I rather play a full campaign of this mod than 1 hour of those new "wanna-be" xcom titles.
Indeed. They dont even have random map generators in the new xcom games. And while it can cause some issues occasionally, like having to pickaxe your way into the catacombs, usually there are tools available to deal with it rather early in the game.
Its kinda unusual how much capability you're given, yet at the same time, it really does not break the game balance. Even given how much damage-dealing stuff is an important part of vanilla game, sometimes its a really bad thing to do too much damage to your enemies. There's quite abit of context-based usefulness rather than linear benefits (heck, some shotguns are far more useful than a Heavy Plasma and even do more damage than it, just depends on what you're using it on).