I enjoyed XCOM greatly. Love the atmosphere, the planning (which goes out the window during those civillian rescue missions..) as well as the RNG-ness of it all. Many a night was filled with cursing when my Capt Assault with the shotgun misses a flanking shot or when the last killing hit to a sectopod misses, dooming my team.

Now balance-wise, I will say that the Sniper+Jetpack+Squadsight+Damn Good Ground combo is stupidly good. Once my sniper was up (both figuratively and literally), my team was almost immune to any ambushes and could blunt an enemy attack with Double Tap/Headshot.

However, aside from that, the classes imho had a good enough flexibility to suit either an aggressive or defensive style. Aside from the sniper, I felt the others were quite balanced.

For improvements, I feel that throughout the game, I was on Overwatch for most of the time. The expansion slightly fixed that with the introduction of meld. This forced me to be more aggressive since I gotta get dem melds. Another thing I'd like is a more 'alert' enemy. It did feel like a dungeon run for me since I basically engaged packs of enemies one by one. Surely for such an technologically advanced race, they have some sort of long range communication and can send reinforcements instead of letting me take em out one pack at a time?

I'd also like more mission and map variety. I got really bored of the same 'kill everything' missions despite the enemy variety. The maps didn't help things either. By the end, I knew most of the maps quite well and had a rough idea on where enemies would 'spawn'.

In conclusion, it's a great game. However, if anyone is considering buying it, I recommend getting the expansion as well since it adds a lot more fun to the game.