I suspect most people are like me: they’ve played original XCOM on Classic (maybe Normal) difficulty once and didn’t return to it. With expansion they would consider themselves experienced enough to try Iron Man, also maybe some Second Wave options. BAM – the game transforms. It would be another level of fun even without any real features and there you have this meld and stuff. So my bet is that most gamers (and maybe critics) will absolutely love this expansion no matter what.

I won’t be able to render final judgement until at least a second play-through, but Enemy Within definitely breaks up the rigidity of the base game. You still have to prioritize satellites, but with far more non-satellite research items (almost all of which are useful) this almost becomes a valuable limiter; it has to be done, and it’s not so easy anymore to prioritize and allocate the remainder of your funding. You’re decisions are more complicated than “first I get decent armor, then I rush up weapons and ignore everything else.” Now you’ll be tempted by gene mods and MECs and accessories that could provide the edge you need and which make it less important to rush up the weapons tree.

The story is the same, but the path through that story is less constrictive. I doubt you’ll completely change your mind, and so shouldn’t pay full price, but you might want to keep an eye out for sales.

Off-topic: is the Outsider the worst of the aliens? I say yes, because it exists solely to advance the plot. It has a relatively interesting design but no special abilities whatsoever, and disappears entirely after being captured. I really like the idea that the aliens use a semi-organic, self-defending construct to interface with their transportation technology–that’s one hell of an autopilot!–but they squander the whole idea.

The fishing village mission, though. Goddamn, that was fantastic. I didn’t mention it in the review because I didn’t want to spoil it for anyone — I think a lot of its impact lay in the fact that I had no idea what was going to happen — but the last few turns of that mission were the best XCOM has ever been. I wish they could find a way to make more missions like that without scripting them quite so heavily.

(Oh, and Mechtoids aren’t that nasty, but they do the job of beefing up Sectoid packs so that they’re not just free XP for your soldiers. Sectopods on the other hand seem to be even tougher. I certainly don’t remember having to focus fire them with every single piece of ordnance my squad carried just to down them in two turns.)

Right now, my first playthrough is quite fun, and I assume I’ll go to the end.

I also think there’s enough diversity in mec/gene/randomized skillsets/maps to make me enjoy another playthrough, at least.

They still need to change the main storyline somehow, but It’s not so bad.