All skills and weapon actions have their own action points cost, meaning a soldier can shoot their weapon first, for example, then reposition, or shoot multiple times and end their turn. The first major iteration in Phoenix Point’s tactical combat is the expansion of the two-action system in Firaxis’ XCOM to a semi-percentage based action point system, where all soldiers have 4 actions points, but they can be spent in any order. This clash of concept versus implementation is best seen in the tactical combat of the game. Though the developers have included many excellent concepts, due to some odd balancing and wonky implementation, the game feels more like a step to the side than a step forward. Tactically and strategically, it’s clear that the designers at Snapshot Games intended Phoenix Point to be a step forward for the XCOM-style of strategy games with the introduction of complexity, depth, and iteration on some old mechanics. The game’s own narrative structure sets the main thematic difference between itself and XCOM:flexibility of choice.
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However, where the XCOM series focused heavily on the narrative with interesting story elements, lore building, and characters, Phoenix Point has a more open approach to its narrative, instead giving players more freedom and flexibility to experience the game at their own pace. This makes the game familiar to anyone who is aware of the XCOM series, but the horror-centric approach gives a fresh take on the strategy genre. Though Phoenix Point’s story is more Earth-bound, swapping the science fiction inspired aliens of XCOM for a body horror type disease, the overall narrative structure is similar to XCOM 2, where the player starts as the underdog and must engage in an arduous and long war to understand their enemy and bring humanity back as the dominant force on Earth.
Within several years, civilization crumbles, leaving three ideologically distinct factions, rogue havens, and the remnants of the Phoenix Project to figure out how this disaster came to pass, just as a second massive wave of the Pandoravirus begins to spread from the oceans. The virus has a double effect, it both psychically attracting humans into the ocean and then rapidly mutating them into horrifying and utterly alien creatures. As the Project lost its funding and function, a terrible threat rose in its place.ĭue to climate change and the melting of the Arctic ice caps, a dangerous virus is released upon an unprepared Earth, the Pandoravirus, a mysterious and hyper mutagenic virus that spreads across the planet’s oceans. However, due to some unfortunate encounters, the Phoenix Project has lost its reputation and was woefully unprepared for what was to come. Phoenix Point sees the players take control of the disgraced and underfunded Phoenix Project, a shadow organization formed by Earth’s governments to lead secret projects and expeditions into space. Phoenix Point intends to be the next step forward for this evolving style of games, but has the genre seen its next successful mutation?
So, you like XCOM and games like it? Well, another game joins the ranks of XCOM-inspired strategy games, this time from the designer of the original XCOM, Julian Gollop.
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