Responding to the post claiming DRM: savegames are kept below AppDataLocalPhantomDoctrine and you *can* play without Internet-connection. I double checked, of course.
Great game, btw, if you dig the "spy-thriller sneaker" theme. I'm about 15-20 hours in and loving every minute of it. :)
This game is amazing. A little buggy, but nothing game breaking so far.
Great 80s spy novel/movie vibes, awesome stealth/infiltration mechanics, and plannable (!) tactical combat. I saw complaints about the latter, but I like this a lot more than the percentage based mechanics. I hated in Xcom, when my highly trained soldier couldn't hit an alien 3 times in a row from 5 steps, lost a lot of people because of this. Here I know what will happen, I can plan ahead. (getting a little Into the Breach vibe :) ) Positioning is crucial, with flanking you can one shot enemies. But beware, they can and will do this to. As the devs said, it's like chess.
The music is wonderful, but I expected this, it's Marcin Przybyłowicz after all. :)
This game is a diamond with some rough edges, I'm sure the devs will fix those. I'm enjoying it a lot.
Oh, and a game doesn't deserve a one star rating because some localization problems, in my opinion.
As a veteran XCOM fan, all I can say this game just blew my mind. Easy 10/10.
If you are hesitant and ask yourself if you want to buy this game - go or it. The game got superb notes from gendre veterans, negative feedback comes from bad traslations? Game beeing difficult? This is just laughable, some just can't ackowledge the fact weapons should be deadly and medium difficulty shouldn't be kindergarden.
Anyway, tis game will be this years winner of best strategy game and beeing such a nice XCOM/JA/Commandos mashup, I can't reccoment it enough.
I keep returnign to this game wondering what I missed that other people saw with it and I keep drawing a blank.
The good to the game is in how well it creates the early 80s atmosphere for a cold war espionage game. Get that same Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy vibe as the more recent film version had it. There's also some nice ideas to the mechanics - the breach mechanic (later picked up by the XCom series) in particular is pretty enjoyable to watch play out.
Against that, well, it's pretty clunky and for a game where much of your time is spent stealthily moving across a map it's not actually a good or particularly engaging stealth game. I'd compare across to Invisible Inc. for how that can be done whereas Phantom Doctrine just has some real problems with conveying information in an intuitive way and even occasions where you're left scratching your head (eg jumping through windows attracts not a bit of attention or the 'click to make body disappear' solution to downed enemies).
Overall, a solid and worthy effort which should be praised for trying something a little different even if it doesn't quite hit the mark much of the time.
I have already put 12hrs in the game and really enjoy it. Props to the devs for making it so that point blank shots are garuanteed hits unlike XCOM. The learning curve is kind of steep but worth it once you learn the ins and outs of the game.