Picking up the bodies of your fallen soldiers and fighting your way back to the chopper could be just as tense and dramatic as actually accomplishing the mission at hand.

Later, in XCOM 2 and XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, those escapes, referred to as evacuations or “evacs,” became an integral part of the campaign. Rather than suffer a total party kill, sometimes you got a decent chance to escape. In 2012’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown, as well as the downloadable add-ons and the sequel that followed, there was always the chance that you could lose a mission. That would be Firaxis’ reboot of the XCOM franchise. I know that sounds weird, but let’s start with an example from a series that BattleTech clearly emulates, from its turn-based structure to its focus on building out your troops. But, after spending more time with the game, I’ve stumbled on what I consider to be a pretty big flaw: Losing missions in BattleTech isn’t any fun. Since then it’s been a fixture at the top of Steam’s best-sellers list where it’s traded the first place position back and forth with Frostpunk, the post-apocalyptic colony simulation, over the last couple of days.Īfter playing through the first third of the game I was absolutely smitten with BattleTech.

BattleTech, the turn-based strategy title from Harebrained Schemes, came out just last week.