Similiar to other experiences - I really tried to like this game. The pieces seem great - I like the board where you connect clues, I like the setting, interface isn't bad, it all looks very well. After initial failure of treating it like a XCOM game (gosh, tactical shootout in PD is just horrible), I quite enjoyed sneaking and picking enemies one by one like in the Commandos franchise. But the more hours, I've invested, the more hollow it felt. The pieces are good, but they're badly put together. The bugs get annoying after a while, the maps are super repetitive (so your agents fly all over the world, but looks like spy buildings everywhere look just the same, and it's always a rainy evening anywhere in the world... seriously?). I get this tries to create this stealthy/mysterious spy setting - but there's no use if the mood gets murdered by dumb chatter of the agents and silly things like enemies not noticing a disguised agent casually jumping through the window next to them and walking as if that's perfectly normal thing to do. Quite frankly after a while I only enjoyed the world map and the tactical encounters felt like a boring chore. It was either unfair and too difficult (hate the huge shooting distance and endless reinforcements). Still beatable, but just boring and taking ages. Or it was trivially easy - just send a diguised agent with over 110hp on a mission and kill everyone one by one (surprisingly that's less boring than the shooting...) So now I just gave up on this game. It's not fun. It feels like a boring day at the office. That's not what I'm playing games for! I can still see hope for this game when the mod support is added. If dedicated people take the pieces built by the developers, polish them, add more maps and make the gameplay fun - I'll definetely be back. Right now it just feels like this game was released way too soon and developers tried too hard creating the setting and forgot about what makes games enjoyable.
I'm only a couple of hours in, so still a lot to explore, but so far I've been enjoying it a lot. The biggest mistake I've made in the beginning was treating it like XCOM2. It's a totally different game, so don't do it! Personally I would compare it to the good old Commandos from 1998. It's all about sneaking, planning and quietly disposing the guards. Open assault is pretty much a suicide (although not avoidable entirely). It feels a little unpolished and I'm hoping it will get improved in the upcoming patches. Dying to try out the 1.0.3 which fixes the LOS issue most people complain about - I understand the point of it is making the open assault nearly impossible, but enemies hitting across the whole map through 3 windows when you couldn't suspect they can see you just kills the mood. I'd rather be insta-killed in a clear shot situation than suffer those shots. I would like to be able to skip the evac videos and just speed up the game a little. Much more turns are taken during a mission than in xcom (due to a lot of sneaking/exploring), so I think something could be done to improve the speed. Also the interface doesn't explain the hotkeys, which are quite crucial (at least knowing that Backspace ends the turn!) All in all - if you like Commandos and XCOM, you're gonna like it - but this game is less about shooting and more about planning and sneaking.
