UFO: Afterlight

UFO: Afterlight is the kind of strategy game that asks for patience, not quick reflexes: base management, squad control, and a lot of time spent getting the larger system under your hands. By our assessment, its main strength is the mix of tactical ground fighting with the wider campaign layer, which gives it more structure than a simple skirmish game. The honest limit is that older strategy games of this sort can feel slow, fiddly, and rough around the edges, especially when menus and pacing matter as much as battles. In practice it is about learning a complicated flow and living with the occasional clunk that comes with that era of design. It sits between grand strategy and tactics, closer to a cult PC game than to something streamlined for easy pick-up play. The ceiling is mostly for people who enjoy systems first and polish second.