Nothing short of a miracle of design. It could have been just a damn good tactical combat game, but they decided they wanted more. Instead, we get an extremely in-depth simulation about micromanaging your organization and the combat missions, and both sides are extremely good. The feedback between both sides is great too, as you frantically research the alien technology in hopes of fighting back the continually ramping up band of goons you face, which basically culminates in aliens that entirely turn your own squad against itself (Ethereals and Chryssalids) causing you to consider every single element even more carefully. Let's get this out of the way; if you want X-COM, there is no better game to play than X-COM in regards to what it does.

This all said, this game suffers from issues primarily tied to its longevity. Ships you see start being the same, individual troops get so powerful you can just send them in to kill out entire squads, the alien roster becomes predictable and the research feels meaningless. While I like the idea of hitting dead-ends, outside of the Flying Suit it rarely felt like any of the equipment I got was noticeably a huge improvement past the early game and it's only a problem because even the good stuff you research often feels a bit trivial as time goes on. It's worsened by the time you've realized that you've seen pretty much every consistent ship layout so every mission just becomes "send my one guy in and kill everyone unless there's a chryssalid in which case fuck time for my entire team to die." If campaigns weren't so long this would be a significantly better game IMO, but beggars can't be choosers; what exists here, in its current form, is still amazing and worth a play if any of the bullet points here interest you and you haven't played it. I fucking hate Chryssalids.