Phantom Doctrine

This is an interesting spy centric X-COM turn based strategy with a spy base, agents you recruit and change, and the novelty of the case board and connecting intelligence information with push pins and string.

If you want to get thrown into the action be warned! When you get to actually partake in a mission, that's prety good, great sound, graphics and presentation, however after several hours I've only trigged ONE mission so far because of the extreme tediousness of the pointless base sections which basically involve you clicking all over a world map to send your agents to recover information to use in a word-association pinboard puzzle of clues, only to find that when you solve one, you get given another one, again and again and again. After spending over 2 hours doing this clickathon after the first mission I have given-up altogether, it's simply not worth wasting time. The game could have been so much more if these base-building parts were minimal, but as it stands it seems like it's about 75% or more of the game.

The concept of the game sounded quite interesting if you are into round based strategy like XCOM. Sadly the combat is quite a lackluster. The concept of leaving RNG out and adding the "Awareness"-system was a nice try, that didn't work. The stealth gameplay is interesting in the beginning, but when you get a hang of the basics, it's always the same repetition. This can also be said about the random (non main-story) missions. The few maps get multiple times reused and you always play one of 4 mission targets (lay bombs, defuse bombs, kill all enemies, rescue hostage). The main story mission sadly bring not much variance and soon the whole progress feels like a chore. Like in XCOM you can upgrade your hideout, craft new gadgets and train new skills. But everything feels underwhelming. Colllecting clues and gathering intel also tries to bring something new, but fails again, as you always just have to sort random words togther, so it soon feels like the next chore and is rather annoying. I finished the game after 80 hours, but I have to admit, it was like a copmpletionist playthorugh. So you will be able to finish the game much faster. I could not bring myself to even start the expended, 2nd playthrough, where the devs promised to bring more detail into the real thin story. And as I said before, much of the playtime felt like a chore and I just wanted to reach the end of the story in hopes of a grand finale - which was not there. The final mission again just felt lacking. The reason why I still give three stars: - interesting concept, which sadly did not work out. - Solid work by the developer. I encountered no bugs whatsoever and I think I may have a single crash in my +80 hours. - we have to be thankful a developer/publisher tries new concepts/ turn based strategy at all.

This game is not like X-Com. Every mission requires you to sneak arround a randomised map in turn based mode to complete objectives with 2-6 of your agents. After playing for arround 15 hours I can only say that the games mechanics just arent very well realised. Enemies often detect you through seemingly impossible sight lines. When combat inevitably does happen the enemy will receive endless waves of reinforcements. Unless you are very patient and enjoy reloading a whole bunch you should not get this one.

I don't know where the high ratings are coming from. PD is average at best, probably even less. The tactical missions are XCom like, but with less tactical deepness. I really like that this game demands stealth (actually this was my reason to buy it), but gives you no proper stealth tools. The shootouts are poor and crucial information is not visible. There is lots of downtime, mostly for useless civilians wandering around like zombies. There is very little variation in the missions. We get a tutorial which covers the tactical part, but not anything else, but THAT's where I would have needed one. The investigations are pretty much clicking randomly on obvious clues. I can see tons of good ideas in this game, from the setting to the content, but none of them are properly designed and the game feels rushed and unfinished. If You look for great turnbased combat, choose XCom. If you look for tactical stealth espionage, choose Invisible Inc. Phantom Doctrine is not terrible, but I can't recommend it.