This drops in less than 24 hours - anyone know when the review embargo will be up? @tomchick when will you be able to review it, and do you plan on reviewing it?
I got back into playing Hard West yesterday while waiting for this. It was very interesting wrapping my head around the luck mechanism and internalizing what the chance to hit actually meant within the context of that system. I never really paid that much attention before and wrote it off much too quickly without understanding it. It looks like combat in Phantom Doctrine is similar and I can’t wait to try it out.
I even have codenames for my agents, Percival, Spyglass, and, of course, Satchel.
On Steam the devs said 2 hours before it goes live. The initial discount is good for a couple of weeks, so there will be plenty of time to check out reviews, although I’d be surprised if anything popped up that would make me not want to get this tomorrow. I’ve already cleared my calendar.
That’s not bad - I’ll be at work for hours before I can play it anyway, so I’ll be looking forward to reading about it. All signs (including my gut) tell me it’s going to be a great game, tons of fun with lots of content and tactical goodness, and my gut is rarely wrong (in these matters). I hope any issues are just with late-game balance or something easy to fix, minor stuff.
AI turn processing seems to take a little longer than I would like. I’m hoping that’s better optimized by tomorrow.
I haven’t spent much time with it since the stream, but I do want to get a bit further in and see if it’s something I’d like to keep playing. Although, based on the time I have played, I’m worried about this:
In its current state, the turn times might be a deal breaker.
-Tom
It would be a PITA for sure, but (for me) not a deal breaker, as I tend to watch movies/TV on the second monitor while I game, so not a huge deal. Still, something I hope they can have patched in time for launch or soon after, at the least.
Is that the biggest hurdle you are facing with regards to getting into it, or actually I suppose you can’t really get into details until tomorrow morning. If you don’t mind taking the time, I’d love even just a little mini-review/impressions from what you played (on and off air) once the embargo lifts. I’ve got funds set aside to pick this up, but with so many other games coming out in September I’m not married to it or anything. I do think it looks like a lot of fun, though!
Hear, hear! Pretty keen for this one.
The embargo is just on reviews. As far as I know, I can talk freely.
And, yes, that’s currently the biggest hurdle. I’ve played enough that I can kind of see what they’re doing and I’m intrigued. It has the potential to bring to the standard tactical X-Commy formula a lot more than the simple “shoot bad guys” gameplay.
I am a bit concerned that the decisions you make when leveling up aren’t very well thought out. It seems like there’s a bunch of relatively inconsequential stuff where there should be cool skills. For instance, if you choose to make a character a Vietnam vet, that could be pretty awesome, right? But you know what you get for that? A slightly wider angle on overwatch. That doesn’t really get me excited, and I’m not sure whether there’s much else in terms of character advancement.
I’m also a bit concerned that too much information is slammed under the hood when you’re in the tactical game. You can’t call up your character sheet. You only get the most basic information. But I want to be able to see everything about my characters at any time. They’re my characters! Well, not really, since they seem to be canned, more like a Fire Emblem than an X-Com. But Phantom Doctrine doesn’t seem interested in letting me look at stats when they’re most important. Uncool.
-Tom
I can forgive almost any sin as long as the KGB campaign involves a moose and a squirrel.
Or maybe more like an Invisible, Inc?
If Phantom Doctrine resembles the BEST GAME EVAR, that’s okay with me!
Shame about the info-hiding, though. I may have to take phone pics of my stats screens to reference during tactical mode.
Reviews are starting to hit. IGN confirmed my concern about evidence gathering, but no mention of turn times, so perhaps that’s been addressed.
RPS didn’t seem to like it much. :(
Why couldn’t they have rooted this in history? The review states they used 2 made up “poorly explained” spy groups. Would it have been that hard to actually set it in actual cold war espionage organizations? And use historic events as backdrop?
If nobody minds the share, our review is more positive. We seem to be against the consensus so far though so take the writer’s enthusiasm with a pinch of salt: https://www.strategygamer.com/reviews/phantom-doctrine/
That’s a fantastic review, and has re-ignited my excitement with rocket fuel.
I’ll take strategygamer’s opinion over RPS any day of the week
Gamespot also loved it.
A bunch of other reviews are in the Liked it, didn’t love it spectrum.
RPS’s review looks like the outlier.
Wow, I’ve also been waiting for some early reviews before taking the plunge. I can’t say what I’m reading so far is helping. Yeah, that strategygamer review is heartening. But that RPS review. Whew. My suspicion (my hope) is that the RPS reviewer might be pointing to some accurate flaws but getting unduly bothered by them. (It reminds me a little of Alec Meer’s original Battletech review there). And I’m a little skeptical of some of the things the guy runs down. He complains about the no-RNG combat removing all the suspense. From what I’ve watched in Youtuber demos, yes there’s no crossing your fingers while shooting, but there seems to be great suspense in the enemy move phase where bad guys wander around unseen and and you wonder what terrible mistakes you might have made in your turn moves. I do worry that the RP reviewer’s complaint about how the player can’t tell ahead of a move what targets will be available sounds like a real annoyance. At his (and Tom’s) complaint about so much happening under the hood might be something that’s going to drive me nuts.
Oh well. I think I’ll bite. Maybe they’ll patch a few things. Here goes nothing.
Excellent. Looks like the negative nancy’s were just the first to hit “publish” maybe. More positive reviews are nice to see.
I’m picking this up for sure, but I also want the Bard’s Tale Trilogy (vol. 1) because that seems cool and I never played them before, so I’m set if this will be better with a patch or two, but I don’t have infinite time either because of stuff like Dragon Quest XI, Spider-man, and Pathfinder coming up already. I think I’ll just have to give it a spin after work tonight and see which game (this or Bard’s Tale) gets my time and attention this week/weekend.