I'm a huge sucker for tactics and strategy games. As a self professed PC Master Race gamer, these are the games that excel on the PC platform and have absolutely no competition from the console platforms. In fact, I would even go as far to argue that the target audience for the consoles is not one that is generally too interested in these sorts of games to start with. So, then the chicken and the egg problem exists for the consoles... no demand for decent strategy/tactics games and thus no development for them...

By far and away the most successful turn-based strategy/tactics game of all time is the X-COM universe... which in it's current incarnation as XCOM2 is an epic masterwork of on the ground small squad tactics and strategic map decisions and consequences. It is incredibly gripping to play, and you really fell like you've won each small victory with perseverance and sacrifice, with disaster always lurking just around the corner.

So, in that vein of games and under this shadow, how does Phantom Doctrine stack up?

Setting

Phantom Doctrine is produced by the makers of Hard West (Polish developers, CreativeForge Games)... which is also another game that I need to put out a review of! Hard West was a pretty engaging tactics game set in the Wild West of the US (with a bit of a demonic twist...), but it had a unique spin on the cover tactics of the XCOM genre of games. It is a game mechanic that has been updated, refined and integrated in this newer release in a more modern setting.

The story is set in the depths of the Cold War, with a decidedly conspiracy-centric take on the era. There are shadows and conspiracies all through the world and within the whole of the narrative, with the player taking the role of either a CIA or KGB officer who has stumbled upon a giant world spanning conspiracy (Beholder) who is playing all sides against each other.

The main story is drip fed through non-time critical story missions (meaning that you can complete them at your leisure whilst the main strategic world continues alongside), with set piece tactical missions book-ending the major narrative chapters. There is a touch of artificial limiting of the player, with certain developments not being available until narrative milestones are completed.

Tactics Gameplay

There is an interesting take on the tactics mechanics. You generally (except if you are ambushed) start each tactical mission in the Infiltration mode during which the guards trace fairly predictable routes (but the enemy agents are much less predictable...) and you have no timer to complete the mission. The downsides to this are that your agents earn significantly less XP and are restricted to silent take-downs (silenced weapons or hand to hand takedowns) which are definitely less devestating than the full assault options. In addition, depending on the tactical equipment of your agents... you will be restricted in areas that you can be detected wandering around in. Your three tactical outfits are:

1. Full assault armour: If ANYONE sees you ANYWHERE then it is straight to full assault mode.
2. Body Armour: You can stay in unrestricted zones (except if you are seen by an enemy agent) without your cover being blown, however if you are seen by anyone in a restricted (red) zone then it is time to break out the noisy weapons!
3. Undercover (no armour): You are free to traverse the entire field without fear of detection (except from enemy agents) as long as you aren't seen doing anything suspicious (like killing or bashing someone or stealing stuff...)... funnily enough, these things are NOT considered suspicious; packing a full sized Machine Gun, walking straight through a window, jumping out a window to drop several floors down.

...so, as you see in the last undercover option, there are few immersion problems in the game!

However, despite the much reduced XP gains for your agents, the infiltration option is the best for the player. As soon as your infiltration is discovered... all hell breaks loose. Keep in mind that you are spy agency operating in hostile areas... so, when I mean shit hits the fan... most of that shit will be blasted in your direction. It begins with steady enemy reinforcements and then is topped off by airstrikes from the enemy team. This is stuff that you just don't want to have to deal with! (that said, a sturdy or even a flimsy shed roof seems to be adequate protection from the missiles and chain gun strikes from the air!).

This dual mechanic really does introduce some different styles of gameplay... with the infiltration being dominated by slow steady movement and quiet planned takedowns... and then the noisy sections being dominate by a sudden rush of firepower and a sprint to the objectives and exfiltration before you are swamped by reinforcements and the escalation of enemy strength.

The tactical mechanics follow a tried and true formula of move-action that was brought to gaming audiences via the acclaimed XCOM reboot. It is well recreated in this game as well, along with the half/full cover dynamic that was also a staple of the XCOM serious.

However, where there is a novel twist on the tactical gameplay is the Awareness resource that made it's debut in the earlier Hard West game from the same developers. This is a regenerating resource that aids the agents in making special offensive actions (like headshots or physical takedowns) whilst serving as a damage mitigation (via dodging abilities) for defence. So, if you decide to use the Awareness resource for attacks, you will find yourself much more vulnerable to damage. It's a great idea in principle... however, due to the fact that you will pretty much find yourself in infiltration mode (unless you screwed up...), you will be using this resource solely for taking down enemy troops and agents silently using the hand-to-hand ability (and because you are in infiltration, no one will be attacking you!).

This leads to the most damning criticism of this game.... the hand to hand takedown is just too powerful. It works as a single shot non-lethal takedown of any enemy regardless of infiltration or full assault modes. The fact that there is little option in the way of reaction fire (you lose the option to fire if you choose the reaction fire mode...) means that you can just run straight up to any enemy and just punch them senseless. This is just too overpowered and (in assault mode) is completely immersion breaking. In infiltration, it means that you are just constantly positioning your agents to take down enemies with this move... or even just walking a single disguised agent around punching everyone in the face.

If they removed this hand to hand takedown mechanic, then you would see much more reliance on this alternate mechanic which is much cooler and requires more planning and placement and team co-ordination. The Breach mechanic requires you to pre-position agents at multiple entrances (including windows or drops and at least two entrances), and then upon execution your agents bash in and takedown a single enemy each with whatever weapon they are wielding (silenced or not...). This is a mechanic that has much more tactical potential and planning, and would have been a highlight of the game... if it were not overshadowed by the overpowered takedown.

Still... despite the immersion breaking flaws and the overpowered unbalanced skills... it's always nice to see your team get back safely! This is also the screen where the various perks and level up notifications get handled... or any MIA/KIA ones!

... and the sweet sweet loot!

Strategic Map

The Strategic Map is pretty lackluster... essentially involving playing whack a mole with deploying your agents around the globe to investigate suspicious events, most of which end up being nothing at all. Where it can get a bit tense is if your agents get ambushed en-route to an investigation, which drops you straight into an assault tactical map, one of the very few times that you end up in that position!

Ultimately, this portion of the game is played in real time... with pausing for agent dispatch... and it severely click heavy and not fun at all.....

There are some very loose choice events, which involve you picking from a menu of options... often with very little idea of what the effect on your agent/s is going to be. I guess that the option that uses the most resources will often be the best one, but that isn't appear to be guaranteed.

Base Management

The base management screen is the paused time interface for handling your agency... essentially it is a glorified set of menus with about as much interest as that sounds like it should be. Interestingly enough, when you have to uproot and relocate your base... all the rooms are in different places physically on the map layout... which is logical enough, but from a UI/gaming point of view is pretty annoying when you want to quickly and easily snap to the room that you are after!

Crew Quarters

Your crew, which are limited in number depending on your agency "level" are actually quite a detailed sea of perks and numbers... however, what one quickly learns is that all those numbers are pretty much meaningless, as you will be never really relying on them if you never break infiltration!

Likewise, all the perks and weapon abilities are pretty much useless as well... because most of the weapons (yes, even the shotgun) can be silenced and you'll be only using the takedowns to avoid breaking infiltration anyway....

So, lots of detail and flavour... but ultimately, shallow window dressing on characters that you are not really attached to... which end up being pawns that you move around to perform the all powerful physical takedown move. That said, there is a sneaky little twist in the unknown perks that a character has... one of them could include being an enemy mole or mind controlled operative... which leads to them turning during a tactical mission. So, characters with a lot of unknown perks could have immense power... or the increased chance of being an enemy asset!

Forger

Oddly enough, this station becomes one of the most important rooms in the base management screen. Why? Because, this is where you get your income from! You forge your income....

However, a secondary use of this station is for creating new identities for agents that have been "made" or are "hot". This involves coughing up the necessary dough and time.... and then running through a character creation screen for the new identity. I only needed to do this once in the whole game... but it was horrific, there is no history of connection between the new and old identities... the codename remains the same, but the look and everything is different... you may as well have rolled a new agent with the same level. Already, you had little to no emphatic connection to your agents... this makes it even worse!

Infirmary

If your agents end up here, then you screwed up your infiltration somehow in the tactical map... aka, you are playing it wrong!

Wounds (lost HP) take time to heal... but it is no problem, you can still deploy the agents with no additional skill penalties (other than a reduced HP) and they will dutifully return to their critically ill bed when they come back from deployment!

Workshop

This is your other cash cow... you make stuff and then you sell them as fast as you can whilst pocketing a little bit of profit. It's time consuming and adds to the click fest... but what are you going to do with your agents anyway? Unfortunately, whilst doing this job (or the forger job), your agents don't gain XP. So, your dedicated cash cow workers are going to be left far far behind in levels.... (which doesn't matter, as you'll only ever be using the universal takedown move anyway....).

Analytics

This is perhaps the most interesting (and later most boring....) part of the game. You link together keywords from your investigations to try and connect real world information to the code-names that started an investigation dossier. Upon the completion of a dossier, you gain access to new equipment in the shops, intelligence leads (for other dossiers...) or potential recruits. Essentially, it is a way of "leveling up" the actual spy agency....

Sometimes, an investigation clue requires to be hunting around for a keyword in some conspiracy flavour text. There is no penalty for guessing wrong (in fact, there is only a highlighting if you guess the word right... nothing happens if you guess wrong....), so you may as well just click around randomly... although, after a while... you see the sane flavour text being repeated, so you start to know which words to choose!

If you are too lazy to make the simple connections yourself... you can staff an agent here to do it for you over time.

Body Engineering

Pretty uninteresting... you can pump an agent full of a drug to increase some stats at the expense of others... but it doesn't matter, as you don't need stats to employ the physical takedown move... (I start to see a pattern here....).

MK ULTRA

From this station, you have a wide array of interesting choices on which you can choose to inflict upon captured agents (or your own agents!). Mind control, turned moles, interrogation.... just to name a few... however, in practice, I ended up only with the interrogation for more information followed up by a quick execution. The other options for turned and controlled agents was very interesting, but it would mean that the tactical missions would go to assault mode quite quickly... bad bad bad!

Looks and Performance

I played this on a decent productivity laptop (XPS 15) instead of my gaming rig, and to be honest... the looks of the game were okay. Nothing spectacular (which would have been limited by the 1050 graphics card anyway...), but it wasn't terrible to look at either... occasionally some weird pop ups and such things, but that was more an artifact of my hardware instead of the game. I did give it a go on the gaming rig and it was quite good to look at... but again nothing spectacular. Interestingly enough, the game has recently received a port to the Nintendo Switch with it's relatively under-powered hardware... on the other hand, even the Witcher 3 has managed that!

Sound wise, the game is pretty boring... the same barks and soundscape all the way through... it is no aural treat....

Conclusion and thoughts

The setting for the game is quite intriguing and held such great promise... an XCOM type undercover spy agency, combating a grand conspiracy set in a world of conspiracies drawn from the existing lore of Cold War conspiracies! The initial missions played also in a promising way, with the mechanics of the game being relatively logical and streamlined...

... but with the incentive to remaining in the Infiltration mode and the overpowered Takedown move basically reducing every tactical mission to stay quiet and punch people (then hide them...) or if the guns get loud, run up to people and punch them... this essentially broke the game. It was way too tedious... the only danger was if you got spotted due to some careless placement and scouting... or bad luck due to walking around a corner into an enemy agent. Combined with the lack of attachment and personality of your own agents and the whack-a-mole strategic map... well, this ended up being a tedious chore of a game.

The story is okay... nothing great, the sort of airport novel spy thriller sort of level of story. After several months of playing this game (less and less as the time progressed), the desire to see the end of the story is the only thing that brings me back to the game (and stops it getting uninstalled...)... however, remembering how tedious the tactical map is.... well, the only reason that I'm completing it is to free up the disk space now... knowing that if I just uninstalled it, then I would have to wade through the whole thing again just to see the end of the story (which would be EVEN worse!).

This was a a game that could have been sooooo good.... however, it doesn't stack up to the leaders of the field XCOM2 The interest isn't there, and the actual gameplay is not engaging enough...

Review Hardware

DELL XPS15 (9560)

CPU: i7-7700HQ
RAM: 16 GB
Storage: SSD
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050

Screenshots are by @bengy