Keith: No, you're no longer leveling the landscape... not even close. You get to blow up some boxes on occassion. If you've got a heavy with you, however, you can use your *1* rocket (ONE!) to pop a hole in a wall to get at a particularly annoying target.
Argh! ... well, I can understand it, if the game is to be a tactical game and not a "after a certain point the optimal approach is to stay near the landing craft and level everything from range".
What I *really* don't like is mid-mission spawns. That's just crap, particularly since they're not map-edged. Highly annoying.
Wait what? Not even from the edge of the map, but anywhere? Is it literally out of thin air or is there some kind of indicator where they could come from? If it's not at least somewhat predictable (assuming proper scouting) that could be a dealbreaker for me. I'm not looking for a new game here, I'm looking for xcom. I'll take a new game that's xcomish, but not if it drops aliens on my head with no explanation in the middle of the mission.
Reaction fire is crap. It's not working the way I'd expect, ie: enemy moves from cover, SHOOT IT. No, it only works on newly seen enemies. Seriously? I wonder if I'm just not using it right.
That would also be in the dealbreaker range for me except that I'm imagining they'll fix that one, or it was a pebkac thing like you're wondering, etc.
The whole 'one item in backpack' bit is very tactically limiting. You want to bring a taser? No grenades for you! Medkit? No grenade, no taser! It really eased the balance of the game on the developers, I'm sure, but frack, really?
Not nice, but sounds adjustable-to.
Hmm, well, will see if they fix that reaction fire thing, and hope something can be done about the mid-mission-mid-map spawning... otherwise I guess it depends on how low the discount goes.