X-Com 1 and 2 (new versions) are great games, even if they moved away from the large squad slaughter that was Enemy Unknown, terror from the deep and partially Apocalypse. I personally really enjoyed looking at black sections of the map and thinking "that will cost 3 rookies to explore"
Everyone is aware of the "95% to hit meme" around X-Com, and if you've played Phoenix Point, the difference is especially jarring. If you haven't, aiming in that game is purely a probability cone, so standing point blank next to an alien means something. In X-Com it doesn't mean diddly squat.
I finally figured out what the problem with X-Com is, and why it's always uniquely frustrating. With it's pod based mechanics, fake stealth and drip fed enemies. What you are seeing on screen has no relevance and only serves as a distraction. Being right next to an Alien and missing is irrelevant because where the character and alien are on screen do not correlate with the game.
X-Com is, for all intents and purposes a very fun card battle game. If it were a Dos prompt game, with exactly 0 visuals, nothing would be lost.
Try it next time you play, completely ignore the visuals and imagine your character as a card drawing a dice based attack against another card.
I just can't play those Firaxis games.
I have replayed the old Microprose games and they just hit in all the right ways; all the micromanagement and not wresting control from the user. The squad limitations and the focus on "personalities" and also forcing in so many female characters was just a huge turnoff to me.
All the people who justified Firaxis dumbing down the game turned me off even more, and the fact you need a dozen and one mods to try to bring it up to the quality of the original trilogy just made me realise I can stick with the original trilogy and actually have fun instead of fighting with the game.
Someone also Jagged Alliance 3 here on this forum, and it was a good departure from some of the typical turn-based strategy games that all seem to mirror Firaxis' design. However, it does still suffer from the aiming nonsense that you brought up with the newer XCOM games, where you're standing next to someone point blank with a shotgun and they somehow miss a body shot while fully aimed in. It creates save-scumming situations and makes the game feel cheap.
Still, at least Jagged Alliance 3 doesn't have the same sort of squad limitations as the new XCOM games, even though it still shares some of the same annoying AI problems and smallish map designs.
But yeah, I have Phoenix Point on my wishlist so I will probably give that a go next.
It's good, the combat system is far better than X-Com, the rest of it is slightly worse IMO.