TL;DR – XCOM: Chimera Squad is an enjoyable and accessible version of the latest iteration of the XCOM series, with a focus on linear progression and defined characters as opposed to the more freeform structure that the rest of the series is known for. In spite of, or perhaps because of this different strategy XCOM: Chimera Squad is a more relaxed and less intense affair that rarely feels overwhelming or unfair. This makes it a great starting point in the series for novices and indeed a great introduction to turn based strategy games overall, but it can feel a little basic for existing XCOM (and indeed X-COM) fans.
XCOM: Chimera Squad was always destined to be a black-sheep in the overall XCOM family, as not only did it release at a budget release price-point but it also lacked a lot of the depth that the series is known for. Instead of needing to create and nurture your squad while the spectre of permanent death lingered over them constantly, here your squad is largely pre-defined and it’s impossible for them to permanently die. This is because XCOM: Chimera Squad is taking a more narrative approach to the game’s story, with each character being deliberately designed and balanced to ensure that you always have a balanced assortment of squaddies. While you can’t recruit all 11 agents on a single playthrough, you can have a maximum of 8 of them at a time and can take 4 with you on each mission. Each of these characters fits a specific role and while there is an upgrade tree, 3 of the 5 choices for each character are mandatory and so you only have to make 2 decisions as to how they’re going to develop. Again this was done deliberately so that the developers could spend time fleshing out each squad mate and generally speaking they’ve done an admirable job, as while the writing isn’t stellar they were able to give each squaddie their own flavour and plenty of opportunities for them to insert their own quips. These characters also have their own interactions both during battles peaceful police operations and while at home in the base, so that they feel like a somewhat natural and cohesive squad. Perhaps one of the biggest selling point of XCOM: Chimera Squad is the fact that you get to control multiple alien squaddies, specifically a Muton, a Snek, a Sectoid and two half-man half-alien hybrids. These alien squaddies have some of the abilities that their counterparts had in the previous games, with the Sectoid acting as a Psi-capable unit and the Muton and Viper having melee rage attacks and binding attacks respectively. As for the hybrids, one is a melee combatant while the other has an energy shield and mainly functions as a defensive buff provider with a focus on close range attacks.
The reason for this disparate group to come together is that you’re the new XCOM commander Reclamation Squad commander and this rogue’s gallery is your sci-fi SWAT team with which to keep order in a post-XCOM 2 world. In this setting humanity won and now humans and various sentient alien species have to live together amidst the remaining cities of Earth, one of which is City 31 where the game’s story takes place. Perhaps unsurprisingly the alien occupation has left myriad pieces of devastating equipment lying around, and it’s the job of you and your squad to reclaim them and keep them out of the hands of those who would cause further damage to a reeling world. Unfortunately for you and your team, there are three gangs/cults operating within City 31 and you’ll need to investigate and cauterize each one before they can wreak havoc on the city. In spite of how it sounds, these investigations don’t require much in the way of investigating, as essentially you’ll have a series of timers which obscure main-story missions and that give you time to engage in multiple randomly generated missions so you can build up your squad. While you’re galivanting around saving the day, you’ll of course have to develop new tech (although the research system is massively simplified) and are encouraged to rotate through your team so that individual squad members can engage in training. This training system necessitates squad members being out of action for a few days, in exchange for them developing some skills such as additional actions and bonuses to max HP, their dodge skill and so on. Unfortunately you can only train one squad member at a time, and if a squad member takes too much damage in a mission there’s a chance that they’ll get a “scar” which reduces one of their stats. The only way to remove this scar is to have them spend 2 days in training, and for context I finished the whole game in just over 70 in-game days so removing scars eats up a lot of your training time. Of course you could leave your scarred members be, but most of the debuffs are pretty significant such as -3 movement per turn, -30% chance to hit, -3 max HP and so on. Further encouraging you to rotate your squad is the fact that the more powerful training options are only unlocked once your squad member has reached a certain level, so if you keep one on the bench they’ll be relatively weak and if you keep a unit on active duty they’ll always fall short of their max potential.
Then to make things even more of an exercise in plate-spinning, you’ve got the Assembly which functions as your research lab and SPEC OPS which is basically a designated beach-warmers slot. To keep it quick, the Assembly is where you can research and unlock new gear, but fortunately all you need to do once it’s been researched is to buy it so there’s no waiting for something to be researched, then waiting again for it to be produced. Some unlocks are purchased 1-by-1 (for example grenades and medkits) while others only need to be purchased once and then upgrade is applied to all applicable squaddies (such as the weapon upgrades and the armour upgrades). As for the Spec Ops, these are essentially bonuses that can be attained by having squad members busy themselves for a few days. Initially you can only get basic bonuses such as +60 intel or +$80, but as your team gets more developed and as you build up “field teams” across the city more interesting Spec Ops unlock. Two of the more useful late(r) game Spec Ops are to receive a free Field Team, which saves you a bunch of the intel resource, or to reduce unrest in every single one of the city’s 9 districts at once. Speaking of which, City 31 is split into 9 pieces and in each part you have a separate unrest bar alongside the ability to build one of three Field Teams. These field teams are split between Security, Technology and Finance and each type provides a bonus to the applicable resources (Intel, Etherium and Credits respectively) once per week and also increases the unrest reduction of operations in their respective district. You can then upgrade these Field Teams using the intel resource (or farm the applicable Spec Op) with these upgrades increasing the bonuses / unrest reduction provided. There are also “situations” that occur, and these are basically non-missions that involve sending out your squad but no enemies or fighting occurs. Generally the cadence of XCOM: Chimera Squad is mission -> situation -> mission and so on, but the main story missions can interrupt this as they unlock after a certain amount of in-game days have passed.
Once the main quest missions are unlocked, they’re not mandatory (with a handful of exceptions) but as you can only do one mission at a time and they always spawn in batches you’ll generally want to do main missions as soon as they become available. Failing to respond to a mission will cause the unrest in that district to increase and once the unrest in a district reaches the maximum level of 5, it gradually begins increasing the overall City Anarchy at a rate of +1 anarchy per max unrest district per day. Fortunately you do gain some abilities as you build and upgrade your field teams, which let you reduce unrest in a district, auto-complete a situation, freeze unrest in a district (to prevent it going up for failing to respond) and one that reduces the City Anarchy level which is important. Why is that important? Well once the City Anarchy hits a score of 14, you instantly receive a game-over and lose the game. On the plus side once a district hits the max unrest level, a new mission is automatically created for that district which you can complete to reduce that district’s unrest. The caveat is that if you don’t complete this mission you’ll lose your field team and it’s worth noting that these missions tend to be quite difficult. They’re not impossible of course, especially as you get infinite retries but they’re noticeably harder than the normal missions which generally aren’t too bad.
On that subject, missions now have multiple phases and always start with a Breach phase. This is another one of the major changes that have been made to the formula, as you’ll be able to decide in what order your team enters the mission and what entrance you’ll be taking. Sometimes you’ll need an item (equipped in your breach slot) to be able to use different entrances, and each entrance will provide pros and cons. Once your squad bursts into the room the enemies will have a varied reaction time, with some being surprised, some being alert and others being aggressive. These reactions dictate whether they’ll do nothing (and have a bonus for shots fired at them), get a free non-aggressive reaction such as Hunker Down or fire at your squad during the breach action. Fortunately your squad members each get a free shot during this breach action, so you generally want to prioritise summoners and physic enemies alongside the ones that are going to shoot at you.
Some missions have multiple of these phases, with the final mission having 4 of them, and during each phase you’ll enter a room filled with baddies and either have to take them out or complete an objective such as escorting a civilian to an evac zone. One of the most difficult parts of XCOM: Chimera Squad is actually these escort missions, as they always make aggressive use of the game’s reinforcement system which causes new enemies to spawn in. The twist is that often these new enemies are able to get a turn in before most of your squad, so depending on your positioning and what abilities the enemies have this can be a significant barrier to quickly wrapping up a mission. To make matters worse, often these reinforcements continue to respawn at the end of a turn so a simple escort mission can involve 3 enemies spawning per round, and for most of the game you can only have each character fire once per round.
Which brings us neatly to another part of the game that’s undergone a change, as now squaddies and enemies take turns one-after-another with the overall order being determined at the start of each round and being impacted by the order your characters entered the room during the breach phase. This means that you’ll need to be strategic with your breach order, as you’ll often want shotgunners to go first and more accurate squaddies to go in last, but this then means that you’ll have to wait for multiple enemies to have their turn before the guys at the back of your breach option can do anything. Generally this isn’t a big deal, but occasionally your squad members put themselves in bad positions after the breach or are otherwise unable to prevent themselves from getting disabled, mind-controlled or charged by a Berserker. I quite liked this tweak as it makes the firefights feel much more intense and forces you to react quickly to the more threatening enemies, although as you don’t have the ability to command your entire squad at once those missed shots can quickly cause things to spiral out of control.
Another slight change that’s related is that enemy grenades, and some types of the grenades that you use (such as Claymore’s satchel charge) are given a spot in the turn order before they detonate – which means that you can often avoid them if you’re lucky with the enemy targeting… or miss the ones you’ve thrown if you’re a FOOL. One last thing to mention with regards to the breaching system is that your squaddies occasionally have other abilities that can be used, or can equip some items which enable them to take other actions, but generally these are limited to one per mission. As missions can have up to 4 breaches, this requires a bit of patience on the players part lest they blow through all of their good abilities during the first part of a mission. Similarly your squaddies have abilities that they can use, some of which have a general cool-down on the basis of combat rounds, but others are only usable once per mission. A good example of the former is that you can now use a “team up” ability to make a squaddie on your team take their turn next, which is very powerful. Squaddies also have the ability to use certain equipped items during combat, although these don’t count as an action and include things like grenades, medkits and the like.
My general feeling is therefore that all of the tweaks have been included to make a faster paced XCOM experience that still manages to be a challenge without ever feeling cheap. Abilities are quick, the breach system ensures that you always know where enemies are (so no more stumbling into a pod of enemies) and the turn ordering system makes moment-to-moment decision making more important. That’s not to say that you can’t take your time on each turn of course, but generally it’s a question of whether you can tank a few shots or need to pop an item/ability you were trying to save for later. Overall the game is relatively short and while the campaign has 3 investigations plus one or two boss missions after the last investigation is wrapped up, the whole thing never overstays it’s welcome. I will confess that some of the mission types felt repetitive, especially the escort/rescue missions which seemed to keep popping up but fortunately the inclusion of the situations means you’re still able to press ahead without getting bogged down. The only time the game felt silly was with the miss system, because I found that unless I put a squad member in danger with an exceptionally aggressive flank, most of my shots had already an 80% chance to hit. Which is often enough, but man oh man did those occasional misses feel spiteful. Of course this is a) entirely true to the series and b) a reminder that any good strategy isn’t dependent on a single shot hitting. Still, I had a few close calls as missing an 85% shot caused enemy A to take their turn where they crippled squad member B with an ability who then missed their turn so enemies B and C got some shots off and so on. With that being said, I played on “Challenging” and I’d say that the game was challenging without being overwhelming, especially as it’s almost impossible to softlock yourself by getting all of your best squad members killed. Indeed it can sometimes be beneficial to restart a mission as otherwise you’ll run the risk of having scars impact your squaddies for the next few in-game days. Don’t be tempted to savescum however, as on Challenging and Impossible you are dependent on the game’s autosave feature as you can’t make any manual saves!
In conclusion then XCOM: Chimera Squad is a great game and a solid entry for both the series and a good starting point for TBS noobs. While it has some quirks to it, generally these serve to create a fast paced XCOM experience that’s faithful enough to the rest of the reboot series while still being familiar. I enjoyed the setting, which some people hated as it gave a good justification for the Breach mechanic which is a lot of fun. Plus the inter-character reactions can be amusing, as was some of the NPC background chatter referring to alien conspiracies and news bulletins which made light of the political aspect of the post-XCOM 2 world. While XCOM: Chimera Squad is a budget release in terms of price it isn’t a budget release in terms of polish or content, as it’ll take you around 20 hours to beat and there are relatively few bugs to be found. I did encounter some animation glitches, but never had the game crash or encounter a significant bug which shows that the QA department did a good job. Overall I’d say that XCOM: Chimera Squad is well worth the modest asking price and I’d highly recommend it for anyone looking to try out XCOM or TBS games more broadly, although I would recommend the higher difficulties for more experienced players.