Sorry I meant to reply to this, but got lost in the shuffle. I'm curious how well balanced it is, and if the end game is as broken/boring as I've heard it can be - cleaners do the entire mission to save time, etc. Where as with XCOM difficult ramped up and everyone from your team was needed to complete a mission.
Oh and how much the overarching 'spy' plot plays into things
I've played maybe halfway through the CIA plot.... (the KGB plot is supposed to be almost the same except for the opening)
The gameplay is XCOM, but mostly stealth. You want to do everything to avoid combat, since it is really hard to survive.
The story is nothing to write home about, where there's some overarching plot going around but the standard missions really fail to tie into it in a meaningful way.
You often get to decide whether to play a mission or just "foil" the bad guys' plans off screen (and get worse rewards).
After playing a few hours you definitively skip a lot of missions since they all feel very same-y...
And the "connect leads together using strings" is really meaningless, since it doesn't reveal anything regarding what it says it shall reveal, and the rewards for finishing a board is completely unrelated to the issue of the board.
Creating new aliases for your agents is a neat feature, except you do not need to change their appearance at all. Changing their appearance is totally voluntary, so you pretty much just pay to get a new ID with a new name and perhaps a picture (if you want to lose your grip on which agent is which).
But the upsides... The setting is fantastic and the soundtrack is perfect for a spy thriller.
The game is fun for a few hours, but it outstays its welcome a bit!