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[jamotide]

I played Aftermath and Aftershock and wouldnt say they were overhyped. And "nothing more" may be correct for Aftermath,which I found pretty generic. But I was very surprised by Aftershocks complexity on the strategic level. Even the realtime combat offers alot of depth in what you can do with your soldiers, lots of options and tactics you can use, that are not immediately apparent. I hated it the first half hour, but kept on playing because the base and research part was impressive. Then I learned the combat and began to like it, even though I am a militant turn based defender. I played through it two times, second with the ACM 2.0 mod, which makes the game much harder, it is a bit of a pushover on vanilla.
Leveling up the soldiers is immensely well done, it is more complex than most RPGs nowadays. Very motivating even for repettive missions, which you can mostly just chose to do.
The whole presentation of the story and many other things seem to have been the model for the new Xcom game.
So I would recommend Aftershock, it is better in many aspects than the original xcom, which I played through 3 times before this. Since it costs 1-2 $ nowadays, its worth a try, just dont give up in the first half hour, when the ugly graphics (not technically bad, just ugly) and the realtime combat seem like a giant deterrent.