Its not turnbase, its more or less slow down time an press actions.
Yeah, this is the main difference. Between missions it's similar to XCOM in that you perform research and manage your soldiers/equipment, but the actual missions themselves are nothing like XCOM for a bunch of reasons:
- The gameplay is real-time, not turn-based (time slows down a great deal when selecting special abilities, and in the Options menu you can even change this behavior so that the game completely pauses rather than slowing down)
- You control your entire squad as a single, cohesive unit, rather than giving orders to individual soldiers
- Combat is meant to be AVOIDED in many cases, as you have seriously limited resources and combat induces stress, which in turn can result in your soldiers suffering huge stat penalties
- Each mission is a persistent, nonlinear level where you have a whole bunch of objectives you must try and achieve; you'll often run so low on health/resources though, and start encountering so much resistance, you'll need to fall back to your HQ and rest before returning to wrap things up.
To me it's like a stealth/survival horror squad-based RTS with some XCOM management between missions. I've honestly never played anything quite like it before. I will also say this: it is hard and unforgiving
as hell. There's even a disclaimer at the start of the game that basically tells you "This game is really tough. Pay close attention to everything we teach you in the tutorials." I've already to had to reload saves more times than I can count because half or more of my squad got annihilated. Oh, and of course there's also permadeath.
