Last week I shared the first gameplay teaser of X-COM: UFO Defense 3D, a full 3D battlescape for OpenXcom Extended. It runs the original game's rules, AI and saves, drawn in 3D.

Here's what changed this week:

Video (3:51): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJa4IzOUJtg

Everything in the video is real gameplay. Each comparison shows last week's build first, then wipes to this week's.

ENVIRONMENTS

• Ground materials now span many tiles, so the ground no longer repeats every tile
• All grass is procedural, with flowers, leaf litter, stones and dead weeds, tuned per biome
• Visual noise matched to the original sprites, so soldiers stay easy to read

TERRAIN AND VEGETATION

• Sun-following slope relief: hills and ramps read as clearly as in the sprites
• Living plants have a waxy sheen, and the hedges were rebuilt

LIGHTING

• Night missions are actually dark now, following the game's own shade levels
• Street lamps, flares and fires are real 3D lights, each reaching as far as the game's own light power

NEW UNITS

• 3D Tanks (Cannon, Rocket Launcher, Laser Cannon) and the Cyberdisc, filling their full 2x2 footprint
• Tanks cook off and burn down to a charred wreck
• A Cyberdisc's self-destruct uses OpenXcom's own blast and bursts it into burning segments

ANIMATIONS

• NaturalMotion Euphoria style shot reactions for non-lethal wounds: a hand reaches for the wound, the head looks at it, then back to the fight
• Hits land anywhere on the body, and blood hits the floor for every 10 HP lost
• Lethal hits get a short dying window, then death throes; head shots drop the body limp at once

Screenshots, clips and side-by-side comparisons with the original sprites: https://xcom-3d.pages.dev/

Feedback welcome, I'm thinking about releasing this sooner than I initially planned with any late game units that aren't finished being sprite billboards. It might be cool to have a sprite billboards mode while keeping the 3d environments as well.

Hi there, I’m someone who hasn’t really delved into the whole strategy type game of XCOM however I constantly watch a YouTuber Baalorlord and play a lot of slay the spire and saw him play XCOM and it looked really fun. However during stream I heard him say ‘he preferred XCOM 1 over 2’ due to various reasons. I want to try this game out and thought I’d get others opinion on which is a better game in general and which is a better game for someone just starting out!

I read conflicting statements (EW).

One said you should sat rush and you need 2 steam vents on 2nd layer after the first misson or just start over and the other said doing sat rush and picking engineers over scientists hampers your weapon / armor research and makes missions harder. Other guide mentioned to get mimetic gen with sniper ASAP to have a easy time in missions.

What's the current easiest approach to beat that mode (no ironman)?