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.
Those % to hit chances are all effected by the location of your character in relation to them. The Flanking bonus alone takes impossible shots and makes them near guaranteed. Standing point blank to the enemy means a whole lot, and anyone whose ever actually played the game knows it. Everything visual is relevant under that umbrella and disproves your entire point. If you want to drag it to pedantic, literally every game could do without visuals and just be a number on the screen and accomplish the same thing.
The problem with the "95% chance to hit" meme is that its brought on by lack of information. There are a lot of pure raw numbers going on behind the scenes to make that final one, and often times your starting units just literally lack a high enough number even with every advantage multiplier to get to 100%. The game doesn't explain its own mechanics other than a vague notion that is good enough but leaves you with a lot of those Xcom Moments of confusion when they happen.
But that's why the most popular mod for the game was a literal higher difficulty, more complexity one. Because once you have access to more information the game becomes a lot more manageable and predictable to a point of needing more difficulty to return the challenge.
Both of the new Xcoms are littered with issues, like the retarded stealth and pod mechanics, but the RNG to hit thing isn't are egregious as it seems once you actually understand what its calculating and how to work within it (grenades bandaid everything).
I've played the literal Card Battle game that Firaxis made after Xcom 2 (Midnight Sun) and it plays nothing like Xcom.
And even if RNG were really bad, part of the fun/challenge of tactics games like XCOM is making a plan, and then having a plan to deal with if/when the first plan falls apart. It's a management game. And, just like in something like RimWorld or Dwarf Fortress, much of the !FUN! comes from managing those absurd and chaotic situations where everything goes to absolute shit.
I like missing high percentage shots, because it makes you think more and manage the new and more challenging situation. A string of bad luck can lead to some of the most fun gameplay, and the most memorable stories.
I've missed a 100% shot before, back in Long War 1, due to mod number rounding. I remember it a decade later, because that was hilarious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI-iNE6zv90
There's also the point that 100% just means your chance of hitting, a mob can still dodge if the numbers are close enough and reduce your hit to "Grazed" doing only partial damage in later games.
Thin Mints from EU/EW and Sneks from XC2 were similar in that regards as both were
snakesagile fuckers.As the game shipped, overwatch watch so overpower, I usually got the fuckers. They kill a lot of dudes tho.