Phantom Doctrine

Decent strategy / turn based spy game. 7/10. I got alot of hours play for my money. Not without its flaws; too much emphasis on stealth over action, pacing off in places, missions and intel analysis become repetitive. But don`t be put off. I look forward to the sequel.

I really enjoyed this game, 9 out of 10.
The game loop is fun and the systems are well made. There are definitely some things I would have preferred and some directions I disagreed with in the UI and skill system. However, none of them were enough to take away from my enjoyment
It might be quick and easy to say "Another XCOM game", but other than at a super macro level of tactical RPG, they are not the same. The management and combat aspects are different and equally enjoyable. The espionage / counter-espionage centered story is fun and suspenseful. It intertwines real life events from that time period throughout the narrative and that makes it hit even harder. The game offers options for stealth if you choose or just going all out if you enjoy the crush of combat. So you can accomplish your field missions without firing a single shot.
The combat system is different from XCOM in several very important ways. For example, there is no random hit chance in combat. You know what will hit and what won't with certainty. But, that does not make it easy by any means. It is very challenging, so be prepared. After your first "gung ho gone wrong" experience, you'll see what I mean.
The map management aspects offer variety, and once you build your detention/interrogation base module, the options for how to handle situations open up real nicely. I am trying not to spoil anything, so I'll leave it at that.
All in all, I really enjoyed this game and would recommend it to anyone that likes T-RPGs and for anyone looking to try one. The price on this one (when on sale) was amazing, and even the full retail would be worthwhile for fans of the genre. If you're just curious, then wait for the next sale and give this a shot.

I did enjoyed it.
This game filled my XCOM withdrawal greatly. But in a half sense.
The concept of the game is fantastic. But some elements of the game hinted out the struggles that the game itself tried to maintain to catch up with XCOM concepts and at last they remained as the questionable assets to game itself.
The needs to Dipose the Body for example. The sake of stealth theme while balancing the nature of turn-base-XCOM-like ended up having our characters magically delete the dead bodies even in the weirdest scenario.
The Stats and Skill requirements to fit the DnD characters backgrounds.
This I do like but I also heavily disliked how Skills and backgrounds story of a characters have to be too fixated on stricted Weapon proficiency. That honestly doesn't hit right. It messed up the freedom of creating the characters players want.
And speaking of Stats.
The requirements to knockout enemy is that you need to have your guy's HP more than them is most questionable concept I learnt.
As far I understand there's no Percentage to Hit here. But having the Focus Bar to help out your survivability. Needing to have more HP than your enemy to be able to non-lethally knock them out is not good. I hate trying to juiced up my guy's HP JUST so I can finally match the gameplay for its stealth espionage theme and not just awkwardly get to mandatory loud or killing my targets when I wanted then alive instead. And trying to get more HP and Stats upgrade is not easy to come by.
Overall. The Investigation Board system is VERY unique and fun. Of course after a while I did notice the pattern and realized later how repetitive some names can be. But that's to be expected by then.
For a game to keep XCOM fans busy and dope up, I still do recommend this game. There are flaws but can say it was well-made.

A neat twist on the Turn-based-tactics formula, very much an XCOM-like game, but expanding enormously on the stealth gameplay some may be familiar with from XCOM2
Once you get your tools and skills sorted, it's very possible and encouraged to play entirely stealthily. With your agents strolling through office-buildings after-hours to pilfer secret documents and steal equipment.
The combat is much more forgiving than the usual fare for this genre, and it's particularly satisfying to use the Breach mechanic to send a team of two or more agents into a room to slaughter any hostiles present.
Interestingly, this pairs incredibly well with silenced pistols, because you can maintain your Infiltration status. No alarms will be raised as long as you weren't caught on camera, and nobody sees the room full of dead people before you can remove the bodies.
The Geoscape map is pretty familiar, and sending over a dozen agents to cities around the world gets quite strategic. Though I do wish there were more benefits to having agents who speak the local language and are familiar with the customs. It feels weird to send my american agent who only speaks english and french into china, surely they'd stick out and have trouble completing their mission?
The intel boards are a neat mechanic too, sticking dossiers and photographs on a pin-board and linking them together with bits of string to connect the dots and link codenames and places. It feels very satisfying and I've not seen anything similar before.
All in all, it felt rough initially, but once I found my feet playing it I rapidly warmed up to the game.
Definitely recommended to any fans of XCOM who wish they could play more secret-agent than commando-squad.

I've bought this game with won gift card from allkeyshop.
An X-com game in the espionage cold-war universe. I've enjoyed the story and the possibility of playing any major Secret Agency Is great. Agents can be "upgraded" in numerous ways like training, conditioning, perk revealing, equipment, leveling. What is nice here is that there are many ways of successful finishing the map, and those enemy agents coming from nowhere(fog of war) really spice things up. One of the better games out there.
No problems playing this on Linux.

Some parts get annoying and repetitive but overall a very fun cold war espionage game that has solid combat and a fun plot running through it

It's a shame the developers went under because this is a great game and if they had just a little more time to cook this could have been one of the best turn-based strategy games of all time.
If you want to play a stealthy XCOM-type game with a Cold War jazz vibe, if you love stringing up documents on the board like Charlie Day, and if you can tolerate it's relatively minor flaws (mainly some UI inconveniences and not enough unique assets) then this is for you!
If you pick it up, definitely play on Easy to give you a bit of breathing room until you figure out the flow of the game.