Phoenix Point - new Julian Gollop turn-based strategy game

Does anyone know if it’s like Netflix where they will rotate titles out of the list?

I believe I’ve heard that mentioned a few times, titles will rotate in and out

One thing I found annoying about Netflix is that some titles that I thought I spotted and now have time to watch, is gone.

So Game Pass may not be ideal for people like me who replays old games from time to time.

You can buy the game through Game Pass. MS will offer a 20% discount on it if you have an active subscription.

Other than that it may rotate back in again at some point.

If anything its the best thing to happen to gamers like you. Do the subscription for a month when the game releases, make sure to finish the game in that time. Pick the game up on a deep sale a year later. Win-Win for consumers.

Makes sense. But with my luck. It’ll have a high chance of rotating out the moment i subscribe!

I don’t think this was posted before

This is going to be an awesome game.

This does look excellent.

That looked awesome, I hope they get the difficulty balance down well. Can’t wait for the release.

I can’t either but I will have to since I backed the game and want a Steam version :(

Looks awesome - I cannot wait.

That targeting of specific parts on the enemy looks pretty sweet. Can’t wait to play this fall.

I really like what I see. It seems I favor Julian Gollop’s school of design over Firaxis’.

The ‘first person aiming’ could seem gimmicky at first but it’s really a way to give some control of the RNG to the player and make it more intuitive. You don’t have an abstract 45% to hit, you have two circles, the small one with a 50% of the shot going there, and the bigger one with 100%.
It’s intuitive if you have played any FPS, it makes the relation to distance super easy : if a enemy is close, you can put the big circle on him and you always hit him, if the enemy is farther away, you can see how the small circle is 80% covered so it could miss because the shot could go to the other 20% of space, if he is farther away even the monster profile will occupy even less space in your vision. And you can imagine how the circle’s size will be affected by soldier’s skill or weapon type.

And this ties neatly to their body part system. Some parts can have different armor, you can disable weapons and parts, some parts are obviously different on size so there is a trade-off in what to aim, and cover and unit relative position will affect that parts are able to be shot or not.

The more flexible movement system is my jam, it always irked me in XCOM, while it still keeps most of the streamlined approach of Firaxis game.
The directional overwatch is also a great addition, giving more player agency and nerfing a bit how good it is at the same time.
There are special abilities like in XCOM, but they are a bit more in control as you need to use will points to activate the.

It’ll be on Xbox PC game pass as well if that helps.

Yeah, all those things seem very well considered; softer RNG, more intuitive/less abstract systems (aiming, targeting, time units, watching), giving more of the flexibility of the original X-COM while simultaneously building on it.

I see it zooms in for an over the shoulder view - does it ever do that new XCom thing of staying zoomed in while I smash through a window or whatever? That’s my favourite bit :)

Looks cool, but man, Gollop owes a major debt of honor at the least to whomever did the Firaxis X-COM graphics/UI/UX stuff. I mean it is just pretty blatantly ripped off in large chunks.

Which they paid in full by using the “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” school of thought. :)

Sure. I’m not suggesting there is some legal right or something. And I agree that building on the backs of what came before is a big part of the game industry. I’d hate for everyone to have to ignore good UI tricks that came before, just because someone else did them. :)

As an aside, part way into that video, it’s a pity that you can tell if you killed a hidden target by whether you gain willpower. It would be kind of cool if it really remained unknown until you went to the area/find the body.