Episode 446: Phantom Doctrine

[Rob Zacny]

Three Moves Ahead 446:

Phantom Doctrine
Phantom Doctrine promises a combination of tactical combat and sleuthing with cold war-era spycraft and compelling procedural narratives. Its delivery on those fronts is charming but ultimately falling short of the goal. Join Rob, Evan Lahti, and Xalavier Nelson Jr. as they dive into Phantom Doctrine and end up talking about Hard West.

Phantom Doctrine, Hard West

 

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[omzh]

First time poster/long-time listener here, but I enjoyed listening to the this podcast. As someone who isn't so much of a trained critic of games, I have been finding the game much more enjoyable despite the flaws discussed on the show.

 

I think there are certainly some design decisions that are at odds, specifically in that the combat is absolutely more punishing. This incentivizes running around the map in stealth mode, knocking everyone out and collecting all of the loot/intel items with no time limit  and it doesn't push the player to get into combat. I think outside of maybe some story missions (I also haven't finished my first campaign yet, but I know of one mission where combat is necessary), you could probably get through the whole game without alerted combat. Even the Beholder cells can be cleared entirely stealthily. While I find that interesting, I would like if the game put you into more combat situations procedurally. The story missions are all great fun, but the limits of the game show with the procedural missions as mentioned on the show.

 

Despite that, I do feel like this game has some good bones, and the developers have stepped up to make changes to balance the game. For example adjusting LOS for fire, readjusting the power of perks (Actor especially was game-breaking for how good it was) and it looks like more tweaks are incoming. I hope they can patch in things like sound from takedowns, breaking glass, and enemies moving between rooms so that it adds some difficulty to the stealth and planning layer that could allow for more interesting situations that emerge.

 

On that note, I'd like to point out that the devs are currently working on mod support (https://www.facebook.com/notes/creativeforge-games/field-report-september-4th/935461166638732/). I think with mods the game can be turned into something much greater, and I will personally be revisiting the game as new updates (and hopefully DLC) are released for this game. I will have to try Hard West now as I haven't had much experience with this developer before, but it sounds promising if not just rough around the edges.

[ilitarist]

Elerium is much better investment than ethirium.

 

I've tried Hard West (GOG gave it away some time ago) after listening to the sho and it was meh. Looked like a much simpler XCOM - for the first couple of hours you only have a single fight of 3 people, usually fewer. So it felt simplistic and clunky. Character progression doesn't look interesting, you can assign weapons and magic abilities to them in any order you want so no one has any personality. Metagame gets old fast.

 

Anyway, from your description Phantom Doctrine sounds like it fails thematically. Beyond those random events you've mentioned it's less of a spy game than XCOM 2 it seems. All of your agents can instamelee anyone and shoot with 100% accuracy. I know it happened in Alpha Protocol too - your character could be a murderous killing machine - but at least you had an option of being invisible or rely on gadgets without being so good with weapons. And you had a lot of dialogue and investigation to do. Invisible Inc is more of a cyberpunk industrial espionage story but mechanically it too sounds more like a cold war game. Your agents are themed as Cold War spies and, most importantly, they're not soldiers. Most of them can only fight a weak basic guard only when they attack from behind with a shocker, very few of them are able of murdering anyone. You have dedicated missions on gathering info for future missions and you are never safe - what's more to wish for in a spy game?

[omzh]

I'll take your word on Hard West, I definitely want to see some let's plays and maybe I'll try to pick it up on deep discount or through a bundle if the free offer doesn't come up again.

 

Quote

Anyway, from your description Phantom Doctrine sounds like it fails thematically. Beyond those random events you've mentioned it's less of a spy game than XCOM 2 it seems. All of your agents can instamelee anyone and shoot with 100% accuracy.

 

Actually the bigger criticism is that it's much MORE of a spy game than XCOM 2. No mission timers, no reinforcements until you get an alarm so you can basically meander through a mission in the stealth phase until the alarms go off. If you have Agents with the Actor perk, they can use disguises and won't be spotted by anybody (until recently they patched it so it was a little less OP and enemy agents can detect you if you're close) but it basically made every mission a cake-walk. In addition to breaching and silenced weapons it's still really easy to get through a mission without an alarm, and there is definitely an inverse difficulty curve.

 

As for being super soldiers, that's actually more about playing the easy difficulty. On hard you can't take down anyone who has more health than you which makes taking out enemy agents tougher for a little longer until you get to body engineering/enhancement to up your agent's stats so their health far exceeds anyone you would meet. It also removes the ability to hide bodies, but beyond that I haven't played a game on hard so I wouldn't know much.

 

I will say for the unpolished experience that it is, I do enjoy the setting and I do enjoy the combat situations when it gets tense. I can see the devs here put out some decent games albiet a lack of polish, but I do want to follow it's development and see how the game changes.

 

I have heard of Invisible Inc. before, but I think the reason I never really noticed it was because of the art style. I'll definitely take a look at it again, possibly when it's on discount.