passively level from training centers while sending our my max stealth troops to do my information gathering, then pull them out to do story missions. It's a weird play pattern compared to the starndard X-Com and XCOM "definitely do the missions because you get penalized if you don't and rewarded if you do." Here you mostly get penalized for doing missions (by things getting harder and you not really getting material rewards). The fact that the bulk of the tech comes from the factions adds to the lack of reward; while in XCOM you're excited to fight a new enemy because you can research their drops for an upgrade, here the upgrades from the monsters themselves are a 10% damage bonus to that monster type for capturing a live monster and vivisecting it. Allying with the factions or stealing tech from them are the real way you get ahead.
Additionally, the final mission is mostly a pain; you have a giant fight with 12+ enemies, including two bosses and several mortar enemies that spam shit on you, so if you haven't gotten used to some sort of game breaking combo (either abusing stealth or wiping out hordes in a single turn) then your lack of numbers compared to them are going to screw you. And then once you're past that there is an HP sponge boss with a nasty attack (though you can negate it with the right class) that infinitely spawns adds and has limited vulnerability windows. It feels like the devs realized they had created a bunch of gamebreaking stuff and force you to rely on it, rather than rebalancing everything.
On the whole, it's a decent strategy game that still needs a few balance patches to really become something great. But I like that it has its own ideas and wants to try and see how they do.