Phantom Doctrine

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.

Getting into this game is just too unclear for me, it TAKES a lot of want to, so many facets that are not clear or understandable. For example, I still don't fully understand how training works entirely. I will continue to try and slog through it for a bit more, but I kind of regret the purchase and will likely abandon - disappointed as I really like the the genre and concept of the game.

phantom doctrine is a isometric espionage tactical RPG that is a tad too long. it's a really cool game and concept but it does wear out its welcome because of the fact that you don't really get anything new introduced after like ten or fifteen hours, which is NOT good when the main story is at least three times that length, if not more. a lot of the stuff you do in the gameplay loop feels extremely tedious and repetitive as a result of the game not introducing anything new. it really captures the idea of a spy thriller decently but there are a decent amount of flaws that make what should've been a 20-30 hour banger of a TRPG into a game that is much longer than that, especially if you're trying to go for 100% completion.

Combat is much like xcom, as advertised, but without the aggravating RNG frustrations. You also have the option to complete all but 3 or 4 of the missions in full stealth, which is fun at first, but becomes super trivial as you get some of the skills along the way (particularly the skill that lets you sneak around the enemy agents in disguise).
Overall the game is fun, but it does get repetitive after a while. Combat is enjoyable, stealth is enjoyable, the body enhancement stuff is a cool system, the weapon diversity is good, the theme is cool, it has all good elements, but at some point you're just doing the same things over and over.
That said, it was good enough for me to want to spend the time to play it through to the end, which will take you 40-50 hours. It would take quite a bit less than that if it wasn't for the one pet peeve I have with this game... DON'T make animations in turn based games that can't be sped up extremely or skipped altogether! I'm so sick of watching my agents stab themselves with those stupid movement increase syringes and slowly walking halfway across the map with a KO'd agent on their back - let me skip it!

For me this game hinges on the border between a thumbs up and a down. It would be very simple to say it is X-Com with spies, but if it had X-Com’s gameplay it would be nice, however it ends up with a washed-out version of it.
So, what this game does bad is the spy stuff, it feels like the devs wanted to make an X-Com clone but at the last moment they remembered “Ohh crap, we need to add spy stuff!”
The way the tactical combat works; first of all, it relies on Infiltration, meaning you sneak around without being detected. That sounds good but when I tried the game on normal difficulty it was a mess. Often times I woke up triggering the alarm (and thus ruining infiltration), out of the blue, it was so damn often it was painful to get through the levels. Regarding that alarm, what it does its to make every enemy aware of you, and this game has that NPC can sniff your farts kinda system, so if you think of going in a hidden spot and wait for enemies to wander around aimlessly, NOPE, they will home in on your location, once that alarm sounds prepare for combat!
And this brings me to the second point, the combat. Let me just say it will make you miss the % system of X-Com, here all hits are 100% and damage depends on cover and armor. It is so annoying, because enemies know where you are, they will often shoot right on the edges of the fog o’ war, and you end up getting ganged from all sides. No cover and some armor mean certain death. There is also an energy bar called Awareness which gives you some dodge chance, but against enemy agents it is almost useless. To brush up on what an Agent is in this game, they are the guys you control, but they can also be fighting for the enemy, basically they will be a mini-boss, so expect from them to dodge sniper shots from the back, point-blank head shots, and all the BS your agents can do, except Takedowns. And good thing too, because takedowns are 1 hits KOs, you need energy to perform them but late game, a few mobile agents with 2 action points and plenty of awareness can decimate the enemies. To close up the combat, I hate this system; shots are being fired through walls, through covers (because even full covers do not fully block shots), distance does not count for digly dick, snipers have similar range with pistols, enemies can see you but you can’t see them until they shoot, once that alarm sounds and you did not clear up as many enemies as possible during infiltration it becomes tedious to not get flanked, ohh and reinforcements pop out a few turns after the alarm sound. At very best, use infiltration to complete the goals and then you can trigger the alarm so you are able to evac in a moment’s notice.
Ok enough complaining about the combat, the third thing is the investigation board. What this does is to unlock agents for you to hire, weapons, armors to buy, components (which are drugs to inject in your agents to boost stats) and a few more things. For me this was a tedious mini-game, it is basically tying the string on notes (like the boards you see in detective movies). The problem is that you often get sh!t rewards for completing one of those! Especially at the end game, where I just got new agents when my roster was full… It feels like such a waste of time completing those boards.
Why I am giving it a thumbs up is because I enjoyed it a bit in Easy difficulty. It had that balance to not make you feel overwhelmed by the combat and I could finally complete infiltration without having to go around the map looking for weak spots which take too damn much. It may have been too easy but at least the pacing was alright. There is also a new game+ unlocked after beating it once, it gives some extra story, but I sure as heck will not play it twice.
So, I recommend this game during a sale or in a bundle and really want that tactics kick after finishing X—Com, JA, Hard West, Commandos, and might be other good ones out there which I haven’t tried.

as of this writing I have 2,290 hours played in Phantom Doctrine. It is infinitely replayable. This is perhaps my favorite turn-based game of all time, and that's saying something, as I'm 54 and been playing since Castle Wolfenstein. The depth of the game's character development, the myriad ways to buff characters, get cool weapons and gear, just wow. Then the whole investigative angle where you physically connect clues to advance the story is epic and has been copied in other games I've played since.

Summary
Combining the slow, deliberate elements of TBS with the slow, deliberate, exacting playstyle of a stealth game sounds about as exciting as molasses dripping off Nordic pine during Yule. Somehow, it works. Yes, it did get too slow more than a few times. Yes, the game doesn’t have enough variety for its playtime…but I enjoyed it. Admittedly, though, TBS are my jam.
A better than average XCOM clone, Phantom Doctrine presents us with a novel game idea. Let’s combine traditional turn-based strategy with stealth. Stealth games usually want to suck you in with a very personal playstyle. Love’em or hate’em, Assassin’s Creed has cornered the third person stealth game market. Mark of the Ninja, on the other hand, was a beautiful blend of stealth with the unexpected side-scroller, so I was willing to give PD a shot.
I wasn’t really blown away, but I also wasn’t disappointed. Maybe I’m too old school, but “stealth” to me is turn your surround sound on and power up Theif. Prepare to be immersed. You’re supposed to be so wrapped up in not being eaten by a Gru that trying to do this with 2…or 6 meeples is just absurd. PD allows you to rely on all the classic stealth elements, while letting you play as a much larger group. A spy thriller is one of the only settings where this makes sense to me, so kudos to CreativeForge for finding the correct marriage of this odd couple.
At first, you play as a spy agency that gets burned. You don’t have the XP, skills, or gear to be really good at this whole stealth thing. If you are clever, or lucky, you can get through a level with total stealth…but odds are you don’t understand the game well enough. Flub it up and alert the map. There is no in-between BTW, total stealth or total alert. Maybe this sounds extreme…but playing a lot of AC recently where you can sit in the crapper for 5 sec to lose your tail, this was actually kinda refreshing.
After a few levels, you can build a team with a decent shot of clearing the map in total stealth. This is where the real fun was for me. Your meeples die fast if the map goes sour on you. A firefight is the sign to extract…now! By 8-10 hours, you should be able to clear each map with close to total stealth every time. Or if you trigger an alarm, you have your prime objective and you just need to hop to the extraction zone.
While overall a positive experience, the problems you expect (and some you didn’t) do drag PD down. Trying to run around in TBS mode while maintaining full stealth is slow and tedious. That won’t bother some. It didn’t bother me for a while, but eventually I thought (channeling my inner Tristana) “I wanna shoot something!” Which is the wrong answer. I did get to that point about 60 h in…but even if you build a combat beast, a firefight is still the wrong answer. If the game has a critical failing, it is that stealth is the only correct gameplay.
Levels quickly become repetitive. The game has 40 h worth of maps for an 80 h game. Yes, that math includes the fact that a few reruns are ok. Easily halfway through you will be like…this map…again…really.
Another thing that angered me beyond reason (literally, still cannot figure out why I am this mad) is how certain in game interactions (picking up a body to hide it) create a side animation that cannot be skipped or sped up. Why did I spend 1.5 h of my 50 h watching myself pick up unconscious bodies? Ok, admittedly that makes me sound like a serial killer…but we’re all gamers here so…I’ll leave it in.
I guess the only other thing to comment on is the story, which was a solid (if a bit formulaic) *spoiler alert* spy thriller. It was, however, more of a side element. Frequently I was surprised when my “handler” popped up to give an exposition…”oh yea, that’s right there’s a point here.” Good enough to enjoy, but not so good that you need to play PD if the down points sound like a drag.