By maintaining most of previous XCOMs' roots, XCOM: Chimera Squad is a mostly successful entry that emphasizes brisk encounters and a guided narrative through tense battles of strategy.
XCOM: Chimera Squad is a bold move on the part of developer Firaxis Games. After the franchise laid dormant, I dabbled in XCOM: Enemy Unknown and was impressed with how brutally difficult the game was, especially as it was widely released on console. I think a generation raised on Dark Souls was ready for the kind of challenge that was commonplace in the early days of PC and console gaming. I felt guilty when my oldest comrades were vaporized by alien threats and hated the idea of having to train soldiers greener than the little men they were fighting against. Despite wanting to dive into XCOM: Enemy Unknown and its sequel, I never truly sank my teeth into the games to get a feel for how they played in the later hours.
Chimera Squad plays like an XCOM game, yet I think longtime fans may be irked by the larger changes to the formula. But it also strikes me as an experiment on the part of Firaxis to gently nudge the uninitiated into the world of XCOM, setting the stage for future titles that may pick and borrow from what makes the series so enthralling.
After the events of XCOM 2, mankind won the battle against alien forces, freeing Earth. Chimera Squad takes place five years later, where humans and the aliens abandoned by their masters are making the best of an awkward situation. City 31 serves as an example of how peace can be obtained in a post-invasion world. Unfortunately, the mayor of City 31 is assassinated, leaving the city on the brink of anarchy. Who will get to the bottom of this catastrophe? That’s right, the titular Chimera Squad.
The Squad isn’t made up of soldiers you name yourself. Instead, Firaxis has opted for creating 11 unique agents each with their own name, personality, backstory, and special abilities. What this amounts to is a ragtag group of buddy cops fighting against the forces of evil, shooting the shit, and trying to keep the peace. Each member of the Squad gets their own voice-acted lines and banter so players truly get a feel for their quirks. Rather than the larger threat to City 31, I think most will gravitate towards the Squad and the interplay between its members. Early in the game it was revealed that Cherub, a member of the team, was actually a clone–one of thousands, to be fair–of the current enemy faction leader. Cherub expressed this discomfort to his fellow Squad mates who quickly reminded him it was a non-issue.
Though Chimera Squad abandons the “Earth is being invaded” narrative, it manages to strike an intimate chord with moments like these, ensuring the characters you play as aren’t boring grunts. But this is also where Chimera Squad loses some of the XCOM DNA that many players may have grown to love about the series. Because the Squad consists of a set number of members, none of them will permanently die. Permadeath instead exists as a difficulty option or due to handful of fail states. In Enemy Unknown and its sequel, players had the ability to name units, train them, lead them into battle, and play a hand in their survival. These player-crafted stories were perfect fuel for videos and streams and the imagination.
Along with the lack of this customization, the stakes with the Chimera Squad and City 31 don’t feel as grandiose. Because a character cannot permanently die, players don’t have to be overly careful unless they want to. If one member of the Squad is severely injured during battle, they will just gain a “scar” which affects a core stat like dodge rating or total HP. Scars can be removed if a character trains for a couple days, so don’t get too stressed.
As I spent more time with Chimera Squad, I noticed this theme of lower stakes as it pertained to the game’s difficulty. XCOM instills players with a sense of tension, dread, and accomplishment in its missions, which at times could last upwards of an hour. Chimera Squad boils down the essentials and gives players less wiggle room to make grave mistakes. Gone are the days of a fog of war where players could accidentally stumble into an alien’s line of fire accidentally. Costly injuries and death that could set back days and weeks of in-game progress are no longer an issue. What did this amount to? Personally, I think it amounts to a more initially enjoyable and less frustrating game.
Playing on Normal difficulty throughout the campaign, I was never met with any situation that felt impassable. Instead, tense situations remained that way. I didn’t feel compelled to constantly reset checkpoints because I made a stupid move or a character got too injured early in the day. Growing pains of understanding the flow of battle melted away after a handful of missions steeled my nerves but never made me complacent.
Most missions in Chimera Squad occur over the course of one to three encounters. Each encounter starts with the four chosen members of your Squad “breaching” an entry point to initiate a fight. Whether a vent, a window, or a brick wall, players are given the option to place multiple units at whatever breach point they see fit. After getting over the silliness of a group of human and alien soldiers surprising gun-toting robots by blasting through a chain-link fence (whatever, it’s a game), it’s fun to start experimenting with breach points and how effective they are at gaining the upper hand in combat.
Depending on the breach point, a number of buffs and debuffs will be placed on Squad members they apply to. A Squad member may receive increased accuracy or mobility while other breach points increase the risk of taking damage by placing a member at a different vantage point. Often, the first or last Squad member to go through a breach point is affected the most. If I knew that a breach point would disable a member’s weapon, I would choose Verge to go through that point. Verge specializes in psionic abilities so I could stun a target or inflict berserk on one without needing to fire a shot. Some points can only be breached if one character is equipped with an item such as a keycard or explosive that assists in the team passing.
Once the team bashes through a point, time slows to a crawl and players are allowed to target any enemy they wish or use a unique special ability that can only be activated once per mission. Enemies can be surprised, alert, or aggressive during a breach. Surprised enemies get an initial debuff while aggressive enemies take the shot right after the breach action is completed. Because several enemies can be defeated during a breach, it’s important for players to keep in mind what should be shot first and whose powers are to be taken advantage of.
This initial burst of action is quite unlike anything seen in XCOM, both stylistically and strategically. It unfolds like a chaotic moment of Rainbow Six: Siege or a blockbuster flick. By eliminating threats before any movement around cover takes place, Chimera Squad takes away a large amount of downtime for players. And though it may not look like anything seen in the series previously, the amount of strategic thinking that goes into breach mode is exceptionally large, especially when taking team composition into account.
Any post-breach action unfolds similarly to XCOMs past. Players are expected to click around the arena to move to vantage points to get better chances at hitting enemies. The major difference here is in sheer map size. Across most encounters in Chimera Squad, maps are quite small. High ground and full cover exist to give players a tactical advantage but, in all honesty, I rarely felt the need to move my characters around, instead using a turn on an ability or just to shoot my gun. I suppose this explains why a player can be a couple squares away from an enemy and miss a shot, a frustrating truth for the series. Non-lethal means are also available to players. Knocking an enemy unconscious isn’t always the best method but doing so results in an increased chance for Intelligence, a type of currency that can be used for upgrades.
Regardless of map size, Chimera Squad ultimately retains much of the tactical fun of a traditional XCOM game. I found plenty of opportunities to advance my position and turn the tide. Player and enemy turns now alternate, as opposed to moving as a group and acting in unison. It is advisable to always have one or two Squad members that can shift an enemy out of their turn. I found Torque’s ability to use her tongue (she’s a snake) to whip an enemy next to her, then ensnare them indefinitely. Shelter can shift places with an enemy or friendly, which can get someone out of a tough spot or be used for further advantages. It wasn’t until a few hours in that I realized how important it was to not only attack, but stop an enemy from potentially causing real damage to a member. Around this time, I think players will truly get a feel for the diversity each member of the Squad can offer and how battles can be small, intimate puzzles rather than the massive ones previous XCOM games presented.
Once a mission in Chimera Squad ends, players are treated to the barracks where a number of actions can be done. Players can see an overview of City 31 and its 9 districts. Each district has a threat level that raises when players ignore any kind of mission in that district. If a district reaches its maximum threat level, City 31’s anarchy rises, with maximum anarchy resulting in a fail state. Increased threat and anarchy also means that missions will become more difficult for the Squad. Over the course of the campaign, “Dark Events” rise up during missions that add a not-so-friendly modifier. Players usually can choose between one or the other but they always will make life harder.
To counterattack the constant impending doom, the Squad can invest time into completing projects, training themselves, or doing a spec-ops mission. Spec-ops missions grant one of the three in-game currencies or other rewards by having a Squad member basically sit in the menu for the projected number of days. Training a Squad member will boost a core stat or removing a scar by, you guessed it, waiting a few days. Projects create assembly projects that result in improved gear for the Squad, whether it be better weapons, new breach gear, or robot backups that will come into a mission if a teammate is downed. These projects can often take several days but will go by faster if a member of the squad is attached to them.
Players need to be smart on what they spend resources on in Chimera Squad. While I don’t think it’s as likely to back yourself into a hole like in previous games, spending money on the wrong pieces of armor or research may put your team behind when enemies start to get tougher. Still, it’s a mildly fun distraction to organize your team both in and out of combat.
One major issue that I had with Chimera Squad, however, was in its presentation. When it comes time to deploy your Squad and assign them equipment or navigate through the barracks, players are likely to be a bit frustrated by the overly simplistic menus. Not only can tooltips feel somewhat clumsy, it can require multiple clicks to navigate things correctly. Though I didn’t encounter many glitches or problems during gameplay, graphics can sometimes get stuck, like a roof appearing over a building where units are or a gun firing in the wrong direction. Nothing game-breaking occurred in my time but it is something to be wary of. Be sure to save often if your difficulty setting allows it.
At a $20 price point (or $10 for early access), XCOM: Chimera Squad is a mostly successful experiment. Firaxis Games has cherry-picked many of the best elements of the XCOM series and put them in a more fast-paced, action-oriented title. Tactical superiority still reigns supreme, especially with the intelligently designed breach mode. However, I think some players will miss the more hardcore elements of XCOM despite their exclusion not necessarily fitting the pace of this title. In no way does Chimera Squad feel like a budget title, outside of its somewhat clumsy menus and presentation. But this graphic novel-style, pulpy tactical adventure seems to be the tipping off point for something equally exciting and grander in the future.
