Some of things that ultimately ended up making me enjoy this game less than the original though it is still a good game.
[spoiler]1. the "false choices" where I can only choose one out the three missions at a time. Because even though I can produce every other ship and or weapon in the game, including highly advanced alien ships, I can't manage to put another skyranger together?
2. is linked, I can have up to 99 people in my barracks but out of those 99 people I can only field 6 at a time? Why no "b" team skyranger?
3. Satellite coverage, like I have to build uplinks to each satellite, and somehow these uplinks that are quite honestly in one geographic location, like Asia, or the US, or where-ever are some how able to connect to the satellites "over the horizon." It's not like there arent already 10k spy satellites in orbit, the fee should be to lease them from google or someone
4. real bad interceptor game play. It's only marginally better than the original, they should have done something to improve that aspect of the game.
5. research was really dumbed down so you get blinking light indicators on what you need to do in order to complete the game. The orignal handled this much better in my opinion.
6. I too miss them attacking my base, god damn that was good shit when you had to control a million of your own units, some without guns, spread out through your base, trying to get some to safety or weapons. Where base layout actually mattered.[/spoiler]
There's a bunch of good to go with all that bad.
[spoiler]1. Loved the newer alien classes and what they did with the Cyberdiscs and those massive rolling aliens, whatever those are called with like 30 HP or more.
2. The sniper class is fun (if a bit overpowered) and the new sniper guns are fun to use and the various sniper abilities, especially when you unlock "double tap" and Angel Armor.
3. Some of the missions were very good at conveying scope, like the underground base mission for me seemed to go on and on. (I'm playing Ironman so I had to carefully approach every turn, there is no benifit to being reckless.)
4. Taking out the time point system was a good move for the whole game, even if it dumbed it down a little, it seemed more like it was complexity for complexity's sake.
5. Explosions were cool
6. grappling hooks n such were nice addition to armor and being at a high point to "spot" or Snipe from was pretty cool. Until a cyberdisk shows up in the building you are sniping from, and kills your high ranking sniper right before the final mission that is.
7. Ethereals were a lot of fun to fight against though I think that Assault class + shotgun was their effective and easy counter, or a well placed "few" sniper rounds.[/spoiler]