Thoughts - The reviews seem to be all bang on.

It's just as hard as previous incarnations but not as fiddly.

I never cared for the fiddly-ness in the battles but I'd like to tinker around in that gloriously rendered base some more. But its early days yet, I'm not even a month in yet. I am six soldiers down though. The battles can go from near triumph to utter defeat in a single turn.

Encounters - They've mostly gone badly. And so they should, I'm playing on Classic Ironman.

On my second mission somebody got caught in the explosion of a car setting off a chain reaction of panic amongst my troopers which resulted in another death but also the death of a Sectoid. One man came back.

Sadly I've had to abort a mission as the target I was supposed to rescue would not register my troop next to him.... and I accidently clicked abort before getting all my troops back, losing a decent Sniper in the process. Derp.