[ENG] Phantom Doctrine - Review
(I think I don't have to tell this but - review contains my feelings and thoughts about the game, and after reading this - reader should decide if the game sounds cool or not really)
Phantom Doctrine is a strategic game with turn-based combat. It was released on 14th of August of 2018 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch. Phantom Doctrine was created by a Polish studio called CreativeForge Games and published by Good Shepherd Entertainment.
If I had to describe Phantom Doctrine with one sentence I'd say that - Phantom Doctrine is an XCOM set in the times of Cold War - and it would be mostly true, but there are many mechanics that distinguish Phantom Doctrine from XCOM. The action takes place in 1983, peak of the Cold War and we have to uncover and stop the secret conspiracy before it's too late...
In Phantom Doctrine we take control as the leader of 'The Cabal' - the secret organisation created to prevent conflicts and conspiracies. We create our leader and... Character creator has a few interesting options - we can choose if we want our Agent to be from CIA, KGB or the third, hidden faction that unlocks after you complete the game once. Each faction has a different beginning story and different codename for your main Agent (CIA = The Mask / KGB = Grizzly) - personally I have took the path of CIA/The Mask and I don't really know how the KGB/Grizzly or the third faction starts but I think I will return to this game somewhere in the future so maybe I'll find out.
Game offers you 2 'story types' to play - Basic - Basic Phantom Doctrine Story / Extended - more information, details and alternative pathways in certain missions. I chose Basic - I don't remember why, either Extended was blocked like the third faction or I was unsure about Extended
There are 3 difficulty levels - Easy, Medium, Hard with a bonus Ironman feature available to turn on - Ironman basically gives you very small margin for error as you can only play on one save and if you mess up - you messed up, deal with it.
(I will refer to my Main Agent as The Mask, just for simplicity) As The Mask, you control yourself and other Agents in The Cabal - those agents can be helpful (and sometimes loyal if you earn their trust) but they can also be secret spies of your main enemy organisation in the game - Beholder Initiative. If you have spy in your team, he will turn against you if you will enter into an open conflict with enemies during mission.
Your Agents can also have personal situations or affairs to deal with and you will often have to choice - let the Agent go for some time (or let him go to Mercenaries which in effect will give you a chance to meet him as the enemy) or pay a certain amount of money to solve the situation quicker.
The game contains many plot twists, with your agents and your helpers (e.g People who help in The Cabal but you can't really control them or take them on missions) - many of them are truly surprising, infuriating or simply sad.
I think it's obvious that - if The Mask dies on a mission - it's game over
Phantom Doctrine has a lot of mechanisms, unfortunately it introduces to you to so many of them in such short amount of time, that it's incredibly easy to get lost or confused about what you have to do or how something works.
In XCOM, you have % chance to hit certain target - you won't find this here. In Phantom Doctrine you have two values on your attack - the lowest and the highest - for example 85 [22] - it means that it can deal 85 damage but it can also deal 22 damage. Depends on the type of the enemy and how many Concentration he has - Concentration is required to perform certain abilities but it's also required to give you a chance to dodge an enemy attack.
There is Breach ability - an unusual, but a strong attack ability, which requires at least 2 Agents standing next to a door. (Bonus - if both agents have silencers on weapons, alarm won't be raised). Breach allows you to clear an entire room of enemies with a single ability.
Investigations - throughout the game (and often forced on you by the Story) you get various cases to investigate, which more or less requires you to find keywords in gathered materials and connect them with the same keywords in other materials - for example, if case has 19 available materials to gather, and if in two of them you will find the keyword 'Eclipse' - you can connect them. After many connections and connecting the main keyword to find (e.g 'Sunset') - the case is solved and you get rewarded
Throughout the story, you will have to relocate your base of operations a few times. Either story-wise or just because it's too dangerous to stay there. Game has a 'Danger' meter, after exceeding certain point - every moment is a huge risk of enemy attack which in effect robs you from almost all money and part of the Agents. You can test your luck or delay the attack by doing missions, but sooner or later it will inevitably come
Sometimes you will have to change identities of your Agents to prevent them from getting easily ambushed. Agents' pressure meter slowly raises after an alarm and receiving damage - changing their identity isn't too expensive but it's life saving. Do it.
Stun. You can only stun enemies/civilians that have HP lower or equal to yours (e.g you can't stun a 138HP Beholder Agent with your 120HP Agent)
And it's only a few mechanisms which game throws at you during the first few hours...
You can either go ham and start killing everyone on a mission, or you can go silently. And the game visibly rewards stealth approach. When the alarm goes off - enemies know where you are, endless enemy reinforcements are coming every few turns and your evacuation vehicle can be exposed (Giving you +30 to your Danger Meter). And there are few things that can set off an alarm - going into restricted area and getting noticed; getting noticed by a Beholder Agent; shooting from a gun without silencer. But... There is one, really overpowered and exploitable mechanic while playing stealthy. Before mission, you can send few of your Agents to do Recon, and after Recon you can disguise 2 of your Agents (The only downside is that disguised Agents can only use sub-machine guns and pistols, although if you have silencers it;s not a problem) - Disguised Agents are spawned already often deep within enemy territory and they can walk through the restricted areas without caring. The only thing that can discover them are Beholder Agents (although even they can be easily bypassed and stunned). But alarm can be set off by guards if they see body or they see you knocking their buddy unconscious or by the civilians (those goddamn civilians were a bane of my existence). You can turn off cameras and other security devices, you can stun enemies and dispose bodies, BUT - if you stun too many enemies, Beholder Agents will start to suspect something and they will look around the place for your Agents and bodies. After around one third of the game I was abusing the disguise mechanic...
Throughout the game, you get introduced to new enemies and mechanics. After certain time even basic enemies have more HP than Beholder Agents from the start of the game (The record was 115HP for Basic enemy and around 160HP for Beholder Agent; Bonus word for Titans - their heavy armor and protection from stuns was a bit painful).
Economy (or simply your money income) in Phantom Doctrine is made by crafting money. You can assign your Idle Agents to craft money for you, boosting your income (E.g if your basic income is 40$/day, after assigning an Agent it becomes 90$/day) - and oh boy you will need a lot of money to do well in Phantom Doctrine - Training Agents; Their personal affairs; expanding the base with more things and upgrades to make your life easier... It's a lot. Fortunately, the game has several story moments during which you can... Practically Idle, nothing bad will happen and you will earn a lot of cash in peace.
There are Beholder Hideouts - they are hidden at the start, and can be revealed through the investigations or interrogating enemy Agents (When Beholder Agent is stunned, you can carry him to your Evacuation Point and by Evacuating with him, you can interrogate him back in The Cabal). Until discovered and destroyed - Beholder Hideouts give you huge downsides - either they cut your income by 10-30$ or they cause your Danger Meter to grow daily by a steady amount. In the worst cases - they do both (for example - they cut your income by 20$ and force your Danger Meter to raise by 3/Day).
In all missions you can find blueprints, secret documents, weapons, armor etc. - unnecessary armor/weapons can be sold for quite a nice amount of money (Not gonna lie, selling half of my equipment sometimes saved my playthrough and allowed to expand the base with the most necessary upgrades)
There a few things in Phantom Doctrine that grind my gears (except long loading times, but it's more because of my ancient PC than the game itself) - after certain point in the game, tempo suddenly skyrockets and you can't find a breather - you constantly get new investigations, new materials, new enemy recons, new Beholder Hideouts - it's annoying but to be honest I liked it.
Bullshit alarms - Oh my... Listen - as much as I understand these types of alarms in Story Missions, I can't stand them in normal ones. Like, you have your perfect stealthy plan - you execute it flawlessly and then suddenly - an alarm. Without reason. Those are called 'Force Majeures' - they can appear when you sent an exposed agent to mission but... When I get Force Majeure, while sending 2 Agents with a whole 0 on their pressure meters - I can't stand it. (Force Majeures in normal missions can be easily rid of by deleting one file - called Lgen_scout_alarmsoon.xml in 'MissionLogic' folder in Phantom Doctrine folder)
Repetitivness - the game at some point becomes really repetitive, maps are getting recycled and materials for investigations are repeating - only changing keywords. It gets a bit annoying but you can get used to it
(The final mission is beautiful, although it almost forces you to use open combat throughout the whole mission, it is amazing conclusion to your several hours of gameplay. Don't worry - I won't reveal the ending or the most important Codenames. I only want to say this - if you feel that you're going on a final mission - don't hold back, equip your Agents with the best weapons and armor you have. By doing this - despite 2 of my Agents being knocked unconscious, I was able to rescue them and Evacuate successfully)
Phantom Doctrine is an amazing take on the Cold War topic, long (around 40-hour long) campaign filled with twists, plots and occasional confusion it worth the time. Despite few flaws and exploitable mechanics, you can easily enjoy the game. Although my PC is having a really hard time on this game, I know I will come back to it one day and maybe I'll do an 'Overkill Playthrough' what do I mean? - Hardest difficulty, Extended Story Mode + the third faction - because why not, challenge is a challenge! Anyway, have a nice time uncovering the sinister plot behind Beholder Initiative and the conspiracy surrounding the Cold War!
Kind Regards,
Wing
Phantom Doctrine is a strategic game with turn-based combat. It was released on 14th of August of 2018 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch. Phantom Doctrine was created by a Polish studio called CreativeForge Games and published by Good Shepherd Entertainment.
If I had to describe Phantom Doctrine with one sentence I'd say that - Phantom Doctrine is an XCOM set in the times of Cold War - and it would be mostly true, but there are many mechanics that distinguish Phantom Doctrine from XCOM. The action takes place in 1983, peak of the Cold War and we have to uncover and stop the secret conspiracy before it's too late...
In Phantom Doctrine we take control as the leader of 'The Cabal' - the secret organisation created to prevent conflicts and conspiracies. We create our leader and... Character creator has a few interesting options - we can choose if we want our Agent to be from CIA, KGB or the third, hidden faction that unlocks after you complete the game once. Each faction has a different beginning story and different codename for your main Agent (CIA = The Mask / KGB = Grizzly) - personally I have took the path of CIA/The Mask and I don't really know how the KGB/Grizzly or the third faction starts but I think I will return to this game somewhere in the future so maybe I'll find out.
Game offers you 2 'story types' to play - Basic - Basic Phantom Doctrine Story / Extended - more information, details and alternative pathways in certain missions. I chose Basic - I don't remember why, either Extended was blocked like the third faction or I was unsure about Extended
There are 3 difficulty levels - Easy, Medium, Hard with a bonus Ironman feature available to turn on - Ironman basically gives you very small margin for error as you can only play on one save and if you mess up - you messed up, deal with it.
(I will refer to my Main Agent as The Mask, just for simplicity) As The Mask, you control yourself and other Agents in The Cabal - those agents can be helpful (and sometimes loyal if you earn their trust) but they can also be secret spies of your main enemy organisation in the game - Beholder Initiative. If you have spy in your team, he will turn against you if you will enter into an open conflict with enemies during mission.
Your Agents can also have personal situations or affairs to deal with and you will often have to choice - let the Agent go for some time (or let him go to Mercenaries which in effect will give you a chance to meet him as the enemy) or pay a certain amount of money to solve the situation quicker.
The game contains many plot twists, with your agents and your helpers (e.g People who help in The Cabal but you can't really control them or take them on missions) - many of them are truly surprising, infuriating or simply sad.
I think it's obvious that - if The Mask dies on a mission - it's game over
Phantom Doctrine has a lot of mechanisms, unfortunately it introduces to you to so many of them in such short amount of time, that it's incredibly easy to get lost or confused about what you have to do or how something works.
In XCOM, you have % chance to hit certain target - you won't find this here. In Phantom Doctrine you have two values on your attack - the lowest and the highest - for example 85 [22] - it means that it can deal 85 damage but it can also deal 22 damage. Depends on the type of the enemy and how many Concentration he has - Concentration is required to perform certain abilities but it's also required to give you a chance to dodge an enemy attack.
There is Breach ability - an unusual, but a strong attack ability, which requires at least 2 Agents standing next to a door. (Bonus - if both agents have silencers on weapons, alarm won't be raised). Breach allows you to clear an entire room of enemies with a single ability.
Investigations - throughout the game (and often forced on you by the Story) you get various cases to investigate, which more or less requires you to find keywords in gathered materials and connect them with the same keywords in other materials - for example, if case has 19 available materials to gather, and if in two of them you will find the keyword 'Eclipse' - you can connect them. After many connections and connecting the main keyword to find (e.g 'Sunset') - the case is solved and you get rewarded
Throughout the story, you will have to relocate your base of operations a few times. Either story-wise or just because it's too dangerous to stay there. Game has a 'Danger' meter, after exceeding certain point - every moment is a huge risk of enemy attack which in effect robs you from almost all money and part of the Agents. You can test your luck or delay the attack by doing missions, but sooner or later it will inevitably come
Sometimes you will have to change identities of your Agents to prevent them from getting easily ambushed. Agents' pressure meter slowly raises after an alarm and receiving damage - changing their identity isn't too expensive but it's life saving. Do it.
Stun. You can only stun enemies/civilians that have HP lower or equal to yours (e.g you can't stun a 138HP Beholder Agent with your 120HP Agent)
And it's only a few mechanisms which game throws at you during the first few hours...
You can either go ham and start killing everyone on a mission, or you can go silently. And the game visibly rewards stealth approach. When the alarm goes off - enemies know where you are, endless enemy reinforcements are coming every few turns and your evacuation vehicle can be exposed (Giving you +30 to your Danger Meter). And there are few things that can set off an alarm - going into restricted area and getting noticed; getting noticed by a Beholder Agent; shooting from a gun without silencer. But... There is one, really overpowered and exploitable mechanic while playing stealthy. Before mission, you can send few of your Agents to do Recon, and after Recon you can disguise 2 of your Agents (The only downside is that disguised Agents can only use sub-machine guns and pistols, although if you have silencers it;s not a problem) - Disguised Agents are spawned already often deep within enemy territory and they can walk through the restricted areas without caring. The only thing that can discover them are Beholder Agents (although even they can be easily bypassed and stunned). But alarm can be set off by guards if they see body or they see you knocking their buddy unconscious or by the civilians (those goddamn civilians were a bane of my existence). You can turn off cameras and other security devices, you can stun enemies and dispose bodies, BUT - if you stun too many enemies, Beholder Agents will start to suspect something and they will look around the place for your Agents and bodies. After around one third of the game I was abusing the disguise mechanic...
Throughout the game, you get introduced to new enemies and mechanics. After certain time even basic enemies have more HP than Beholder Agents from the start of the game (The record was 115HP for Basic enemy and around 160HP for Beholder Agent; Bonus word for Titans - their heavy armor and protection from stuns was a bit painful).
Economy (or simply your money income) in Phantom Doctrine is made by crafting money. You can assign your Idle Agents to craft money for you, boosting your income (E.g if your basic income is 40$/day, after assigning an Agent it becomes 90$/day) - and oh boy you will need a lot of money to do well in Phantom Doctrine - Training Agents; Their personal affairs; expanding the base with more things and upgrades to make your life easier... It's a lot. Fortunately, the game has several story moments during which you can... Practically Idle, nothing bad will happen and you will earn a lot of cash in peace.
There are Beholder Hideouts - they are hidden at the start, and can be revealed through the investigations or interrogating enemy Agents (When Beholder Agent is stunned, you can carry him to your Evacuation Point and by Evacuating with him, you can interrogate him back in The Cabal). Until discovered and destroyed - Beholder Hideouts give you huge downsides - either they cut your income by 10-30$ or they cause your Danger Meter to grow daily by a steady amount. In the worst cases - they do both (for example - they cut your income by 20$ and force your Danger Meter to raise by 3/Day).
In all missions you can find blueprints, secret documents, weapons, armor etc. - unnecessary armor/weapons can be sold for quite a nice amount of money (Not gonna lie, selling half of my equipment sometimes saved my playthrough and allowed to expand the base with the most necessary upgrades)
There a few things in Phantom Doctrine that grind my gears (except long loading times, but it's more because of my ancient PC than the game itself) - after certain point in the game, tempo suddenly skyrockets and you can't find a breather - you constantly get new investigations, new materials, new enemy recons, new Beholder Hideouts - it's annoying but to be honest I liked it.
Bullshit alarms - Oh my... Listen - as much as I understand these types of alarms in Story Missions, I can't stand them in normal ones. Like, you have your perfect stealthy plan - you execute it flawlessly and then suddenly - an alarm. Without reason. Those are called 'Force Majeures' - they can appear when you sent an exposed agent to mission but... When I get Force Majeure, while sending 2 Agents with a whole 0 on their pressure meters - I can't stand it. (Force Majeures in normal missions can be easily rid of by deleting one file - called Lgen_scout_alarmsoon.xml in 'MissionLogic' folder in Phantom Doctrine folder)
Repetitivness - the game at some point becomes really repetitive, maps are getting recycled and materials for investigations are repeating - only changing keywords. It gets a bit annoying but you can get used to it
(The final mission is beautiful, although it almost forces you to use open combat throughout the whole mission, it is amazing conclusion to your several hours of gameplay. Don't worry - I won't reveal the ending or the most important Codenames. I only want to say this - if you feel that you're going on a final mission - don't hold back, equip your Agents with the best weapons and armor you have. By doing this - despite 2 of my Agents being knocked unconscious, I was able to rescue them and Evacuate successfully)
Phantom Doctrine is an amazing take on the Cold War topic, long (around 40-hour long) campaign filled with twists, plots and occasional confusion it worth the time. Despite few flaws and exploitable mechanics, you can easily enjoy the game. Although my PC is having a really hard time on this game, I know I will come back to it one day and maybe I'll do an 'Overkill Playthrough' what do I mean? - Hardest difficulty, Extended Story Mode + the third faction - because why not, challenge is a challenge! Anyway, have a nice time uncovering the sinister plot behind Beholder Initiative and the conspiracy surrounding the Cold War!
Kind Regards,
Wing
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