Man, oh man. In 2026, I wasn't sure if we were ever going to see something like this again. 2012's Enemy Unknown is one of my favorite (and most played) games of all time, and XCOM 2 was a very ambitious and fun sequel. It's unmistakable that this was made by many of the same developers, and the structure of the game is not too dissimilar. The major change is that your player character is an actual character/squad member that you customize and send on missions, rather than a faceless "Commander" avatar. Effectively, the campaign feels like a hybrid between XCOM 2 and a Mass Effect game, complete with companion characters you talk, develop bonds with, and do sidequests for.
That mix is essentially peanut butter and chocolate. Don't get me wrong - you are not getting an in-depth ARPG experience with full dialogue trees, multiple hub areas, ect. The points where you run around between battles on mission are really perfunctory, in practice. Nor is the game a "true" XCOM in terms of depth or challenge. (To give you an idea of what I mean, I played on Hard and completed the game without ever failing a story mission, and lost only 2 squad-mates. I am not an especially skilled XCOM player.) Neither of these points are really outright negatives for me at this time. Even if I like the characters, I no longer have patience for hours of talky cutscenes. And while I'd like a harder tactical experience, the level of challenge here was more than enough to have fun (and it was nice to be able to beat a campaign on my first try).
I really hope Bitreactor is able to keep the band together and follow this up, because what flaws it has could absolutely be rectified in a sequel, or even an expansion/major update. The game could use a bit more variety and depth - especially in the enemies. This becomes particularly egregious late-game, when one enemy faction becomes extremely samey and repetitive to fight. More ways to adjust and tune difficulty would be nice. (While I appreciated not losing a bunch of plot-relevant characters, I think a less forgiving death mechanic would be one of the first things I'd try out.) The game also just... ends after the campaign wraps. Given the ending situation, it's fairly obvious that some sort of post-game sandbox was intended to be included, but had to be cut in order to get this thing over the finish line. Finally, the game is messy technically, though not a true disaster. I believe the first patch has smoothed some things over, but damn can you tell this is an Unreal Engine game made by the Xcom 2 people. The game looks very close to Xcom 2 in terms of fidelity (complete with that classic Unreal texture pop-in!). I just wish it didn't run as crappily as Xcom 2 did in 2015, regardless of the fact that I (and most people) am not playing this on decade-old hardware.
That's mostly easy to forgive, though. You're not coming to a game like this for blow-away visuals, and bad performance isn't the killer it could be in an action game. What you have here is a breezy, fun tactics game/lite-RPG hybrid that uses the Star Wars setting to tell an effective (if fairly tropey) story. Several of the companion characters were charming enough to win me over, and I (like many) am well over giving a shit about Star Wars-anything. (Big credit to the male VA for Hawks, whose work carries a lot of the later beats, and whose Cowboy drawl sounded very funny coming from the mouth of a Twi'lek.)
If you love Firaxis-com, temper your expectations a little and I think you'll like or love this. If you're a Star Wars head, definitely give it a try. I hope we see its like again... in less than 11 years this time.