HeyDaniko // April 1st, 2021
I’m unsure just how much I have to say about Chimera Squad, and so it seemed like a safer bet to just jot down what’s on my mind and see if its enough to bother posting. So let’s see.
Sadly, I never did get around to uploading my old XCOM 2 article from my previous blog, which is something I may actually edit and move over in the near (or distant) future. It would have been nice to have had that article up here for some comparative points.
But where to start with Chimera Squad? First and foremost, please know that this game is NOT XCOM 3, and die-hard fans of the series should feel no more pressure to play it than they did The Bureau. That being said, it is the same genre and formula, so lends itself a little more familiarity with that. The Steam reviews for this game are by far some of the most accurate I have ever personally found for a game, with people claiming that Chimera Squad is little more than a watered down XCOM 2, or even pointing out that its more of an asset recycle than a game in its own right. Many players were left wanting more having come from the complexity and insane difficulty of XCOM 2, but none of this intrinsically makes Chimera Squad a bad game, just not the safest of purchases for fans.
The premade characters are both a boon and a blight on the game has their interactions with each other can often be quite humorous or even charming. Character interactions are something I’m a big fan of as I have mentioned in earlier articles. BUT, and this is a capital ‘but’ for a reason, the character creation of XCOM 2 was one of my, and thousands of other players’, favourite aspects of the game. Without having my gaming guild and buddies to take down alien invaders, I immediately felt a somewhat lack of investment in the narrative. Call me heartless but I’m more concerned about killing my friends than I am their stand-ins. The premade characters also come with another mild hiccup – a move from class based combat and abilities to character based one. Understandably this move was made to accommodate the fact that not all members of your team are human this time around, but locking characters down to their ‘unique’ skills (reused class based from XCOM 2) just doesn’t feel like a fun, constructive, or even diligent move in my opinion.
As for the shout about Chimera Squad mostly reusing old XCOM 2 assets, I think that much is apparent. With the probable exceptions of the human character roster and home base, just about everything else is identical to how it appeared in the previous title. Even the new alien allies are little more than slightly recoloured XCOM 2 enemies. Weapons, animations, skills, environments – pretty much everything appears to have just been lifted straight from the game’s ancestor.
On the plus side, I will say that the change in difficulty suited me a little more than the previous game, which was a fiendishly punishing experience without the right nooby mods. But everything else? Just a shadow of something much, much better.
On the whole, I would say that I enjoyed around 50% of my Chimera Squad playthough before feeling thoroughly burned out. The missions and “breach mode” are repetitive and tedious, and the story is largely forgettable. Its not terrible, in that I have played considerably worse games, but you will almost certainly be disappointed.
Cheers,
Daniko
Thunder's Remnant 