Phantom Doctrine

It could be a great game with original X-COM and JA style in unique spy atmosphere. The idea is really great. And the game UI looks familiar to fans of X-COM. But then it seems that someone in management thought that their game would look like a clone of X-COM and decided to destroy the good things of X-COM and add their own unique logic. Unfortunately, this logic does not work properly and works stupid. I expected to have a solid squad-based missions like in X-COM. Indeed, we have agents here with military perks and stats that are improved as you level up, there are different weapons and upgrades (like silencers), turn-based battles... But why do you need all these things if you can't fight in this game? Yes, because the developers think it's a spy game, so any military conflict should be avoided. You can't play Rambo style, you can't play Hitman style. You play only hide & seek, and if someone spots you, you need to run, because unlimited waves of enemies will come every turn and kill your team. That's the greatest disappointment of this game. Of course there are issues with AP, cover, hit chance, etc. in fight mode, and it seems they explicitly tried to do that ONLY to have some difference from X-COM and JA. However, they couldn't make it balanced, logical and playable.

I saw this on sale for 5$ on a steam sale and considering the game was originally $40+ I gave it a try and suffice to say while i'm not totally disappointed with the purchase, I most definitely saw the reason behind the price drop. Pros: - XCOM style game focused around stealth and was a novel concept and I liked that the developers tried something new - Speaking of XCOM thankfully there is no central interrupting every 2 seconds with a, "COMMANDER THEY ARE NOW 12 POINTS AWAY FROM COMPLETING THE AVATAR PROJECT, PLEASE BEGIN TO PANIC!!". Instead the game trusts you to keep on top of all your agents and missions only stopping you when extremely critical timers are up. - Agent customisation was there and appreciated however without a workshop has fairly limited options. - The world is very well done and it definitely sells the shady world of espionage on a global scale. - The combat system wasn't amazing but definitely wasn't as bad as other games I have seen in the genre CONS: - The stealth while a novel concept misses a few marks that prevent it from truly being good, that being the unnecessary need to individually move enemies on the map. "But wait" I hear you say, isn't that suppose to happen? and yes it is, however the game insist on physically doing each animation even if the enemy isn't in view making full stealthing a mission take forever. - A small pet peeve but the game made no sense when it came to deployment of troops, as you can have agents within the area however that is completely inconsequential as you will just instant spawn in with whatever team you want, not to mention that most missions are 2 - 3 man teams so its bill and bob for every mission until one dies. It would have been good to see that if you had agents in the area you could utilize them on mission, however this was not the case. - Animations, while I don't mind them in XCOM because they can be modded it out, unfortunately lacking in any workshop you will have to watch every animation, from when they walk to run to walk, to every time you enter a mission (BTW its the same cut scene of a van rolling up and you hoping out the passenger seat and striking a pose) - The locations unlike most games that use a plot based system where the game generates a field then fills in the plots and set dressing, phantom doctrine uses pre built areas and makes slight changes to the rooms within that building. Meaning that you will go into the same damn mall / office about 7 times except instead of the computer being on the left side, its now on the right in the same room. This and the fact that there aren't many structures to begin with makes many missions tedious on top of the slow stealth system. - Combat is initially fun however the stat system is incredibly confusing at first and it was only until near the end did I get a fundamental understanding of the combat. That being said, your going to want to avoid combat all together as the game will infinitely spawn enemies on your position until you leave the area making some missions straight up impossible. - Speaking of stealth they also have certain areas with unknowable alarms that will activate without any hint of how you got spotted, only for when the enemy begins their turn (Which btw sometimes it even fails at that not really explaining why the alarm occurred so you just send it and try speed running the mission instead of any tactic you had planned prior) - In addition a lot of the systems within the game are rather convoluted or not well thought out, Ie. Your not allowed to say hide out of sight under a desk or in a closet, or simply be behind a fairly good piece of cover at a cost of an action point so your best option is to stand in the open right next to your target like your a cartoon character with a lamp shade on their head, but you can't forget the 12+ statistics you need to balance your character around? (and this extend throughout the entire game) - Finally the story for me wasn't as interesting, and I don't really want to spoil it but I can say the beginning did definitely capture my attention but slow burned it out as the game went on. So in conclusion is phantom doctrine a bad game, yes and no, (if you can get in on sale below 15 dollars which to be honest would still be a stretch). However considering that the game lacks a workshop which immediately hurts it's replayablity, and combat/stealth is tedious, frustrating, and confusing, the story is fairly mid, the game is too complex in useless areas but absolutely shallow in others, and the other quality of life issues that plague it makes it a pass for me unless you really hungering for this particular genre or story. But hey at least the developers are making a sequel!..... yeah that might not be a good thing..

I really do like this game. It can be very slow and grindy, and the combat isn't a patch on XCOM, but it's a good game. Unfortunately, I have to give it a negative review, because for some reason the game has become literally unplayable. I don't know why, what or how, but the game has just decided to crash on launch every time, so I can no longer play it.

现在是打都打不开，一直闪退，无语了

Just tried to open and it crashed 3 times in the first second

Game Crashes when trying to boot up, unable to play.

A Game with potential, but many letdowns and missed opportunities. I had 2 playthroughs, 1 on easy as CIA and one on Medium as [spoiler] Mossad [/spoiler]. While i had a good enough time on the first playthrough to start the second, the second "extended" one was quite the dissapointment and i cannot recommend going for a second playthrough for the things you "missed" The bones of the gameplay are solid but are hampered in many aspects. While the mechanics work pretty fine, for the first 2/3rds of the game your agents wont have enough AP/FP (Action Points and Fire Points) to actually utilise a lot of mechanics to it's potential or intention, and you need a guide for the body engineering to reach those milestones. The stealth works well enough, but become a bit tedious, the game pushes you to play loud (you get 50% xp on stealth kills, so if you focus on stealth all your agents will be underleveled) and that too works reasonably well if you adapt to the setting. "Frontal assaults" usually end up being a well setup ambush to take out half the enemies on a map, then mop the rest up on the next turn, rush to objectives and exfiltrate before reinforcements arrive. The Enemy AI did not seem to change between difficulties, the enemies just got more hp and damage, often leaving enemies with 3-10 hp left, which is incredibly frustrating if you dont have more than one FP, and didnt really add much to my normal difficulty playthrough either in forms of challenge nor fun. No mission has more than 9-10 enemies, 3-5 of which are usually just absolute trashmobs + reinforcements, which also doesnt really give you the feeling of storming a base of anything. The weapons are balanced in a weird way, where there is always half of the available inventory which is straight up useless or hopelessly outclassed, but which class of weapons this is changes as the game progresses ( Shotguns and pistols are great in the beginning, Shotguns, Snipers and SMG in the midgame, and Assault Rifles in the Lategame, LMGs are always useless) The story itself is intruiging on the first playthrough until you realize everything is completely scripted through as it has to align with historical events and reach the quite unsatisfying ending. All story is strictly communicated through brief voicelines during the mission and are at times quite easy to miss, not that you are missing a lot as most of the times it is just another breadcrumb. Even in the end the big unbelievable threat you have to stop to save the world lacks any sense of urgency or drama as it is just another mission where you push a button on a terminal. The "extended" playthrough seemed to add exactly one 5-10 minute mission in the very end to clear up the REAL mastermind behind Beholder, and with as little as the story actually changes you figure out halfway through the second playthrough anyways who it is. The additional faction you unlock after the first playthrough [spoiler] Mossad [/spoiler], has no real unique spin or perspective, nor uniqute mechanics to add to the game. It baits you early with plotpoints about a chemical weapon attack on [spoiler] Isreal [/spoiler] but seems to forget about that plot halfway through. It also dangles hunting down infamous nazi [spoiler]Jospeh Mengele[/spoiler] in your face, but he ends up just standing around motionless in a big open room in a mission as a side objective with no real buildup and exactly 3 lines of dialog after you kill him, and that is basically all the story missions in a nutshell. The Information gathering system is interesting the first couple of times, but quickly becomes an unbearable chore. While the files have 8-10 pieces of intel it is fine i guess, but it will later load you with 15-20 pieces of intel, each with red herrings on them, and expect you to do DOZENS of them, and character progression is locked behind them in the form of body engineering recipies. Also you will notice on your 3rd File or so that all the actual pieces of intel are completely identical, with random blacked out parts and names switched, so you wont get any additional lore from them either. And often times you will just spend your time micromanaging 30 agents since you can't actually put actions in a queue If you enjoy the tactical approach and setting you will have fun with 75% of one playthrough and its worth picking up on sale. Just dont expect anything but a strictly linear story with a handful of story mission and a ton of random filler. Replayabilty is pretty much 0 in my opinion, so dont get baited into the second playthrough iif the first left you slightly dissapointed, that feeling wont go away. All in all it is not enough to give a thumbs down in my opinion, but it could have been so much more!

Game has a progression breaking bug in the 6th chapter of the CIA campaign that causes the game to get stuck in a logic loop and be unable to progress. It's well documented and random who it happens to. I'm not going to reset several hours of progress to go back a chapter and pray it doesn't happen again. Sad the developers abandoned this game and didn't fix main story bugs like this. Otherwise, it's a solid X-com style game with some fun spy/espionage elements to it.

Good, not great. I don't normally review games, but I hope someone sees this, and takes the ideas for this game and makes it just a little bit better. I can only just barely recommend this game. I want something better, but this checks a lot of the boxes that a lot of other games don't. Pros: Actual functioning stealth mechanics in a turn based strategy. XCOM2 was sorely lacking this. Having the ability to start AND finish missions is pure stealth was great. Disguises. Distracting enemies. Turning off the security. Silenced weapons. Nonlethal take downs. Vision cones. Patrol areas. Peaking corners, windows, and doors. All of it! Just so good. This game really had a fair bit of depth and logic when it came to turn based stealth, and it was enjoyable to play with. Great ascetic. The art team really put in some time and effort when it came to the overall look and feel of the game. The maps looked good. The menus looked good. All of the little detail on all of the documents and insignias. The base(s) (YES! there were multiple! Whenever you relocated it would change the layout. It was such a nice touch) looked dark, grim, and spartan. Everything looked rough, rigid, and impromptu, JUST AS IT SHOULD. It really gives you a feel that you are working with the what you have, to make the most of a bad situation. Level design was solid. The maps had more of a hand crafted design, with little RNG elements. They felt natural. They made sense. They had character. They didn't just look like a bunch of random rooms, with random furniture, stacked up to make a building. They actually felt like a warehouse, or a strip mall, or an office building. They had purpose. They both looked great and seemed real, while also being enjoyable to play around in. You could plan around the maps. You could set up and execute operations in an order. Great sound track. Absolutely phenomenal mix of music. Very atmospheric. Very fitting. Created a great espionage tone in all the right ways. Hit both the low end, when you were infiltrating and sneaking about, and the high end, where you were in open fire fights, very well. New and interesting gameplay. Beyond the standard base management and strategy missions, the game had a few really interesting ideas that fit the theme well. The mission timers and prep missions were a nice change of pace. Very interesting options for captured agents. The document and case tracking to get more info and options was fun and thematic. Functional customization. Some of the actual gameplay impacting upgrades were great. The talents and perks for your agents were fun and interesting, giving the game an extra layer of strategy. The base modifications had real significant effects across the board. It all really added up over time and made you want to get that one extra gizmo, or hoped that one agent learned close combat specialty. It really gave the player a purpose to keep progressing and pushing for more. cons: Not enough depth. The game had some great ideas, but it REALLY badly needed a little more time in some regards. It was nice to have a range of weapons (pistols, rifles, SMGs, LMGs, shotguns) but when it can to actual differentiation between specific guns, it was all just an even slope. You start with the basic pistol, and then find pistol +1, and then pistol +2, and by the end of the game you have pistol +7. The stats of the gear increases or decreases linearly. It would have been great to have some more variety. Have weapons with unique statistics. You almost always just chose the best number, rather than any actual functioning advantage or disadvantage. Many of the weapon modifications felt the same way. Some would change the way the weapon worked in some small way. Silencers, AP ammo, bigger magazines. Those were nice. So many of the rest of the mods were simple just to add more damage. There also were not enough maps for the length of the game. In one playthrough I think I infiltrated the same taxi company over a dozen times. The maps individually were great, but after a while I started to memorize where everything was. I knew the collectible spawns. The camera layouts. The AI patrols. At that point it became more math and timing rather than any actual thought invoking strategy. The character customization options were a bit too limited for the volume you play with. At one point I had 20 agents, and 3 of them were identical clones in different clothing. Two of them even had the same voices. If you only ever played with a team of 6 (the limit on the bigger missions) You would be fine, but having to flex through an entire roster for different reasons (mostly good reasons) had you ending up with a lot of similar looking agents. Atrocious voice acting. It wasn't all bad, but quite a few of the NPC voices and voice lines were terrible. Some seemed professional and focused, as expected. Some seemed like they had no idea what was going on. I ran into one voice pretty frequently who always wanted me to shut up and leave them alone. In a turn based strategy, it isn't possible to progress without giving your units orders, so that seemed exceedingly counter intuitive and annoying. Some of my spies seemed like they were 7 year olds running around with squirt guns, excited to do spy "stuff" and kept enthusiastically looking for me to give them somebody to kill. Poor pacing. The first few chapters felt overly simplified. You Really couldn't get many worthwhile advancements or upgrades until around chapter 4 or 5. Even then, some of the upgrades felt very temporary, especially training and body engineering for your agents. You would put time and resources into training one thing, only to reach the next chapter and find something entirely better to train them in. It felt like padding. If you really wanted to max out your team and base, simply rush to the final chapter and perform all of your upgrades then. In addition to this, the linear and open ended elements conflicted with each other. The game felt too structured to be open and free as other games, like XCOM, limiting the replayabilty. At the same time, the more open points felt too slow and grindy to be a true linear story game. It seemed to want to be both, but failed at being either. More so, some linear elements tried to thematically push for urgency, but then you would be allowed to keep running standard ops and spending time upgrading you base and agents without much limitation or hinderance. Unusual AI intelligence. Some times the AI seemed like it was psychic, knowing where I would put up over-watch cones to avoid them, and being able to detect my agents on other floors or through walls. Other times the AI seemed brainless, running straight up to my agents, but then not firing their weapon. This occurred for the pathing too. I found out, if you stand in the way of an NPC when it patrolled, you could force it to go in different directions, making it easy to navigate it just far enough off course for a stealth take down. You could also use this to block off doors, keeping NPCs from leaving some rooms or entering others. This felt jarring and janky. It completely destroyed your immersion in the game when you were in the middle of an infiltration, only to see an NPC turn around, go out a door, down a hall, through another room, and then into the hall BEHIND one of your agents, rather than prompting your agent to move out of the doorway of the hallway it was trying to reach in some capacity OR rather drawing attention to your agent.