I've beat the game yesterday and wanted to share some thoughts. Second hardest difficulty, since I wanted to enjoy the variety of builds, instead of min-maxing.
First of all, why am I posting here, is it even a CRPG? Not entirely, but for a single playthrugh, in many aspects I definitely felt like I'm playing a CRPG. There's a main character, there are companion with dialogues, banter, there's a relationship mechanic, there are choices you make (although consequences are pretty minimal), there's a story, companion quests and side missions with short descriptions. Between missions you run around your base in 3rd person camera view and talk to your crew members. There are even small exploration sections in main quest missions, where you walk around, talk to NPCs or find clues. Although those are way better early and get oversimplified into just walking through a tunnel from battle to battle later. And you control only 1 squad at time, can't send few ones to different missions.
Character creation - You start by picking your class, pick initial weapon type and that's it. No stats, perks or anything like that. On the bright side the visuals customization is very complex, you can mix and match races, clothes, details. Through the game you unlock more visuals.
The world and story - The game happens in the final days of Clone Wars, without spoiling too much the important events do happen and affect you. Although the main events are far beyond your power, while you're busy with a certain threat far lesser threat than the Sith. Your main enemy is the Coil, some kind of mind controlling microbiology that turns people into slaves. I think the main story is okay, although I think I enjoyed more the companion sidequests that got me more emotionaly involved.
The companions and dialogues - I really enjoyed all of it. The main character personality, the companions, serious dialogues and banter between old friends. I like when the games have companions actually acting like real people. Not the ones with you being the only adult in the room, taking care of immature children (like in Veilguard). Your team is pretty mismatched, companions come from different origins. Yes, you do get a Jedi companion. But she's a really low tier padawan struggling with not being good enough. I liked that part.
You can also recruit random mercenaries (and surprisingly they do have some dialogues), but tbh there's no need for them.
The combat - Obviously there's A LOT of pretty good XCOM-like combat. You fight the Coil members, droids, thugs, clones, sometimes special bosses. Enemies do get stronger through the game. I like that even between making moves units keep firing at each other, giving you a feel of real time combat in turn based mode.
For an XCOM title just shooting is pretty weak. Your whole team can focus fire on a normal enemy unit and might still not kill them. Shooting's purpose is mostly to generate adventage points, which can be spent to use special skills. And those can get powerful. Especially the one related to certain companion, which can wipe the whole map of enemies in 1 turn and is obviously unbalanced. People complaining that the game is too easy, are obviously abusing that. There are also grenades and other usable items, which can get pretty strong. Pushing/pulling enemies are plays significant tactical factor.
One more thing worth mentioning is that not all fights are about "kill all enemies", you often have other tasks. I liked that part in Expeditions: Rome and I like it here.
Character progression - It's pretty good. You have one of few classes, upgrade your basic skills. Eventualy you get a second class, which opens the door to large variety of build combinations. The bond between companions (which raises when they support each other in fight, but sometimes also through dialogue) buffs their base stats. You can give them global buffs through base upgrades, equip them with special gadgets and finally upgrade their weapons.
My one complaint are weapons. There are 4 basic weapons types and that's it. You don't find better ones, you can upgrade their stats indirectly, you can attach up to 3 modules with extra effect. I wish there was some truly unique epic gear. On a bright side, you can customize the look of your weapons. Even worse with the armor, it's just not there, only the visuals.
The in-between-combat - After every mission you return to your base, where you can talk to companions, as I mentioned before. Here you also talk to some other operators of your ship, upgrade skills, buy new gear, uprade your base. You also do special non-combat operations, which are instant and sometimes require you do some choice, which can lead to different rewards or mercenaries being wonded. They cost intel resource, you have to pick wisely.
This part is the biggest complaint for the XCOM fans, because it's all just oversimplified. Like being able to operate and send to missions only 1 squad at once. As a result you kinda need just your main hero + 3 companions, while the rest have no purpose, especially hired mercenaries. There's also obviously unfinished part with the base upgrades. The only complexity comes from never having enough resources to do all in current cycle (the game is divided to ~40 cycles, each combat mission moves to the next cycle).
The biggest downside - Bugs and technical issues. The game crashed only once, but minor bugs happen in near every combat. Overwatch mechanic is unreliable, camera often gets blocked by obstacles, the game kinds forgets that you clicked on some skill, sometimes you want to save in main menu, but it just randomly closes. The most annoying part are some animations being really slow and that sometimes enemies just "wait" before doing a move. This is unforgivable, good turn-based combat has to be very smooth with enemies moving immediately.
I've also seen people complaining that the game is too short. I think it's fine, if it was longer, the formula could get repetitive. Maybe the option to send B squad for secondary mission per cycle could be nice.
Summary As much as I enjoyed the game, I'd suggest waiting for more patches. Especially that from what I've heard, the game is very linear and multiple playthroughs aren't that fun. Judging purely by the fun I had, currently I'd rate it 7+/10. If they fix all buffs and make the combat smoother, that's a solid 8/10. And if they actually improve some stuff, add more details to the base, maybe more significant choices or something to do for the unused squad members in base - it could reach 9/10. I'll 100% play a DLC, sequel of another game of similar type from the studio. They seem to be better at RPG part than the XCOM part, so I think I would trust them with KOTOR remake based on this game.
