As above really, being a long-time fan of the original series and the spin-offs prior to XCOM: EU it makes me sad that the bigger strategy depth (i.e. base building, researching etc.) seems to have been simplified for the COD generation of players. The smaller scale strategy, i.e. the squad battles, seems like it's turn based tactical lite.
While I'd certainly like there to be things like Base Assaults, building a bunch of bases all over the planet just to shore up your radar coverage was kind of a terrible system. Maybe you're different, but I don't know of any X-Com players that put meaningful investment into the ability to make multiple bases. The base system as it stands now definitely requires planning on high difficulty. You have to have the caverns cleared out for when you need them, but you also have to be careful not to break the chain of bonuses for building similar rooms adjacent to one another. At the same time, the bonus system applies equally in all directions but building deeper down requires exponentially more resources. All of this with trying to reserve enough resources to actually do any base building when it is very tempting to outfit your squad as much as possible. Sounds like strategy to me.
I think research is
better now than it was, personally. In the original you could inflate your scientist pool whenever you had the money to brute-force research, here you only get scientists as mission rewards and monthly allotments, forcing you to chose what research is most likely to benefit you.
I totally disagree with the criticism of the squad size. Being able to bring dozens of guys on a mission and just swarm the alien menace kind of degrades their threat level.
I don't know, it just seems like somebody wanted to make a turn-based strategy title that would pull in the action crowd instead of really sate the hunger of the true strategy fans out there.
I've met the action crowd, they'd cry if they had to play this game.
Oh and not to mention the accents are ALL Yankee regardless of the country the unit comes from
Eh, voice acting is expensive.