XCOM®: Chimera Squad

Take-Two and 2K games have updated all their games Terms of Service, turning this game as well as all of their other games into literal spyware. Important Info in Terms of Service: • Mods are a bannable offense • Display of Cheats/Exploits is bannable • Forced arbitration clause and a waiver of class action and jury trial rights for all users residing in the United States and any other territory other than Australia, Switzerland, The United Kingdom, or The Territories of The European Economic Area • You can be banned for using a VPN while connecting to online servers • Cannot access game content on a Virtual PC Then we have the lack of transparency in data processing, data transfers to third countries, dubious consent by minors, no purpose limitation, profiling and to top it all of - insufficient justification for data use. Collected Data Types as per the EULA, it's a generalisation for anything and everything 2K related, this list includes more than just what the game collects. It includes everything they want to collect through their services, from you. • Identifiers / Contact Information: Name, user name, gamertag, postal and email address, phone number, unique IDs, mobile device ID, platform ID, gaming service ID, advertising ID (IDFA, Android ID) and IP address • Protected Characteristics: Age and gender • Commercial Information: Purchase and usage history and preferences, including gameplay information • Billing Information: Payment information (credit / debit card information) and shipping address • Internet / Electronic Activity: Web / app browsing and gameplay information related to the Services; information about your online interaction(s) with the Services or our advertising; and details about the games and platforms you use and other information related to installed applications • Device and Usage Data: Device type, software and hardware details, language settings, browser type and version, operating system, and information about how users use and interact with the Services (e.g., content viewed, pages visited, clicks, scrolls) • Profile Inferences: Inferences made from your information and web activity to help create a personalized profile so we can identify goods and services that may be of interest • Audio / Visual Information: Account photos, images, and avatars, audio information via chat features and functionality, and gameplay recordings and video footage (such as when you participate in playtesting) • Sensitive Information: Precise location information (if you allow the Services to collect your location), account credentials (user name and password), and contents of communications via chat features and functionality.

Please stay away from this game and avoid purchasing any game products from 2K Corporation and its subsidiaries! Because this company has updated its privacy policy, it will collect all user privacy data during gameplay through methods such as hard disk scanning and browsing history copying, including bank cards, social media, online shopping platform accounts and passwords, and even chat records in social media! Important Info in Terms of Service: • Mods are a bannable offense • Display of Cheats/Exploits is bannable • Forced arbitration clause and a waiver of class action and jury trial rights for all users residing in the United States and any other territory other than Australia, Switzerland, The United Kingdom, or The Territories of The European Economic Area • You can be banned for using a VPN while connecting to online servers • Cannot access game content on a Virtual PC Collected Data Types: • Identifiers / Contact Information: Name, user name, gamertag, postal and email address, phone number, unique IDs, mobile device ID, platform ID, gaming service ID, advertising ID (IDFA, Android ID) and IP address • Protected Characteristics: Age and gender • Commercial Information: Purchase and usage history and preferences, including gameplay information • Billing Information: Payment information (credit / debit card information) and shipping address • Internet / Electronic Activity: Web / app browsing and gameplay information related to the Services; information about your online interaction(s) with the Services or our advertising; and details about the games and platforms you use and other information related to installed applications • Device and Usage Data: Device type, software and hardware details, language settings, browser type and version, operating system, and information about how users use and interact with the Services (e.g., content viewed, pages visited, clicks, scrolls) • Profile Inferences: Inferences made from your information and web activity to help create a personalized profile so we can identify goods and services that may be of interest • Audio / Visual Information: Account photos, images, and avatars, audio information via chat features and functionality, and gameplay recordings and video footage (such as when you participate in playtesting) • Sensitive Information: Precise location information (if you allow the Services to collect your location), account credentials (user name and password), and contents of communications via chat features and functionality.

Considering the change of terms of service, I can only NOT recommand this game, and any other game from the involved compagnies. Game is... WAS great. They removed mod support, apparently even condamn it now. Game as a steam workshop, that is now NOT functional. This kind of BSs should not be endorsed by any self respecting player.

I was hoping for a classic Xcom experience and this wasnt it. It is an OK game, but it isnt Xcom.

Horrible, Repetitive Lobotomized game. Not worthy of the XCOM name. Pure crap. An XCOM Fan.

I freaking love the XCOM series but 2k just decided to continue their run of being f*cking ruining-game assholes. Don't buy it

Worst episode of the series, full of gameplay limitations and bugs. get the 2 with the expansion and avoid this junk

Feels like an Alien propaganda cop sitcom that may have aired during the events of the good games.

This had the potential to be an interesting spin on the XCOM formula, but it has way too many bugs. I decided to reinstall it after enjoying Tactical Breach Wizards, but it's still a mess: - Animations are messed up, with characters zipping all over the place - Breaching at the start of an encounter would frequently leave the thing I breached through intact as my agents ran through the solid door - Worst of all the targeting UI will occasionally lie about an explosives radius so that your characters get hit when you set off a 'safe' explosion. The game is cheaper than the full XCOMs, but that's reflected in the comic book cutscenes and smaller scale. It doesn't excuse the game having this many technical problems. Tactical Breach Wizards has come out since and while it doesn't compare directly to Chimera Squad, it will scratch the same itch.

Probably not everyone's cup of tea, particularly if you're a hardcore XCOM fan. But it's still good and enjoyable for what it is. Combat was reasonable, the story was fair. Just don't expect the traditional XCOM experience.

Cool gameplay, lazy presentation, and boring character design, even with aliens. The lack of replayability and a non-existent sandbox is a huge problem. At least for me, that’s a dealbreaker. Dialogue & voiceover? Some of it very cool, but the squad members are either weird or boring. The UI is way too cartoonish, making the game less "cool looking". Even the Xcom1 got it better. The new RPG-like turn order mechanic seemed fine at first but quickly felt the lack of tactical planning due to that, since it limits it deeply. Lack of customisation? Straight up lazy and boring. Yes, again. Though tbh, I'd be cool to play a realistic modern military themed tactical game with some sandbox aspects included with the "Breach Mode" core element. And its knida cool to try Chimera too, just know that its not great and lacking in many aspects.

Why Do Turn-Based Strategy Games Still Struggle With Replayability? I’ve been playing turn-based strategy games for most of my life. It all started with Laser Squad on the ZX Spectrum, then X-COM on early PCs, and later XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which still stands as my personal gold standard. But despite all the years and technical improvements, I keep running into the same issue: Most turn-based games just don’t have enough replayability or mission variety. Some games (Warhammer 40K: Mechanicus comes to mind) have a great setting, but character development feels flat. Others offer deep progression systems—but every mission ends up feeling the same. And some tell a great story, but only allow one way to play it. No real freedom. One recent letdown for me was XCOM: Chimera Squad. Amazing concept: post-invasion Earth, aliens and humans living together, political tensions, secret ops... It could’ve been brilliant. But it forced a set cast of characters on me. I couldn’t build my own team, define my own squad dynamics, or create my own strategies. That sense of ownership just wasn’t there. But Maybe That’s the Nature of the Genre? It’s a tough balance. Do we want a handcrafted story? Or freedom to shape our own? Games like Company of Heroes (real-time, not turn-based, but still relevant) show how powerful narrative campaigns can be. Each mission feels like a movie. But once you finish the campaign, there’s not much reason to go back. Strategy games often force a choice between story and freedom. You rarely get both. Here’s What I Think Could Be Better I don’t think it has to be either/or. What I’d love to see is a game that gives us a few predefined characters—with strong personalities and backstories—but lets us choose their skills, evolve their traits, and shape their relationships. Let us build part of the team ourselves too. Give us that mix of crafted and emergent storytelling. And here’s where it gets interesting: What if the game tracked our key decisions and generated a summary at the end? Not just a stats screen, but a short movie, a written story, or even an AI-narrated recap of what happened. Who lived. Who died. What decisions were made. That would make each playthrough truly feel like an adventure. With modern AI and deep language models, this kind of personalized storytelling isn’t science fiction anymore—it’s actually possible. It just needs the right team to build it.

A very enjoyable turn base game. Not as long and complicated the other Firaxis XCOM games and no modding but the story is shorter. It was fun combining different unique characters, also nice to be the hunters and not the hunted.

A quite underrated game, in my opinion, although not without its flaws. It plays differently than XCOM, but its solid foundations remain underneath the big changes. A small side project like this is a great way to test substantial modifications to the core formula and, although I dont like it as much as its predecesors, I have enjoyed the experience. Many people have criticised the lore. I agree that it makes little sense, but I think Firaxis always has prioritized gameplay over realism -which I approve-, so I can deal with whatever senseless pretext that lets me play in the XCOM universe with some aliens on my side. The worst thing for me are the dialogs; I find then unsufferably quippy and cringey, but I can skip most of them and focus on blasting ayys so, as a whole, this game is a solid 7/10 to me, Worth purchasing if you are fan of the genre (specially on sale).

Its fun for a while, then you get over a hump and it gets super simple and repetitive. Also, im surprised by how glitchy the game is after all this time. Seems like a cheap cash grab using X-Coms name. Get it on sale

x com apart from you dont get to make the choices turn order removes all tactics and forces you to just shoot at the next enemy on the list you can kill

Update 2025-03: 2K TOS + EULA update makes it even worse [h1]TL;DR[/h1] Sadly a bland TRPG that is fairly bad for a XCOM title. The turnorder is timeline based instead of being team based. Don't expect this to be XCOM3 or anything close to it because it sets a very very different tone with some contradicting design choices that ruin the first half of the game entirely because of hidden information and some of your units need to learn a lot of abilities before they allow for more than one valid strategy. [h1]Pros:[/h1] [list] [*] Frequent autosaves [*] Every unit has their own unique abilities [*] Some abilities are really neat [*] Turn limits exist in some missions but are very hard to fail [*] A newly introduced breach concept that is great in theory but poorly implemented into the game design (see below) [*] Visuals are pretty good [*] Most dialogues are cringe, one character is kinda funny though [/list] [h1]Cons:[/h1] [b]This section has been subdivided due to it's length.[/b] [h2]Contradicting design for combat[/h2] Most missions consist of multiple encounters within a tiny area each. They start with a breach sequence during which you get the initiative over the enemies, that have one of three states: Take more damage, either run into cover or return fire after the breach. While each of the aspects: [list] [*] A few of your characters require their more powerful abilities that they learn fairly late as well as proper gear to unleash their potential and become useful [*] The turnorder is timeline based instead of a squad based [*] The encounter takes place on a tiny area. Most of the time you don't have to move your characters at all to wipe out the entire room [*] Until you are able to stun, your enemies or disable their weapons you don't get much of a choice on whom to attack next [*] Your main tactical influence in the beginning is to breach into a room, see where the enemies are and what their their turnorder is, reload an older save, reassign your squad members into a different order and locations to be able to attack the enemies with high initiative first. After that you follow your predetermined rulebook to complete the mission without casualties [*] To be honest I am most certain this scum-strategy is not even intended because it doesn't fit the design at all: [list] [*] The turnorder is hidden during the breach [*] You don't get to see the room from a top down perspective during the breach but only first person angles and hence can't deduce the proper location of enemies [*] Unable to save during the setup phase for the breach or the breach itself so restarting a breach requires the repetition of member assignments [/list] [/list] ... is fine for itself, the combination of them all ruin the entire first half of the game. [h2]Difficulty / Balancing[/h2] This is very much affected by the previous section. [list] [*] Combat: [list] [*] The hardest difficulty disables the tutorial. [*] I played on the 2nd hardest difficulty (since I wanted to see the tutorial) without iron mode - but including the other optional difficulty settings - and apart from the first boss fight this game was way too easy [*] You don't get XP for defeating an enemy. This is kinda odd and feels little rewarding for defeating all enemies [*] Most of the time you fight reinforcements rather than the initial wave of enemies and there is no tactical aspect to it, just tedious repetition, because ... [*] ... the enemy reinforcements are deployed in sizes you can handle easily until the next wave arrives. It would be cool if the reinforcements gradually became stronger and force you to flea the level since they don't provide any XP anyways [*] Units HP is automatically restored in-between missions. You can disable healing only between encounters (a mission often consists of 3 of those) [*] A way to make this game somewhat challenging is by embracing every single miss and to not save scum at all. This is especially true for the breach sequences but that erases any tactical meaning of yours during the first half of the game (see above) [/list] [*] Meta-Game: [list] [*] Upgrades, you can research, are mainly useful in the beginning, since you get way better gear along the way and the level of upgrades is very limited. However in the beginning you don't have the resources to buy the gear you unlocked and as soon as you have the resources you don't really need them anymore [*] XCOM2 had some decent meta management: Which missions to focus with which units, what to research, when to slow down the Avatar Project. All of this is somewhat present in Chimaira Squad ... but not really. Basically you can't do anything wrong and you can't fail [*] Dark events don't progress the Anarchy (somewhat equivalent to the Avatar Project) and are almost meaningless [*] I don't see a way to ever struggle if you invest resources early into your map, even when you specifically ignore the districts that produce Anarchy. Maybe this is just me because I like to get rushed on the meta progression while I love to take my time during the turn based combat [/list] [/list] [h2]QoL[/h2] [list] [*] Some imprecise/missing information: [list] [*] No line of sight indication to simplify your movement decisions for a subsequential attack [*] Can't check gear of your squad members during the mission, even though it is critical to know which ammo is equipped [*] There are multiple types of grenades and a member can only hold one of each type. Why the game doesn't clarify which of the 15 grenades are of which type mind boggles me [*] During the breach you may use special abilities. The UI suggests that this replaces your opportunity to shoot with this character during the breach, but it doesn't [*] Effects on a unit with a duration of 1 are active only during their overwatch window, but not their turn. Stunning an enemy, that didn't have an overwatch set up, for one turn effectively doing nothing seems kinda misleading [*] Abilities that effect the turn order may cause the display of abilities of inactive units [/list] [*] Other things are just annoying: [list] [*] Exactly 4 units are required on a mission. It is not possible to take less on a mission to make them harder and progress with other tasks [*] No quicksave/-load option [*] Calculation of hit chance is sometimes very unreasonable. An enemy that is twice your size, is not in cover, not in melee range (in which case hitting should be harder due to the barrel length and collision) but 2-5 meters away, should be easier to hit than 60% [*] Music stops during the loading screen or breach sequences and the song restarts from the beginning after reloading [/list] [/list] [h2]Bugs[/h2] [list] [*] 7 crashes in 35h of playtime [*] Bugs that soft-lock and force the loading of an older save [*] Training assignment registers the wrong slot and can abort another training that was still in progress [*] Saving and loading is slowed down depending on saves, loads and deletions you did per session. Restarting the game helps [*] At a certain point the auto naming of new save files is going to always overwrite the latest save file instead of creating an additional one until you deleted some save files. Steam cloud save files can be deleted efficiently: Open game with Cloud Sync enabled, manually delete files from your disk while the game is running, close the game [*] Loading a save slot may alter the current game state drastically: [list] [*] Current HP of units [*] The position of units [*] Reinforcements that should have arrived but didn't [*] Enemies you were able to shoot before are out of sight all of the sudden [*] Destroyed terrain that is torn down that much you can walk there proceeds to block all shots [*] A unit that was supposed to be stunned isn't stunned [/list]

Good fun! A bit buggy and some of the characters are bland but I enjoyed it.

I love this type of story and game like from the 1st Xcom which was war and 2nd was resistance and now this one is about living and working together. The gameplay however is alot different then the first two since you have operators which each has different abilities and equipment's. The only thing that sucks are it doesn't have same features and mechanics so this makes so game very different. Still its a fun game with different style but I'm waiting for Xcom 3 one day.

2K updated their EULA for all their games and now they're allowed to install literal spyware on your computer, on top of other things like banning you outright for using a VPN and such. It's a shame cause Chimera Squad is a pretty fun spinoff game that I'd otherwise recommend.

Obligatory TOS BS mention, 2k can eat a fat one. Onto the actual game, its a mess. If you like XCOM, don't play this cause you won't feel like you are playing an XCOM game at all. No strategy here, just mindless combat endlessly. Returning to base is basically just when you can buy new gear and that is it. The combat is also awful, and they clearly know it is bad because the game actively encourages save scumming by introducing a Restart Encounter option, and enemies are always in the same placement so you can try to cheese your way past the Exceptionally poorly balanced combat. The writing is like someone thought they needed to give the script to a Marvel writer, because the game Clearly needed terrible jokes every few seconds. The only likable character is the one who barely talks, and Only because they don't talk much. The plot is also paper thin, just "Oh, XCOM does anti-terrorism now I guess, and you're going to track down gangs in a city because gangs bad." BTW, if you Do make the mistake of buying this game and playing it, make sure to pick the Correct gang to go after at the start of the game, otherwise you'll need to start over your entire playthrough after 8 hours once you find out that you are now soft locked from finishing the game. XCOM is dead now, and this dumpster fire is to blame.

Fun spinoff of the x-com series. Recommended before tackling the much harder Enemy Within on X-Com 2 campaigns

Original XCOM devs are now in the developer which made Phoenix Point. Firaxis of Old is gone. 2K also doing shady EULA changes. Woke ass degenerate game. Avoid.

This game is the absolute worst version of an XCOM style game. Compared to XCOM 2, every single element of this game is significantly worse. If you enjoyed XCOM 2, this game will frustrate you. Play literally any other XCOM style game and you will have a better experience than this. I enjoyed XCOM 2 so much that I sought out as many XCOM style games as I could find to try them all, and this one is by far the absolute worst of them all. Which is so strange seeing as how XCOM 2 is the best example of the genre even all these years later. Compared to XCOM 2, the game play is worse, you have less control, less customization, and all the premade characters that make up the game are just thinly veiled social propaganda messaging statements. It is truly a mystery to me how a sequel can be this bad, but here we are. I bought this game only to satiate my need for XCOM style games, and honestly its just sitting in my library making me angry every time I try to pick it up again and give it another shot. Don't buy, even on deep discount.

DEI trash from the minute 0. Insufferable marvel characters. White dudes where obviously swapped to aliens because we can't have those. We need to have brave and stunning women of color in your face you BIGOT!

Nicht so gut wie die anderen XCom Spiele aber dennoch als Angebot einen Blick wert. XCOM Light von allem was die XCOM Serie ausmacht etwas weniger "Tiefgang" die Kämpfe sind weniger fordernd. Das "Wirtschaftssystem" ist viel einfacher. Das muss nicht unbedingt ein Nachteil sein, man kann ja auch auf dem höchsten Schwierigkeitsgrad spielen (ich habe das bei den XCOM spielen nie gemacht die waren mir auf "normal" schon schwierig genug) -weniger herausfordernd -Zielgruppe: Einsteiger, Anfänger bis Fortgeschrittene "Anfänger" -eher nichts für Hardcore Rundenbasierte Fans die eine harte Herausforderung möchten. (Habe schon viele Rundenbasierte Spiele über einen Langen Zeitraum gespielt ich schätze den Spielspass mit Mittlerer bis "leicht schwieriger Herausforderung" sowas wie "permadeath" ist mir zu blöde dieses Spiel hat für mich seinen Reiz ist mir allerdings ein klein bisschen zu "oberflächlich") + Eher für Einsteiger in Rundenbasierte Kämpfe gedacht + leichter Einstieg + schöne Grafik und guter Sound + alles in allem ein Gelungenes Spiel mit ein paar Abstrichen: - arg repetitive Vergleich zu XCOM 2: - Langzeitmotivation sehe ich hier für mich nicht so wahrscheinlich werde ich es durchspielen und dann eher in XCOM2 wieder ein paar Runden drehen Für mich eins der besten Spiele des Genres da passt irgendwie alles und selbst auf easy ist es noch herausfordernd. Spielspass: 7 Gameplay allgemein, Handling, Bedienung: 8 (UI selbsterklärend usw.) Schwierigkeit: 3-6 Dauermotivation: 5 Grafik: 8 Sound: 7 Fazit: Kann man nehmen im Sale zuschlagen

Take-two's new Terms of Service is unforgivable

It's a terrible game *and* it's malware/spyware now.

2k and their new Spyware is a threat to all of us.

This game is an insult to XCOM

2K have destroyed the legacy of this franchise...

good game

fun af

It's XCOM

amazing

evil companies