I've played a few hours and got all squad laser weapons unlocked though not enough engineers to fabricate them yet. Then I crashed and learned that autosave was not on by default
My restart is going fine. I have laser rifles and will soon have better armor for my troops. Even survived my first terror mission. So far the game seems pretty solid. The scripted parts of the tutorial (the first mission and forced choices for the beginning story missions) can thankfully be skipped.
The missions i've had so far are fun. I was dubious of the bomb mission at first. However the fun factor of it lets you ignore then questionable logic for why the aliens would plant a bomb that only you can defuse.