It's very annoying having the game say 'oh, you're standing right outside the evac zone? Too bad, not close enough, you're all dead now lol'. Especially when you're a few tiles too short. but one of your soldiers must sacrifice themselves to give everyone else time to get out! I've not experienced it myself but I've heard a few horror stories of evac points placed way, way too far out to get to them in time thanks to the procedural level generation, and that could help make it less game-ending when your best squad is caught out like that. It makes me feel like this game could benefit from a Darkest Dungeon style mechanic, where if you run out of time you may still be able to escape. Some of the harder missions don't have timers, and it is a godsend that they don't. There isn't much risk in overwatch leap-frogging, but there is considerable risk in taking offensive actions, or even moving while a pod is engaged (like engaging another pod). Despite this, I think turn timers benefit the game as a whole and forces players into participating in the very thing that makes XCOM, well, XCOM: risk/reward. This consideration even applies to specialists, whose abilities include multiple overwatch enhancements. As a result, overwatch is the very last option I consider and is considered heavily before doing so. I have to make sure that every action each of my soldiers take either does damage to an enemy, strip cover, benefits another team member, or otherwise forwards progress towards objective completion. My only problem with turn timers is that it does devalue using overwatch a lot. I haven't lost a single mission because time ran out, but I have left a mission with one turn left. It gives me a sense of urgency and forces me out of my comfort zone which consist of single move into overwatches. You can masterfully make your way out of a hot zone and achieve the main objective against all odds but then still lose your entire team, thereby effectively ruining your entire game because you were one move too slow. Now I could just save scum it, but I was kind of looking for a reason to restart anyway to fix some of the mistakes I made with the base building stuff, so that's what I'm doing. So my 6 top guys were all gone in a flash. The last turn (as the timer is about to hit 0) came up and on it literally all 4 of my guys maxed out their dash 1-2 spaces outside of the evac zone.

So at the end of the level my entire squad is literally sprinting to the evac zone. That required a bit of a more methodical approach to that section though so the timer became an issue. Some real shit went down and I nearly wiped, but somehow I was able to get out of it and save 4 of my 6 guys. Then I ran into a level from hell with some new enemies that I accidentally triggered while rushing through.

So I played for about 25 hours and never once lost a mission due to the timer. The meld stashes in EW were also better because it was more 'here's a reward for doing it quickly' than 'here's a massive penalty for not running through recklessly.' The missions where there are reinforcements if you don't act quickly enough strike the right balance, imo. Hard fail states / losing your entire squad because of some made up timer is BS. I don't hate them either, I just wish that they were a little more forgiving, either in terms of giving you just a couple extra turns per run or in terms of somewhat reduced penalties for missing the timer (or perhaps tiered penalties where missing the timer by 1 turn is less harsh than missing it by 5 turns). Now you have no more moves remaining so your guy is helpless as the rest of your team struggles to catch up. Like the game is encouraging you to dash and then all of a sudden you dashed one move too far and activated a pod. I don't think that the forced speed interacts particularly well with (a) the need to make sure that you squad is actually ready for a pod of enemies to magically activate at any point and (b) the fact that the levels are procedurally generated so the devs can't make sure that the levels are constructed in a sensible way. I don't like them because of the way that the enemies are still clumped into pods that magically activate as soon as you spot them, unless you are in concealment.

Xcom 2 remove timers