XCOM: Chimera Squad

XCOM: Chimera Squad is a lighter, cheaper spin-off set shortly after the events of XCOM 2, at a time when humans and aliens are trying to live side by side in a single city run by a provisional administration tasked with maintaining fragile post-war order. The player leads a mixed team of human and alien agents investigating rising violence and trying to hold together a fragile peace among factions competing for influence in a post-war metropolis full of tension between the different species.

The game abandons permanent unit death in favor of a fixed but diverse roster with unique abilities and personal backstories, and introduces a split-turn system where the actions of the player and enemies interleave instead of strictly alternating rounds. Missions often begin with a breach through a door, after which the player decides how best to handle the tactical situation, or deploys a different tactic for a different group of enemies. A shorter, more accessible campaign combined with a lower price makes Chimera Squad a good entry point for players who were wary of the full complexity of XCOM 2, and it's technically undemanding even on older hardware, so even a weaker laptop can run it.

The tone of the game is lighter, with an emphasis on the individual agents' personalities, their distinct gear, and their relationships with one another, which is reflected in a more humorous storytelling style between missions through comic-book-style cutscenes interspersed with conversations at the base. Reception was mixed to positive — players appreciated the new mechanics and the lower time commitment, though some missed the tension of permanently losing units that defined earlier entries. Today, Chimera Squad is remembered as an interesting experiment that showed the series that XCOM's turn-based system can be changed more substantially than just cosmetically, without losing the tactical depth and tension typical of this type of strategy game.

Why play it: For players who want to try a lighter, faster variant of XCOM's turn-based system with strongly defined agent personalities, even at the cost of less tension from permanent unit losses.