When it comes to the XCOM franchise, I am contractually obligated to put whatever new entry on my best of list of that year. XCOM Chimera Squad came out of nowhere and delivers an almost “Yakuza 0” like take for the long-standing franchise. A different focus alongside some polarized changes to the design, Chimera Squad is a great introduction to prepare for the more complicated games.
#8 Xcom Chimera Squad
Firaxis surprised a lot of people when not only a new XCOM game was announced, but that it would be out so soon. Instead of getting another massive entry in the series, Chimera Squad was positioned as both a spinoff and kind of a friendlier entry point for newcomers.
Gone were teams of personalized and customized squaddies, and instead we got a set group of humans and aliens trying to work together. Chimera Squad was definitely not positioned as the next mainline XCOM game, and for fans expecting that, they were disappointed.
Instead, what we got was a very “back to basics” approach that we really haven’t seen from the franchise. Besides the change to the squaddies, a new timeline system was integrated alongside breaching areas. The fact that every character started off (and then unlocked) special abilities helped to provide some much-needed utility out of the gate. This was not designed as a grand campaign taking dozens of hours to achieve, but a smaller scale run-through of three mini-campaigns and the finale.
The game was far from perfect and did feature numerous bugs both large and small. In many ways, Chimera Squad represented more of a proof of concept in my opinion as opposed to a full and finished game. Some of the maps were either laughably easy or ridiculously difficult in terms of their objectives, and that’s on top of the RNG of XCOM.
As I said in my original review, I hope that Firaxis took notes from Chimera Squad, and that we see kind of a hybrid model going forward with another XCOM.
Moving on to number 7, we have an indie game that took roguelike design in a different direction.
