Phantom Doctrine

 PC
User Score
7.4

Mixed or average reviews- based on 121 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 81 out of 121
  2. Mixed: 16 out of 121
  3. Negative: 24 out of 121

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  1. sirquacksalot
    Aug 16, 2018
    1
    At the time of writing, 2 days after release, I cannot stress enough that this game is terribly broken and should not be purchased. The combat system is unplayable. Once combat begins, regardless how good your cover is, if the enemy has line of sight to you (and they ALWAYS do), every shot connects and drains not only your health, but your awareness (which acts as one of the only damageAt the time of writing, 2 days after release, I cannot stress enough that this game is terribly broken and should not be purchased. The combat system is unplayable. Once combat begins, regardless how good your cover is, if the enemy has line of sight to you (and they ALWAYS do), every shot connects and drains not only your health, but your awareness (which acts as one of the only damage mitigation mechanics). Once the awareness is reduced, not only do you take more damage per shot, but you can do less and less of your own actions. This would not be a problem if you could realistically choose to avoid combat, however 3 missions in on the KGB storyline, one of the required story missions is an attack on your base, where you start the mission in combat.

    Until the unplayable combat system is patched or changed, I sadly recommend avoiding this game.    … Expand
  2. XTRMNTR2K
    Aug 21, 2018
    4
    First off: I applaud the developers for taking player feedback seriously and releasing a series of patches in quick succession. So far they've been very communicative about their plans.

    The question is: Do I recommend Phantom Doctrine? The answer is no. Let me start with the good things, those are the things you'll see at first. Chances are you're going to see these mostly for the    First off: I applaud the developers for taking player feedback seriously and releasing a series of patches in quick succession. So far they've been very communicative about their plans.

    The question is: Do I recommend Phantom Doctrine? The answer is no.

    Let me start with the good things, those are the things you'll see at first. Chances are you're going to see these mostly for the first 2 or 3 hours of the game; most of the bad stuff only pops up once you can't easily refund the game on steam anymore.

    1. The cold war espionage setting is fresh and the aesthetics of the game fit perfectly.

    2. Having to connect pieces of information on a corkboard is a nice touch. Feels natural rather than a tacked-on minigame.

    3. Stealth gameplay is good, having to evade line of sight of guards, cameras and civilians.

    4. The strategic layer is fun. You have to pay attention when and where points of interest pop up and react quickly. Additionally, you have to find a balance between spreading out your agents and keeping them together in order to avoid ambushes.

    These are the most enjoyable parts of the game. Unfortunately, the fun is marred by a series of very strange design decisions made by the developers. Some may have seemed good on paper, but in practice are revealed as bad game design:

    1. The camera during tactical missions is far too close to the action. The only way to zoom out is holding down the 'v' key to get a better view of the scene - temporarily.
    The devs need to add an option to reverse the functionally (i.e. having a zoomed out view and pressing 'v' to zoom in). The screenshots and trailers make it seem like situational awareness is a thing in this game, but it's often not. This is because of the camera and...

    2. ...the level design. I've had a mission where I needed to kill an enemy agent that was located in the second floor of a small building located on the other side of a trainyard. One of the issues with this map were the fact that you often couldn't tell where you could and couldn't go. Agents can jump out first floor windows but not climb over a waist-high rail waggon? Strange. Add to that the fact that the walkways present on the map will obstruct your view when you're on ground level.
    Just as bad is the fact that combined with the terrible camera it is often impossible to see where the enemies are - both in and outside of combat.
    To make matters worse, the target was in a room, with a civilian, that could only be reached through a ladder. It was impossible in this scenario to reach and incapacitate the target without alerting everyone and starting combat, because the enemy agent would *always* spot my agent entering the room even though he was staring at a wall. This is bad game design, there's no other way to put it.

    3. Maps seem like they are generated from a set of components rather than being handmade. Either that, or they are badly designed for stealth AND combat. Making informed decisions about the tactical positioning of your agents is also impossible because you don't get enough information to do that!

    4. Hiring new agents automatically increases your HEAT level (heat being an indicator of when your base of operations is exposed and you have to move). It's nonsensical and adds nothing interesting to gameplay. It's just a nuisance.

    5. Reloading large (non-pistol) weapons uses all of your movement and action points. Considering that some weapons (like LMGs) expend all of their magazine in as little as two(!) attacks AND take up almost all your movement and action points to fire, it begs the question if the developers ever tested their balance? It would seem that was not the case.

    6. Dealing and receiving damage is more unpredictable than it would have been with random hit chances. This is because damage can be dealt in full, as graze or none at all. If no damage is dealt, the targets awareness is reduced (which is the main resource apart from hitpoints). However, since enemies have wildly varying amounts of hitpoints (could be 30, 50 or 80 - all in the same mission) and it is often unclear which amount of hitpoint or awareness damage is dealt, this makes calculating the combined firepower needed to kill a single enemy impossible. What's worse, enemy awareness is only displayed as a bar, so you have no idea how much they actually have, nor can you see how much awareness you are going to drain with an attack.

    Like I said before, I respect the developers for the way they have been dealing with the bug-ridden release so far, and I applaud their decision to tweak the problematic LOS/LOF system. Yet I can not recommend this game with a clear conscience in its current state, because I believe the issues to be too deep and far-reaching to be fixed in a patch or two. A complete overhaul of several gameplay mechanics would be in order to do that.

    If the developers manage to achieve that, however, I will definitely change my review accordingly.    … Expand
  3. zdesert
    Aug 19, 2018
    3
    This is a game full of half baked mechanics

    -the investigation bored which is really cool until you realize that it is a meaningless wordpuzzle -the globel spy management that is just a chore of slow whackamole - buggy and un-intuitive stealth missions - incredibly weak combat, it is not a combat game, but the combat is forced on you and it is terrible -broken Line of sight -    This is a game full of half baked mechanics

    -the investigation bored which is really cool until you realize that it is a meaningless wordpuzzle
    -the globel spy management that is just a chore of slow whackamole
    - buggy and un-intuitive stealth missions
    - incredibly weak combat, it is not a combat game, but the combat is forced on you and it is terrible
    -broken Line of sight
    - boring tactical puzzles
    - cluttered and confused UI

    the game has style and fantastic theme but none of the individual parts hold up. together those parts can keep the ship floating for a while.... but the ship stinks    … Expand
  4. BLADELING
    Aug 15, 2018
    0
    it's practically unplayable. The combat system is broken.
    Don't expect an X-Com in spy sauce, this game has nothing to do with it.
    I do not understand why the developers released Phantom Doctrine in this state. There were so many good ideas behind it! :(
  5. Xcommaster
    Aug 17, 2018
    0
    Literally the worst game ever created with broken combat and AI with wallhack.
  6. D3D11
    Oct 8, 2022
    3
    Only if you can accept the fact that every shooting is gonna hit. You can use against the enemies of course, but for me this is completely ruins the game. Nothing really have to do with X-COM, don't expect anything from it. The AI is dumb, they shoot you if they see you, if they lost sight, they not gonna follow you. UI is over complicated, graphics is gray and boring. This game has theOnly if you can accept the fact that every shooting is gonna hit. You can use against the enemies of course, but for me this is completely ruins the game. Nothing really have to do with X-COM, don't expect anything from it. The AI is dumb, they shoot you if they see you, if they lost sight, they not gonna follow you. UI is over complicated, graphics is gray and boring. This game has the worst of the tactical-turn based systems. Very amateur job.

    I also wanted to mention how obvious that some of the "8-10" pointers (if not all of them) are paid reviews. If they starting the review with introducing the company, you can bet that it is fake as hell.    … Expand
  7. MrWhiny
    Dec 26, 2018
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Sound like a good game but it's not. Most of the gameplay doesn't really make any sense, story? Game mechanics? Characters? Even weapons?! Who is beholder, who is valhalla etc... just... boring, most of the time you really don't care about story, just go there kill the bad guy and win that is it, this is the main story. Really?!?! And side missions, they're just sooo repetitive, kill enemy agent or capture, beholder cells go there kill everyone and disable bombs... That is it, nothing more, everyone of them are same, same buildings (yeah you can see Lenin picture in USA or UK too lol, so doing missions on different country doesn't really make anything different) always raining and night, no different weathers or day and night cycle, always same atmosphere... Lame.

    And the game mechanics: I don't know what were they thinking, this game mechanics man... In infiltration your agents suppose to be stealthy right? But they walk through the glass, jump out through the window, walking front of the enemy guard (if they're not in the red area), using karate-chop or slapping everyone necks (whatever that is slap or chop sometime looks like slap lol) while standing right next to enemy lmao, civilians are in same group with the enemy (if they will saw you while doing something they'll alarm everyone which is very stupid!), combat mechanics just sooo frustrating! Because when combat start, enemy always have unlimited reinforcements!!! and air strike!! WTH?!! Seriously dude what is this?? air strike in city? I can understand if we're attacking a **** military base but this? And wait this is getting ridiculous, enemy always getting 5 units on each 5 or 4 turns, and they will swarm your agents like a **** zergs!! And AI always know where you are, I like challenging games but this is cheating, period... Obstacles and bullets it just a illusion in this game, why? None of the obstacles are breakable, no destructible environment, LOS sometime doesn't make any sense, combat system in this game just so simple, once you confirm "fire" to enemy it triggers the animations, bullet FX and apply damage to target, not very complex, there is no real bullet simulation because there is no "actual bullets" in this game it just a instant damage if cover in effect then game reducing the max damage output, that's it very simple, very basic and unrealistic any other things it just a illusion and some animations... Lazy development... I prefer **** RNG with bullet simulation instead of this lazy combat system. This is the reason why AI sometime hit our agents behind walls or from very long distance, because there is no "actual walls" in this game! There is no crouch or prone, there is no close combat weapons not even a knife?! Yeah, you always going for slap LOL, one good slap for everyone lmao...

    Agents in this game they're all same with ugly looking faces, whoa look good looking girl or guy (judging from their pictures) once you look at their actual model, they always look like gremlin lol. Same skills, no special skills, no skill tree, nothing, everyone of them are SAME! Voice acting just meh, really... MKULTRA facility looks like downgrade until you get to saboteur, why? idk..

    And word puzzles, they're just so annoying, solve word puzzle and get more word puzzle yay, yeah very funny :(

    Idk what to say anymore, list just goes on and on, looks like they wasted a good opportunity with this game....    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

86
#86 Most Discussed PC Game of 2018
30
#30 Most Shared PC Game of 2018

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
74

Mixed or average reviews - based on 33 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 16 out of 33
  2. Mixed: 16 out of 33
  3. Negative: 1 out of 33
  1. KeenGamer
    Jan 29, 2024
    90
    If you are a fan of the newer Xcom series, I highly recommend this game. If you are a fan of Cold War spy thrillers, I highly recommend this game. The mystery of the conspiracy is fantastic and makes me want to uncover everything. The gameplay is brutal, but fair and unlike Xcom you won't miss a with a shotgun at point blank range and a 99% change to hit. This game fulfilled many niches and I hope others will agree.
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  2. Riot Pixels
    Dec 30, 2018
    70
    It's a little bit weird, sometimes disbalanced, boring at times and clearly lacking a better budget, but now, after a handful of patches, you can safely pick it up during a sale.
    Read full review
  3. CD-Action
    Dec 4, 2018
    80
    Phantom Doctrine is an addictive mix of improved combat mechanics from Hard West and XCOM’s strategic layer (but you also manage particular soldiers, not just your base). I recommend it if you revel in silent executions and infiltrating enemy facilities without leaving any traces, especially if you enjoyed Invisible, Inc. and don’t mind a game being somewhat rough around the edges. [10/2018, p.48]
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