[jars_u]

From what I best remember about playing X-Com

* RPG aspect of seeing your soldiers advance in skill as well as being able to customize their equipment by mission/preference
* destructible terrain and environment
* suspense/atmosphere created in a lot of the missions by things like environment (still remember loving to set things on fire to light up the night)
* always liked the tactical battles best and really thought of that as the meat of the game but the other components - base building/research/world map were meaningful without being cumbersome
* turn based - more thinking or at least planning and less button clicking (I enjoy a good RTS but that is a very different game and think "hybrid" systems are dangerous (aka bad).