Phantom Squad Review Summary

Highly enjoyable and fun gameplay: Players consistently praise the game for being highly enjoyable and fun, highlighting its engaging gameplay, satisfying gunplay, and overall positive experience. Many found it to be a pleasant surprise, offering great value for its price.

Excellent co-op experience: The game's co-op experience is a major highlight, with players emphasizing that playing with friends significantly enhances the fun, replayability, and tactical depth. The seamless multiplayer setup and the ability to coordinate with teammates are frequently mentioned.

Responsive developers and potential: The developers are highly praised for their responsiveness to player feedback, active engagement with the community, and for creating a brilliant first game with significant potential. This indicates a positive outlook for future updates and the game's longevity.

Strong design and aesthetics: Players appreciate the quality of the game's design elements, including well-crafted weapon and level designs, great artwork, and effective sound design. The variety of weapons and items also contributes to the positive experience.

Effective weapon suppression system: The game features a well-implemented suppression system, where both suppressed and unsuppressed weapons have distinct advantages and disadvantages. Players find suppressed equipment particularly useful across most levels.

Unbalanced and High Difficulty: Many players found the game's difficulty, especially in single-player and specific missions like 'Chainbreaker' and 'escape' levels, to be excessively high and unbalanced. This often led to frustration, repeated deaths, and a feeling that the game prioritizes multiplayer over solo play, making the experience less enjoyable.

Inconsistent and Unfair AI: The enemy AI exhibits inconsistent and often unfair behavior, including instant reactions, perfect accuracy, and detection through walls, while sometimes failing to react to loud noises. This creates a frustrating and unpredictable combat experience, where players feel disadvantaged.

Limited Game Content: Players feel the game lacks sufficient content, particularly in terms of the number of missions and interactive elements. This leads to a perception that the game is too short and does not offer enough replayability for its price, especially as a full release rather than Early Access.

Poor Weapon and Equipment Balance: Players report poor weapon and equipment balancing, with many items feeling useless or underpowered compared to initial or suppressed options. This limits tactical choices and makes much of the inventory feel redundant.

Lack of Save Points: The absence of in-level save points, especially in longer or more difficult missions like the 'escape' levels, is a significant source of frustration. Players are forced to restart entire sections or missions after dying, leading to fatigue and a sense of wasted effort.

Tactical Cooperation & Strategy: The game heavily emphasizes tactical cooperation and strategic planning, especially in multiplayer. Players need to coordinate actions, utilize various gadgets, and assign roles to succeed, making it a real-time tactical shooter experience akin to Rainbow Six or Ready or Not.

Diverse Equipment & Weapons: Players have access to a wide array of tactical equipment and weapons, including drones, sensors, grenades, and non-lethal options. This variety allows for diverse approaches to missions and strategic planning.

Flexible Solo & Co-op Play: The game supports both single-player and multiplayer modes, with multiplayer being the main experience. While missions are designed for co-op, they can be completed solo, with solo play offering adjusted difficulty and revival opportunities.

Top-Down Tactical Shooter: The game is primarily a top-down tactical shooter, focusing on anti-terrorist missions and close-quarters combat. Its perspective and mission-based objectives are core to its gameplay identity.

Similar to Door Kickers: The game shares significant similarities with Door Kickers, particularly in its tactical real-time gameplay. Some players describe it as a multiplayer or more modern version of Door Kickers.

Excellent performance and optimization: Players consistently report excellent performance across various hardware, including low-spec PCs and the Steam Deck. The game's optimization is frequently praised for ensuring a smooth and stable experience.

Stable network performance: The game's network stability is a pleasant surprise for many players, with reports of minimal to no lag even during international cooperative play. This indicates robust network code that handles connections well.

Anticipate future content and modding: Players are highly anticipating future updates, especially for new content like levels, equipment, and game modes. There's a strong desire for Steam Workshop support and modding tools to enhance replayability and customization.

Best played with friends: The game is highly recommended for multiplayer experiences, particularly when playing with friends. While some suggest it's best with one other person due to friendly fire, the consensus is that it shines as a cooperative tactical shooter.

Generally positive reception: Overall sentiment is positive, with many reviewers recommending the game and finding it enjoyable. It's seen as a good independent title, especially for those interested in tactical shooters.

Consider alternatives for tactical depth: Some players do not recommend the game as a top-down tactical shooter, suggesting alternatives like 'Ready or Not' or 'Door Kickers 2' as superior choices, especially if buying at full price. This indicates a perceived lack of depth or quality compared to genre leaders.

Good value for money: Many players feel the game offers good value for its price, especially when purchased during a sale. This suggests that the current pricing is fair, but discounts make it even more appealing.

Multiplayer vs. Solo Play: There is some confusion or limitation regarding multiplayer versus solo play. While some players mention playing solo, others note that the game currently only supports playing with friends, indicating a potential need for clearer solo options or matchmaking.

Game's background story: A minor point of feedback concerns the game's background story, specifically the player character's role as a sergeant in an anti-terrorist squad. This is more of a descriptive point than a request for change.

Expectation of optimization: Players are expecting future optimization from the developers. This suggests that current performance may not be ideal and improvements are needed to enhance the overall gameplay experience.

Request for voice chat: Players have expressed a desire for in-game voice chat functionality. This feature would likely improve communication and coordination during multiplayer sessions.

Multiplayer mission context: One review specifically mentions that their feedback is based on the multiplayer experience in Missions 5 and 6. This provides context for their specific observations but doesn't represent a general sentiment or request.