Hah, you can try to stay on top of it. But no matter how hard you try, there's always a chance of that one little mistake that turns into a cock-up cascade and leaves most of your squad dead and one remaining soldier trying to crawl to evac.
I might be biased, since I've been playing the XCOM games since they first came out 30 years ago. But yes, they are really, really good for turn-based combat. I am also a sucker for games with research trees.
Honestly I enjoy the crap out of them. It's definitely less story than BG3 and you WILL lose people you're attached too. It goes on sale fairly often I think, though it's worth it at full price.
I took a break from XCOM after losing one of my best soldiers on an iron man run. Am currently terrified of going back in because i remember nothing and am sure i'd fuck everything up now.
i exclusively play xcom on ironman because i tend to reload on the tiniest misstep - and then i get annoyed about myself, because i cant accept anything else than perfect. ironman fixes that for me :-)
I've done the same thing. It actually teaches you a lot about the game, since you are forced to pay much more attention to when enemies will trigger based on your movements.