The upgrades for the troops are cheap and they do various benefits like offer auto-regenerating health, extra time for bleeding out, boosts for aiming, sensing enemies from afar, etc. With my time of EW, I never found myself over saturated or scarce on Meld. It's a simple change that goes a long way. However, I do understand it's to punish overly defensive players by baiting them to move. It's never explained why these resources are now available or why the aliens litter them everywhere. You obtain this resource solely from capturing Meld nodes on the battlefield before they turn off. Its usage is specifically for the new class (MEC soldiers) and for the gene augmentations. One new game-changer is the new resource, Meld.

However, there are some changes that ruin whatever sense of fair challenge Enemy Within that I wouldn't trust this game with an Ironman setting. In many ways, I would like to say Enemy Within is the definitive version. There are more unique missions and a new mission type, espionage, and it provides a nice thematic middle-half to the game. EW adds the AI behavior from Classic (EU) to the Normal difficulty. The late-game problem of rookies is counter-balanced with gene-mods. There are qualities that improve upon EU's faults. Ultimately, I can recommend it as XCOM 1.5 as it's an entirely new game if you had played on Normal difficulty for Enemy Unknown. I'm at an impasse whether or not I enjoyed Enemy Within.

'EW's sense of 'difficulty' assumes you’re familiar enough with EU to handle the unfair hurdles.'

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