Phantom Doctrine

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Shadow Doctrine is a Strategy-RPG set during the Cold War era, with you managing a covert international agency devoted to fighting the dark forces secretly pushing the world to the brink of conflict. It’s a refreshingly unique setting for the genre and I’m actually a bit surprised that we haven’t seen it more often.

One of the most interesting things Phantom Doctrine brings to the genre is its approach to stealth, which is more than just a “fog of war” thing. As you are often either walking around in public areas or secretly infiltrating facilities, enemies often do not see you as a threat until you take aggressive action or are seen walking in a place you don’t belong. Until then, you are free to move through the area covertly, stealthily taking out guards, avoiding cameras, and doing what you can to avoid being seen. It’s a wonderful approach that adds in more options to approach a situation, though of course you can still go in guns a-blazin’ if you choose.

In between missions, you’ll be managing your team and assigning them to various tasks that will affect their availability in combat when missions come up. In Phantom Doctrine, you don’t just upgrade your facility and weaponry, you have to actually assign both the funds and the personnel to take care of it. If you want to give one of your agents more skills, they have to be sent to training, which takes them out of commission for a while. Meanwhile, you need to keep an eye on a world map to position your agents wisely so they can respond to trouble as it comes up. And in addition to that, as you collect evidence from missions, you gradually piece together clues and links to help you uncover the secret actions of the organization you’re tracking down.

It’s… a lot to take in, and while the game does provide tutorials and explanations for everything, it’s really easy to feel overwhelmed as it throws a lot at you at once, and even after going through it, a lot of it wasn’t very intuitive. I really wish this game took the time to slow down and make sure you understand every step it throws at you.

Graphically, the game looks… fine. There’s nothing especially noteworthy going on here in the visuals, but it doesn’t look bad, either. It’s okay. However, I really wish this game had voice-overs. There is a lot of text to read through here, and this only helps to fuel the game’s issues with overloading new players.

If you’re patient enough to figure out the complex systems at work in Phantom Doctrine, I think you’ll find a lot to like here. This game brings a unique setting and a lot of good ideas to the Strategy-RPG genre. I only wish that it took the time to properly guide players through everything the game has to offer.

tl;dr – Phantom Doctrine is an XCOM-style Strategy-RPG that has you managing a covert spy agency during the Cold War. It’s a game full of wonderful ideas for the genre, but it doesn’t do the best job guiding the player through those ideas, making the game unnecessarily confusing.

Grade: B+

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