Warning: Prob the longest review i've written. It also includes a little guide (I wrote this as I played the 40+ hour long bloated beast. (Presented here as raw intelligence with little cleaning up beyond spelling and grammar)

Phantom Doctrine is an average at best game. It has some things I really liked, and some things hate, some things that are a bit interesting to look at, some that didnt really deliver in the ways they could have, and ultimately nothing about it feels particularly well made or cohesively put together. I think most people should stay away from this game. BUT it is a bit different enough for some of us to find of interest to play. If you are the kind of person who has spent hundreds of hours in games like Jagged Alliance 2 or XCOM apocalypse, then you might find 30-40 hours of this game somewhat satisfying because It's a bit different.

When I heard about this game I saw what people were saying, they either felt it was average or did not like it, yet reading about what it was about and imagining what some of the ideas in it might be like, I figured I would probably enjoy it more than most. (I did. This becomes more satisfying when you learn how the game works and how to exploit it. A guide on that at the bottom of my review!) It does have some neat ideas in it. And if you have been playing every X COM from the beginning you might get something out of it.

The creators of this game are definitely fans of XCOM and they want you to believe this is XCOM. And from these two screenshots alone it looks completely like it. But what the creators dont want you to know is that this game [REDACTED]and not everyone will [REDACTED] Also mind control technology was invented by The Polish and delivered to Galapagos Islands in a dead drop to Agent Gollop who deceptively insinuated that it was the Greys who were responsible.

So yea looks a lot like X COM, with a heavy narrative focus, base management and very heavy stealth element? What's not to like? You even have in game rogue like CNC decisions like you would in an RPG. (sounds like golden KFC recipe for many of us)

Or the "Conspiracy Board" (What a cool idea to advance plot!)

In reality, many of these elements (particularly the conspiracy board which is a great example of where the game falls short) sound fantastic on paper (pun intended) and when linked together are not as awesome as one might imagine. It's also repetitive and even the neatest things in this game get old quick. And so much of it is just simply filler and fluff. Most of the mechanics the game saddles and bogs you down with can simply be ignored.

The conspiracy board is an interesting idea. (Let's take the lore, implement a mechanic in which the player has to collect information and then actually actively do a puzzle in which they can think about whats going on and fit the pieces together for plot advancement or other rewards)

but its very bland and empty in the way it is executed. You can just click things randomly until you unlock the words, then you just match them up. It's also completely random and mindless busy/clicky work. It's randomly ('procedurally) generated on some really goofy templates, so there's no real plot. Actually reading it is just gibberish and doesn't really tie in to anything (Kind of unfortunate because each entry would have been a neat way to implement lore in a UFOPAEDIA context by making little snippets about certain things.)

Phantom Doctrine isn't shit, but it doesn't really play like X Com or anything at all like Hard West. (But it's as quirky as Hard West was.) It does often look like xcom (the way your soldiers will jump out windows and the way some agents move quickly is very reminiscent of the tall men) it IS A turn based strategy. However, its very contrived and on rails. It reminds me a lot of a very old game called Shadow Watch in the way you are robbing places and try to get in and get out in just a few turns. the game can basically be broken down into two core concepts

1. You must approach every mission with pure stealth (especially the first few chapters) ideally never firing a shot, and sneaking and going to ridiculous lengths (and time) to steal evidence and equipment and silent take down anything that is alive. (You get penalties in the campaign for being scene, and once you are spotted a timer happens that forces you to complete your mission in a few turns or you incur another penalty) While this is a very slow and dry form of playing against your own patience and the enemy's paths and AI, it has it's moments which stealth games often do. It's fun to mess around, dragging bodies and jumping in and out of shadows. (It's just too bad tactical engagements dont have the depth of say Jagged Alliance 2)
2. You want to steal enemy documents/intel first. So as to maximize your intel gathering to advance game plot. Then once you build up other means to gather intel in the game you want to be stealing equipment/raiding because its a huge moneymaker, and there arent many ways to make money (beyond the manufacturing of silencers and forging cash)

That's pretty much the game. The game features a very questionable system of tactical combat mechanics which play absolutely nothing like x Com despite looking so similar. The combat mechanics are very strange and not intuitive. You'll really have to learn how the game works and read to play it right (but its not that complicated it just takes time to learn). It then begins to play like a static board game almost. (since there arent dice rolls or randomization its like chess or checkers the way pieces move around, Very odd feeling) Cover and half cover provide damage reduction ONLY. Chance to hit is replaced by a chance of automatic dodge (full negation) and chance of graze (your weapon's min damage) based on a kind of energy level or stamina. I dont think anything in the game is random only some things aren't telegraphed overtly to the player (such as the threshold at which enemies will execute dodge but its pretty simple to get a feel for) the game calls Awareness, which various actions deplete. firing a long burst (suppress fire) and throwing flashbangs will cripple awareness, and this makes enemies a bit easier to hit (Dodge and graze). The strange thing is this game has damage based on (in order from least to greatest relevancy, the weapon itself, and the distance you are from the target. point blank shots always do max damage and cant be dodged/grazed. in addition you can also do a insta kill melee attack in or out of detected combat. For this reason I find it best to always have a pistol and an LMG/sniper for each agent. Pistols also have the bonus of dealing a high damage attack called 'head shot' and there are perks you can get that make certain attacks undodgeable. (Something you want as game progresses and you must do fighting on occasion)

But lets talk about that melee and silent take down combat. Cause this is where you do most of the game sigh

PD is a game where if you have more hit points you can do a melee attack for insta takedown, (think of it as a strength stat) if you don't then you cannot (The game says that this is only the case on hard but its that way on medium/normal difficult as well) This is a really dumb mechanic but i understand the intent and idea. the intent was that if you are injured player from another mission you cant keep doing silent takedowns (and it represents strength of a character) But it also means you can have weaker characters who can't do silent take downs at all if you aren't careful. And silent take downs are your number 1 attack in this game and you should simply not be ever shooting unless its to make a get away at the end of the mission. This means you have 'eyes and ears' characters on mission or a designated 'body hider/body dragger.'

While it's often really amusing to be skulking about and dragging bodies or doing scouting of a map... The fact that this game is funneled into (basically forced) into a pure stealth dynamic, one based around observation and knowing where every enemy is in the map before you actually do anything about it. Then its process. How to eliminate and do it in mechanical and a tedious manner that mitigates risk. Thats the right way to play the game and its also what makes the game not so much fun. For the most part you'll be patiently waiting (which is a bit odd and dry for a turn based game) for an enemy patrol to finish its pattern and then make your movement to send in a team of two guys to knock someone out (one... Two... Sneaky Beaky WHACK) while the other hides the body. then you'll end your turn. You'll slowly go through the map burglarizing and dispatching everything. If you find enemy special agents, you'll drag them back to a evac point and then go back in to do more burgling and mugging.

The maps are pretty nice though. You have police stations and various offices or hotels. Theres about 12-24 of them. Every map is thematically well made and consistent. You don't see hotels that have like a jail. And the town has graffiti and posters respectably representing the region its in. And when your character does their body dragging or a melee take down you get a zoomed in street level shot of them doing it and can see these environments a bit better. Stuff in russia has hilarious sovietish propaganda and other places have their own art styles.

Another complaint is that Overwatch really doesnt work well. It's very unreliable and clunky. You can tell an agent to go on overwatch and you have to actually zoom out to the right squares. You can't just 'look' west to fire at anyone coming from that direction. In addition, they will fire when they reach that square they step on. What this means is that if you fire too soon (as soon as they see) you wont do decent damage (or score a hit if there is cover) but if you wait too late... odds are the enemy will stop walking and just shoot (and kill you) Enemies can also spot you and stop moving and raise their weapons. Worst of all. anyone walking into overwatch gets a +10 armor bonus and RUNNERS (moving 2 AP or more at once) get a +20 armor bonus! That makes overwatch a bullshit mechanic and literally only something to use when 'we are waiting for the get away car and praying'. They should have reworked it into something like Fallout Tactics where you can just fire in any direction you are facing as long as you have a 33% 66% or 95% to hit... but oh wait.. we dont use hit % in phantom doctrine.

Instead of Overwatch you get something else that is a toss up in terms of it's viability. It's called Breaching. Breaching lets you use 2 or more agents to breach (And hopefully clear) a room of tangos. You can do it with suppressed weapons to maintain stealth. It also looks awesome when it works, and its very satisfying to have used your recon to marked your targets on some missions and finish the mission off this way. It's a fantastic idea but it really isn't something you often need to do because you can take your time and pick people off one by one unless you have two guys who never move and are looking at each other. That's when you breach. Breaching has problems though.

1. You can't breach a room with civilians in it and maintain stealth (and as far as i know you cant even target a civilian this way)
2. Some rooms cant be breached for whatever reason. You have to be adjacent and you have to have immediate visibility or proximity of a target. So, if it's a very large room, or a weirdly shaped room (with like a long dangerous hallway not in close proximity to the entrance you came in) it can cause problems.

It feels like breaching was meant to be the signature feature of this game but I found myself rarely using it. Opting for silent takedowns and juggling civilians that route as well. Breaching doesnt give you as much control and its too clunky. However, it does have a bug that gives you a way to 'cheat' by preserving your movement points while actually moving into a room to spend your attack point... If you actually want to move further afterwards for whateve reason.

I think I understand the intent PD was making with the awareness mechanic and reliance on stealth. But when it's all said and done it does not provide for an engaging or satisfying TBT experience. However, it is a novelty and refreshing change. The ideas here are worth exploring and improving on but the game feels like it needs some fat trimmed off (there are an inane amount of research paths that ultimately go nowhere and so many things in the game are not explained and just left the player to fund to figure out what they do. I used maybe THREE grenades at the beginning of the campaign and hardly used any of my equipment. And research upgrades become less viable and just bullshit.)

A short guide would be to just advance time as much as you can without going broke, and not get too investment minded about anything in this game.

This is in no way anything like an XCOM game or Twilight 2000, where you can do full on assaults and use explosives, terrain etc (amusingly enough there is an airstrike option but if you have agents indoors or under any kind of ceiling at all they are protected. what a joke!) The game design doesn't really translate into the feel of being a smooth spy. Whereas many aspects of Hard West actually DID translate into the feeling of being a slicked out gunslinger form a frontier era. However, the rest of the game. The tedious management, the constant events, the weird concepts of brainwashing your own agents and discovering they have been compromised is very thematically on point. The way in which you develop brainwashing technology is really interesting and you actually begin to invest in the enemies agents in order to shut down bases and things. They are more valuable to you alive than dead (if you choose to play it that way!)

The game does have a nice narrative progression (not saying its a good story) and the Strategic view is manageable (but def not perfect) and fits the theme of the game. It has these odd little ideas here and there that are really cool and feel very XCOM-Y (like capturing enemy agents and then investing in them to do things for you... Even though it at times feels much easier and cheaper to just kill them and be done with it.). But so much of it is a bit bloated and unnecessary and doesn't really translate into stuff that aids you. It's easy to get overwhelmed and distracted. A lot of the stuff in strategic feels like fluff and annoyingly 'clicky' (like slowly going about and managing your increasing roster of personnel in and out of the biotech/drug lab, researching and administering them various boosting chemicals to increase stats, then to suddenly unlock alternate incompa tiers of substances (hence your work is lost) when by end game you are seeing very little tactical combat anymore because you are just using agents to end their operations earlier without resorting to combat). It's just a shame the tactical aspect is shunted and stunted. The idea of this game feels sold rather than developed into something fully presentable. It doesn't really have an indie charm but it does have this cobbled together janky feeling to it with its various elements but it doesn't quite feel seamless in the end, and so many aspects of the design really feel like they need to be fleshed out more and worked on.

Short guide and key points to consider:

Checking the math of your income you will see that Income creation is difficult and You can spend tons of cash on stuff that you wont even ever use. One of these things is training and equipment. And good lord does the research cost a lot with little to not benefit once you are halfway through the game. I found myself not really needing to do anything until mid game with training and equipment, and by that point you have some options. For sake of simplicity here's a guide that I went by that I adapted:

I really wouldnt worry about biochem and just click things randomly for the 10-15 soldiers you want to use. I dont think i've ever seen an enemy above 120-125 health so theres no reason to be pumping your soldiers up 130+

Keep 5 soldiers in your base you want to attack with. When you do a raid it lets you teleport them to the site. (dont fly them there thinking you will fight with them to join in the recon team, it stupidly doesnt work that way)

You dont have to upgrade, gear and roid out ALL your agents. just don't do it. give everyone a pistol though. if you send them out into the world send them in pairs so they dont get ambushed. you can equip them with LMGs ARs or whatever but its best just to focus on 10 or so soldiers. An unholy amount of personnel are just going to be paper pushers in your command center and they do not need to be crack troops. It will just confuse you and if you fight with your desk people they get unassigned and need to be manually assigned again (groan). So just leave them alone and let the low level paper pushers do their thing while the special agents do theirs. (Its just like government agents in real life!)

so much of mk ultra facilities are experimental and somewhat up the the player playstyle.

The ability to farm for intelligence using interrogate is more useful than is apparent at first because you do get bonuses for it (you can also upgrade it and make it cheaper) as well as interrogate your own personnel.

Sabotage can save you time by making enemy activity take a backseat. Control Phrase lets you have unlimited troops above your cap (you don't need more than what you need to respond to travel events though)

disguise is the best thing you can have in the game its better than any gear or stat hands down. and so is actor. then i opt for move distance and awareness perks (since that speeds up the player's playing as convenience) and finally DT/combat stuff. many of the perks are worthless such as XP gainers and near worthless (overwatch bonuses)

assigning people to the conspiracy board is a very slow process and they lose work if they get unassigned. but it gets very annoying after doing it manually for a long time. Remember you don't have to SOLVE these puzzles until you are ready. IF you notice you're not getting gear unlocks and its just cycling through agents for hire. Wait until you get a tech tree unlock in the workshop and then complete some intel to advance research upgrades again.

There's no alien invasion or anything so there's' not a time limit so feel free to just whack those bases and keep your cash health as you complete research then finish the current 'mission objective' to advance plot. Same is true of tactical you can wait every mission out in stealth. The only time you cant is ambush mission that start out hot and loud or some of the story missions where if you steal data from a computer it triggers some kind of alert.

Priority: Cameras/loot, Enemy agents, guards, objectives (if any) This will mitigate risk and let you play things out at your own pace.

i found that there was a particular set of gear and skills i liked. basically two roles (but there is an intermediary role)

Chapter 1: -silenced pistol only disguise people. Give them health and melee/awareness buffs and speed buffs. don't need anything else you can give them an SMG as well of some kind i guess (such as if they cant use a silencer due to training) You want 2 of these for roughly every 20 agents You can easily make a force like this with minimal training and investment. just make sure their pistols can headshot and take down whatever enemies you are noticing on the map, if the health gets higher then consider upgrading/trading for better equip or slap in some upgrades to up the damage on your pistol. Start Recruiting people who have training in the DRAGUNOV AND AMR. Try to get 100+ health.

Chapter 1 and 2: (long half of the game) -Build up reserve army of LMG/ pistols. Best to have suppressed pistol. but work with what you have. don't buy stuff. don't train. Continuing to Recruit people who have training in the DRAGUNOV AND AMR and 100+ health. Assault rifles stand in well for LMGs because they have range. as the game progresses you can use your LMGs in combat and have them fed with AP defeating ammo so its good way to deal with cover enemies. Don't worry about giving gear to troops that have training for things like smgs or shotguns. your best weapon is your bare hands.

Chapter 4+ (it goes quicker from here) Start eyeing your agents for snipers. You should have some who have a background in it by now even if you hadn't been screening for snipers. You'll want to replace your reserve army now with snipers. For now dont worry on secondary as much (LMGS or HK CAWS) just focus on snipers. a mix of dragunov and AMR is fine and you can make this work until the end of the game. You don't need to buy them you'll find them in the field. Manufacture rimfire/rifle suppressors (Running an intelligence agency which fronts as an illegal silencer factory. woot.) by the time you get to chapter four you should unlock some good training options with high level agents. But only one is really relevant. High Dominance tactics (the mac 10 one) this has a stun gives you free movement and fire points so you can put stun sniper ammo (you can learn to manufacture it as early as chapter 3 i think) so you can Enemy At The Gates every enemy in sight (and civilian too) if you want. since reload for sniper only costs MP if you don't move you can reload and fire again and keep doing this as long as you can see your targets at once. You'll need sharpshooter as well (single shots don't end turn) with a little planning and patience you can find a vantage points with 1-3 of your guys and everyone dead. The other perk is nice because it lets you take out enemy agents so they cant dodge (story missions that get hot and loud, because then you have to actually deal with enemy awareness mechanics.) a team of two with LMGS or assault rifles in secondary slot can overcome anything.

Shock tactics is the next training to pick because that is helpful on the hot and loud story maps that have enemies trying to ambush you. You can keep pumping up your awareness every kill on low level cops (and that translates into dodges on such maps, because you wont be abducting those agents or knocking them out) totally not necessary.

also not necessary but kind of fun to play with is you can opt out of the secondary LMG for your snipers and get the HK CAWS instead for a few of your special agents. This thing has a range of 10 tiles but does massive damage. it has a higher high and low base damage and it features two weapon slows so you can feed it your stun ammo slugs (if you have unlocked it) The purpose of this weapon is the same as the LMG (full auto suppression) but has massive more damage then have another sniper finish as you are juggling the recharge time between your Undodgeable Killshot ability. (Very dangerous team if they all have this same setup.) For sake of simplicity it found it best to just stick to LMGs except with maybe the hero character.

Also you aren't penalized by using a sniper as a close quarters weapon. It's a perfect replacement for the pistol. has all of the strengths and none of the disadvantages except for less shots in overwatch and breach. Perfect for any agent who isn't a disguise person.

You don't have to aggressively pursue this outfitting. Really JUST TWO or THREE snipers like this (or even one) is effective enough to wipe a whole map. It's complete overkill and borks the game. level them up to twenty and just keep the rest of your active team pool guys as LMGS / pistol.

Tactical combat is not really desirable but it helps to have something prepared for when you are forced into it. and it helps to know how to build towards that.