 The early days of Julian Golub's newest XCOM style game, Phoenix Point, are nothing if not brimming with potential. When I first played Backer Build 1 in early June, I was pleased to know the differences to Phyraxis' current iteration of the XCOM formula, Return Fire, an enormous boss creature the like I'd never seen in this sort of turn-based strategy game and a lack of pods. I saw several evil aliens spawning all at once as some of those. The second Backer Build however differentiates itself from existing XCOM titles even further. Gone are the infinite reloads of weapons. Instead, supply chests are yours for the looting throughout the map. They contain not only ammo, but weapons and the plurable turrets as well. This edition I really like and feel that it further forces you on the move, since there's only so many shots you can take before you run out of bullets on your main and whatever off-hand weapon you've brought along. It further reinforces the risk-reward gamble this type of game is so good at creating. A new class, none of the engineer, is introduced as well as usable vehicles. The engineer I quite like. Not only is he capable of fixing up your vehicle, but he's also got a melee attack which zaps and stuns whichever crap person or gigantic spider boss gets near. The usable vehicle for its part actually makes the main map of the build a bit too easy. It's a very powerful weapon and the only thing that doesn't make it right out imbalanced is that there appear to be no bullets for its machine gun to reload with. The other thing that might be problematic is just how good the engineer's healing ability is. It doesn't come with any charges and I believe I used it twice over a single match. It doesn't have any drawbacks and it should else it's like a cleric in D&D way too overpowered. With the addition of this vehicle in fact I might actually have a problem with the crap people who spawn one by one instead of in the pods I already mentioned. Back in the first backer build, whoa that sounds funny, when they came one by one or two at a time from different directions I was still challenged. They weren't too difficult to kill but they have hard carapaces and do a hell of a lot of damage once they enter melee range so making even the tiniest mistake was punished. With the vehicle very few of the crap people have the opportunity to actually get nearby since a lot of the shots I took with the vehicle's machine gun either downright killed them or maimed the creatures badly enough to make picking them off with the sniper or assault easy as pie. I have to say if you're not careful with your targets with the vehicle you might maim and murder your own. That's what I did to my engineer, a crap person was in front of him, the vehicle was in front of them both and I thought I'd blow the crap person away conveniently forgetting that when you shoot at someone while having a character in that someone's line of sight you're quite likely to hit him too especially with the armor piercing bullets of the vehicle's machine gun. You wouldn't think I'd forget again but soon after the very next playthrough I did I managed to maim my assault. Unfortunately I don't have the footage of that first incident since I wasn't recording but you know it wasn't pleasant. As for bugs in this very early pre-alpha there is some of them. My third and last playthrough of the build the one I recorded ended with me parking the vehicle in front of the spider boss and for whatever reason that screwed up her patting. That's why I unfortunately am unable to show you how the gigantic mutated spider queen tears my boys limb from limb but hey these things happen as I said this isn't even alpha yet as the little description to the upper right notifies all of us. There's also some stuttering for no reason whatsoever but I will say is the game actually performs better than XCOM 2 does when that stuttering isn't present which I know sounds weird but the game also looks better and better. There's obviously no graphics options quite yet but I'm enjoying the movie grain effect for the first time in a game in forever unfortunately much as I'd like to get my hands on the third backer build that will have to wait until early November as announced by Golub in a recent video the good news is we'll be getting the geoscape i.e the map of the entire globe that whole strategic layer which adds the second part of everyone's favorite mix of survival combat I say survival combat in a very different sense from what modern survival games mean obviously and base management personally I can't wait. One last note I absolutely love the fact that monsters will mutates throughout the course of either the game or the battle or maybe both I'm not sure which the model for the spider queen in this backer build was different from what was in the first one but that's not a complete overhaul of the way the queen looks merely the latest stage of the bosses mutation later on of course we'll be seeing added abilities during these later stages I'm not sure and I don't think it has been announced yet how many stages bosses and creatures will each have I guess we'll find out either later on in the development cycle or as we play the final product which has been delayed until either June or July of next year I can't wait there's so much I'm excited about and I feel like we're getting so many interesting ideas in the XCOM like market we've got Xenonoss 2 coming out soon with what is the truest successor of the original Julien Golub XCOM from the 90s we've got Pharaxus's XCOM series the true and proper king of so far which is doing some great things and is obviously the heavy hitter in terms of financing and triple a development and we've got Julien himself exploring all these interesting ideas in phoenix point I just love the place we're in with this genre and I can't wait for more peers Mr Golub can we maybe get animations of our soldiers losing legs feet getting maimed torsos and heads later on in the development cycle please pretty pretty please I mean it's such a neat idea that we have all these new things that's somehow slowed down either us or our enemies but I would love to have an actual graphic representation in the game I would love to see how my soldiers head fly off to the ground with a crop versus nubs with his pincers is what I mean can you make that happen thanks and you dear viewer thank you for watching if you enjoyed this like share subscribe and I will see you next time more on phoenix point and Xenonoss 2 later