I have been a big fan of the XCOM games but really struggled with this one. Firstly the world UI is awful, I mean terrible! So it will take you some time to work out how to optimise building facilities and accelerating their function because they mainly rely on engineers available and slots for them to work. Even now I am not sure what some of the upgrades have done for resistance network facility. The other problem is the battles. I was getting pwned after the first 3 mission or so. In the end I got a tip from a forum. Grenades! They are literally the best thing you can use, guaranteed damage, but more importantly destroy cover, so your squad has better chances of hits. This was the game changer for me. After this my next tip, ignore the ‘recommended’ research and build trees. I built a guerrilla tactics school early to get improved squad sizes, and also I prioritised weapons and armour research over other ‘recommend’ research. Having figured all this out, the game became fun. Prior to this it was worse than going to work!!

I can’t believe I didn’t see this game on App Store until now. I’ve seen reviews going several years back, so it must have been out a while, but somehow I didn’t even know it existed despite me looking for it in the past many times. Weird…As a long time XCom fan I’ve previously purchased XCom unknown, but that game was clunky and difficult to play on iPhone. Not enjoyable at all. This however is a different gravy. Obviously a small phone screen isn’t ideal, but the game does a really good job to overcome that disadvantage, feeling easy to control and intuitive. And this will only improve if you can play on iPad or something with more inches. UI is easy to understand and control. The game is nice and polished, quite impressive actually. Most mobile games are a big downgrade either on graphics or gameplay from the full version. This looks and plays exactly like the original. Even having 1 or 2 little quality of life improvements over the original I’d love to have in the console version.Technically it’s quite impressive too. Playing on iPhone 14 currently for about a week now. It doesn’t overheat at all and the battery last several hours too. It really is impressive how polished and optimised this game is. Especially compared to some other games that are far more simple and worse looking, but overheat enough to cook pizza. It can sometimes get a little slow on the boot, but only for about 30 seconds. After that the game is fast, consistent and smooth. With very few bugs too. At least I haven’t encountered any major issues. Feral did an excellent job with this one. I’ll have to keep an eye out for more of their games.

Absolutely fantastic port of an exceptional pc game. Can’t believe a game of this quality is available on my phone, and it runs like a dream. Well worth paying a few quid for as it’s the real deal, no extra purchases, no adverts, proper game and I love the XCom series. Well done Feral another great port! So my issue- AI behaving odd- for example- vip extraction. I decide to save on fatigue, and just use a sole reaper, stealth in, blow hole in wall, leg it to extraction with VIP but despite my guy being “stealthed” the enemy troops just happen to always dawdle over to the reaper, or the big walking ED209 look alike walks through the walls of the prison complex building back and forth until my guy gets spotted. Patrols should be random and not based upon converging on a character who’s supposed to be hidden. They literally go from all over map to just hang about near the hidden guy, then wait there and don’t patrol elsewhere. Fix that and imo it’s perfect

Feral have fast become one of my favourite developers and it is really easy to see why… They have created hit after hit and brought them over to iOS, not scrimping on quality.X-Com was brilliant, when it was brought over a few years back by 2K, but unfortunately 2K are not the best for keeping their game titles up to date and bug free and I would not be surprised if in the near future that it will be rendered unplayable.X-Com 2 will not suffer that same fate, that is because Feral have the reigns. They are excellent, they add features, quash bugs and just look after their customers, long after purchasing their ported titles.Anyway, onto the game in the time it has been on iOS, they’d have gradually improved this title and the graphics at points are phenomenal for a phone or tablet. I love have in-depth this title is. As I recommend with most titles a pair of AirPods are your best friend for ultimates sound… So invest. This will chew hours of your life away and you genuinely connect with your squads as once they are killed, they are gone forever.It’s worth the price on the single player campaign alone, but I have a sneaky feeling multiplayer will be coming and this will make this a massive blockbuster title. This title is within my top 5 iOS titles, that alone gives you good reason to buy this game!